The X-Files season 11 episode 8 recap and review: Familiar

Get ready for gore, violence and the worst Teletubby you have ever seen in Familiar, the latest episode of The X-Files season 11

It all begins with a creepy, rainy playground where surely nothing terrible will ever happen. A young boy named Andrew – dressed in a bright yellow raincoat like poor Georgie Denbrough in Stephen King’s It – is on some playground equipment. His mother, Diana Eggers, is nearby. However, she is distracted by a tense phone call. She might also be trying to ignore her son’s horrible doll, a dark-gray monstrosity he calls “Mr. Chuckleteeth”.

Maybe she should be paying a little more attention because her son sees a full-size Mr. Chuckleteeth looming about in the woods. Young Andrew runs off and ultimately meets a gruesome end. When we later cut to the police officers searching for him that night, the episode twists the knife even more by making his father one of the officers.

At least Mulder manages to keep it together when interviewing Emily, the police chief’s 5-year-old daughter who was also at the scene. She’s watching a horrifying version of the Teletubbies, the “Bibbietiggles.” They are almost the same, down to the bottom-heavy costumes and brightly colored fur. But their eyes are black voids and they dance over and over to the same music. Then, Mr. Chuckleteeth shows up on screen, dancing and grinning forever. Between that and the extensive witchcraft library, Mulder is thoroughly creeped out.

Familiar is definitely gory, perhaps even excessively so. That’s certainly the case when we come back from commercial to see Scully and Mulder perusing crime scene photos. The cops say it was probably a wild animal attack, while Scully thinks it might actually be a human.

Mulder chimes in with witchcraft, or possibly a demon-related hellhound. Absolutely no one finds this to be helpful.

Things get worse

The grimness intensifies with an autopsy, followed by Andrew’s funeral. His father, Rick Eggers, asks fellow Officer Wentworth what’s going on. Why won’t the FBI release his son’s body? Wentworth spills the beans, saying that the agents seem to think there may be a human culprit.

That’s all Eggers needs to go full vigilante. Somehow, he hasn’t been placed on any sort of leave and is able to search through the sex offender registry via a station computer. He finds one nearby: Melvin Peter. Eggers practically steals a patrol car and leads Chief Strong and Scully on a chase to Peter’s home. Nothing much happens, though no one in town pulls over for sirens or flashing emergency lights. It makes for a very manufactured chase scene, to be honest.

While Chief Strong talks Eggers down, Scully takes a call from Mulder. He’s just meandering around the crime scene again when he encounters a poorly rendered black wolf looming in the woods. It walks away. Mulder hangs up without saying goodbye (though Scully is probably used to it at this point).

Later investigations of Peter’s home reveal way too many party balloons in a bedroom and plenty of pictures of Peter in costume at children’s birthday parties. There’s also a surprise capuchin monkey in a closet, for no discernible reason other than to provide a jump scare.

“He’s potentially John Wayne Gacy with a monkey,” says Scully. But Mulder thinks it’s too easy. He’s also pretty put off by the angry mob forming outside the home. “Mass hysteria, Salem, McCarthyism,” Mulder recalls, looking around at the people.

Salt circles and Teletubbies

Meanwhile, young Emily sees the purple hell-Teletubby at her door and follows it outside. She meets a gruesome end in a similar fashion to Andrew. Mulder finds a salt circle and Puritan gravestones at the site. That’s plenty strange, though Mulder’s leap to witchcraft and demons is still a bit of a stretch.

It’s enough to unnerve Chief Strong, however. He tells the pair that “I have let the devil into my soul and I have sinned against God… but I did not kill anyone.” Strong says he is a “lustful man, an adulterer.” In fact, he was on the phone with Andrew’s mom when Andrew went missing. He cries that he has opened the gates of hell and then runs off.

“I… did not see that coming,” Mulder says.

Later, he pulls out his B-movie dialogue and tells Scully that “I think someone has put a curse on this town and maybe unwittingly opened the gates of hell.” Clearly dramatic, but it’s hard to argue fully when Melvin Peter – who had a clear alibi – is beaten by a mob and then murdered by a distraught Eggers. Even worse, Eggers is released on a $5,000 bond.

