Entertainment
 

Tooms

From X-Files Wiki

For the character, see Eugene Victor Tooms.
Tooms on the loose
Series: The X-Files
Original Airdate: April 22, 1994
Production Number: 1x20
Date(s): Unknown
Written by: Glen Morgan and James Wong
Directed by: David Nutter
Tooms dies under an escalator

Eugene Victor Tooms, the limb-stretching serial killer who Mulder previously captured, is released from prison and set free against Mulder's advice.

Contents

[edit] Summary

Druid Hill Sanitarium, Baltimore, MD. Dr. Aaron Monte checks in on his patient Eugene Victor Tooms on the eve of his commitment review.

At FBI headquarters: Scully meets her newly seen superior, Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner {whose first name and middle initial aren't revealed until a later episode). As the Smoking Man watches, Skinner demands more conclusive reports and orthodox procedures; their high conviction/case-solution rate of 75% doesn't impress him.

Back at the hearing, Dr. Pamela Karetzsky testifies Tooms has no physiological dysfunction. A male expert says Tooms' attack on Scully was simply wrongful frustration due to losing his job and being falsely arrested by the FBI. Mulder grows agitated as Judge Kann dismisses his mutation theory, despite showing that Tooms' fingerprints were at seven of 19 crime scenes since 1903. She says Tooms doesn't look 100 years old. Tooms is released providing he remains under Monte's care, regains his job, and resides with a halfway-house couple Susan and Arlan Green.

Lynne Acres Retirement Home: Scully seeks help from former investigating detective Frank Briggs. He recalls a jar of evidence he'd found at Powhattan Mill's Ruxton Chemical Plant when it was under construction in 1963; perhaps something else at the site could implicate Tooms. Having no luck discovering evidence he follows a policeman's hunch - and discovers skeletal remains.

Tooms, back on the job in his Baltimore Animal Regulation van, has stalked a businessman. He is about to attack in broad daylight when Mulder shows up and asks Tooms to help look for his dog, Heinrich. Tooms, angered at being disrupted, leaves but returns later that night and breaks into the businessman's home, by squeezing through a barred windoow; Mulder, nosing around the neighborhood, notices sewage from the drains on a windowsill, and tells the owner he suspects an intruder inside. But Tooms has retreated.

At the Smithsonian Institute's Forensic Anthropology Lab, a professor, examining the bones Briggs and Scully found, discovers that the skull matches the photo of a missing person suspected of being a 1933 victim. But it's not enough to convict Tooms. Scully worries about Mulder, on stakeout alone for three days since he can't request help without alerting higher-ups who want to quash the X-Files. She volunteers to take over surveillance in her own car. Mulder agrees and drives off - with Tooms in his trunk.

On his couch, Mulder sleeps through the Vincent Price movie [[The Fly]]. Tooms enters through a vent, but rather than kill Mulder, simply scratches his own face until he bleeds. At a hospital the next day, a detective tells a doctor that police found Tooms unconscious in the street, beaten and kicked in the jaw. Tooms says Mulder did it. While police speak to Mulder at his apartment, they find an athletic shoe matching the jaw print. As they haul Mulder in for questioning, he notices a screw underfoot - from the vent.

At Skinner's office, as Smoking Man watches, Mulder notes forensic evidence shows no one was inside the shoe; Tooms has tried to frame him. Scully lies that Mulder was with her on surveillance when Tooms was admitted to the hospital. Skinner expresses admiration for Mulder's talents, tells him if stress is making him or other agents behave inappropriately, to take a vacation - and with a glance toward Smoking Man, orders Mulder to stay away from Tooms, oe all of his Congressional contacts together won't be enough to save his job.

With Tooms' dental records, Scully and the Smithsonian have ID'd the gnaw marks as Tooms' - they have their proof. At Tooms' halfway house, Arlan is just leaving when Monte arrives. Mulder and Scully arrive shortly afterward and find the doctor's corpse and realize that Tooms will go into hibernation now that he has claimed his fifth victim.

The agents go to 66 Exeter Street, where they had last found Tooms but the building has been torn down; an abandoned shopping mall, City Square, now occupies the site. In a darkened, after-hours department store, Mulder crawls through a narrow utility passageway beneath the floor, its entrance at the foot of an escalator. He pushes through a vent into a cavelike area, where the animalistic Tooms attacks. With Scully's help, Mulder escapes and activates the escalator - evidently killing Tooms in the mechanism.

Skinner, later, reading Scully's unorthodox report, asks if the Smoking Man believes it. He knowingly replies yes. Outside Mulder observes a cocoon in and tree and tells Scully that a change is coming for the X Files.

[edit] Background Information

  • Writer Glen Morgan was Christmas shopping at a mall in Los Angeles when he saw men working on an escalator that was open and exposed. The sight inspired him to consider the scare factor of an urban myth, involving a monster living underneath an escalator. Though the monster was initially unspecified, Morgan thought the best option would be to re-use Eugene Victor Tooms, who was previously featured in the episode "Squeeze".
  • This episode's story also grew out of frustration that Morgan and writing partner James Wong had encountered while working on "Squeeze" and the writers' belief that Tooms actor Doug Hutchison could do an even better job with director David Nutter (rather than Harry Longstreet, who had directed "Squeeze"). The aspect of this episode that Nutter found most challenging was how to bring back such a special character. The director was ultimately very pleased with and proud of Hutchison's performance, however.
  • This is the first episode in which the Cigarette Smoking Man speaks. The producers would later joke that they hadn't even known until then that actor William B. Davis could talk, ultimately delighted by what he brought to the role.
  • During the scene in which Tooms sneaks into Mulder's apartment and fakes an assault from the FBI agent, the original version of The Fly can be seen on Mulder's television as he sleeps.
  • Actor Doug Hutchison played the final scene under the escalator nude, at his own suggestion. As Hutchison later recalled in regards to filming the scene, "they covered me in Karo syrup and food coloring... and it was cold! I kept sticking to the walls."
  • Following the completion of this episode, Hutchison used frequent appearances at The X-Files conventions to lobby a second return to the series.

[edit] Guest Starring

[edit] Co-Starring

[edit] References

X-File 129202;

Previous episode:
Darkness Falls 		The X-Files
Season 1 		Next episode:
Born Again
Retrieved from "http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Tooms"