25 best standalone episodes of The X-Files

9. “Squeeze”

Even if you don’t know him by name, Eugene Tooms is one of the most famous villains on The X-Files roster. In fact, “Squeeze”, the first episode that features Tooms, is the very first “monster-of-the-week” episode ever released by the show. Given that “Squeeze” is only the third episode of the first season, even early viewers must have known that The X-Files was something very, very different.

The episode begins with the murder of a Baltimore man named George Usher. He is the third in a series of crimes wherein the victim’s liver has been removed. The baffling case is assigned to agent Tom Colton (Donal Logue), who then asks Dana Scully for help.

He could really use the assistance, as the details of the murders are strange indeed. Each murder had no real entry points. No tools or instruments were used – that is, the livers were removed by hand. Furthermore, when Mulder does some research, he discovers that eerily similar murders occurred in both 1933 and 1963.

When Scully and Mulder return to the crime scene, they discover Eugene Tooms (Doug Hutchison) crawling through the building’s air vents. Though they detain him, Colton eventually lets the suspect go. He argues that there’s simply no concrete evidence to hold him, though Mulder claims to have matched Tooms’ fingerprints with an oddly elongated one found at the scene.

When the pair visit a detective who had worked on the 1933 cases, it soon becomes clear that Tooms is their man. But, how could have possibly have been active then and still have not aged? What is he doing with the livers? How is he gaining entrance to places that, by all rights, are locked up tight?