Eggers’ wife doesn’t want to cut him a break, however. He confronts her about the affair with Chief Strong. They fight, she leaves, he gets a gun and then leaves after her.

Diana speeds along a dark country road, crying, then briefly sees Andrew standing in the middle of the road. She swerves and flips her car. We cut to her wrecked, upside-down vehicle. The computer wolf walks up to it and growls.

Whiffs of Candle Cove

Meanwhile, Eggers breaks into the Strong household and experiences utter strangeness. First, there’s the “Mr. Chuckleteeth” song, apparently sung by his deceased son with plenty of otherworldly vocal distortion. Then he actually sees Mr. Chuckleteeth and starts shooting, though of course, he does not land a single shot.

The TV starts playing a Mr. Chuckleteeth clip, which, in true creepypasta fashion, ends with a line about “[sending] you straight to hell.” It’s complete with a fast zoom into that awful face and some flames in the background. We’ve got some real Candle Cove vibes here.

Eggers tries to leave, but he comes face to face with Strong on the doorstep. When Mulder and Scully arrive after the commercial break, they find Eggers on the ground, dead of a gunshot wound. They drive off to find that Chief Strong has found Diana’s wrecked car and followed her doppelganger into the woods.

Once deep into the forest, Strong discovers his own wife, Anna. She’s holding a huge grimoire and chanting in the midst of a candle circle. Must have taken forever to light each one. “I have to end what I started,” she tells her husband. “I only meant to curse Diana, for what you were doing behind my back”.

The computer-generated wolf chooses this moment to leap in and chow down on Chief Strong. Mulder and Scully rush in, only to see Anna go up in flames. Scully and Mulder just stand there, because I guess what else would you do? You know, apart from trying to help her or something.

“Let’s get out of this town”

The grimoire, however, survives intact. Later, Scully hands the book to Officer Wentworth, saying, “somehow, this didn’t burn.” He looks like he really, really doesn’t want to receive this particular piece of evidence.

“Let’s get out of this town, Mulder,” Scully sighs. They do just that, but as their car pulls away, a piece of playground equipment starts moving on its own. You can’t end an episode of The X-Files without some lingering strangeness, you know.

Apart from the deeply sad and grim deaths of children, Familiar wasn’t a bad episode. It did, however, spend a little too much time focusing on the boring interpersonal relationships of awful adults. More demons, please!

No, it’s not that I’m a sadist (really, I’m not). But how many of us tune in to The X-Files for small-town drama? Sometimes, it felt like there were simply too many adults bickering and hurting one another. If we have to face horrible injuries and broken relationships, can you at least properly creep us out while doing so? Heck, I’d even take more of those nightmare-inducing Teletubbies from the underworld.

Mulder and Scully and demons

Unfortunately, a lot of the supernatural things that were present were strangely flat. That computer generated wolf spent most of its time wandering the forest, while Mr. Chuckleteeth danced about on screen (with nary an adult commenting on the weird kids’ show).

The reveal that Anna Strong is the incompetent witch at the center of the tragedy was also somewhat unexciting. Maybe we should have seen just a little more of her initial witchcraft to make it really stick. This is one of those rare cases where just a touch of backstory could have rooted things more firmly.

Next: The X-Files season 11: Let’s all be nice to robots, or else

In the end, this is a serviceable episode that doesn’t quite pack the thrills of other X-Files tales. It’s good enough for an evening, but how many people will re-watch it when there are other, more tightly written demonic episodes of The X-Files? At least there were a couple of interesting monsters — in the form of those Teletubbies and Mr. Chuckleteeth.

Next week is “Nothing Lasts Forever,” which looks to be a pretty gross one, with all the talk of organ theft and cult rituals. There may also be a hint of vampires here, with the various stakes through hearts. At least, that’s what Mulder wants you to think. We’ll have to wait until next week to see if he’s right.