The X-Files Season 11 Episode 8: Familiar Review

Keith NoakesMarch 7, 2018n/a7 min

If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.

Synopsis: Mulder and Scully suspect that darker forces are at play as they investigate a brutal animal attack on a little boy in Connecticut. (IMDB)

Writer: Benjamin Van Allen

Director: Holly Dale

Rating: TV-14

Running Time: 45mins

After the successfully meta episode last week, it is time to go back to basics. This episode had its fair share of creepy as it dealt with something that the series doesn’t usually deal with which is the occult.

When a young boy in a park is lured into a forest and murdered, Mulder and Scully are tasked to investigate. While the town’s police force believed it to be a simple animal attack, Mulder and Scully believed the boy was murdered and that there was more going on. It seemed like the police were hiding something.

The conversation quickly shifted from coyote-wolf hybrids to hell hounds. The town where they were had a history of witches and witch trials. Scully was there to counterbalance Mulder’s theories. When examining the body, they found salt. When talking to police chief Strong’s (Alex Carter) young daughter, who was also at the park, there was a strange program on the television featuring uber-creepy teletubbies called Bibbletiggles. Mulder noticed several books about witches and witchcraft. The girl points out another uber-creepy character named Mr. Chuckleteeth who she saw in the forest.

Scully’s profile of the killer sets the boy’s father, Officer Eggers (Jason Gray-Stanford), off and goes after a convicted sex offender. He wasn’t home at the time. When Mulder returned to the crime scene, he saw a large dog in the distance. The town was in a frenzy but despite all the evidence pointing to the sex offender, Mulder thought it was too perfect. The earlier girl then got lured into the forest by one of the Bibbletiggles and suffered the same fate as the boy.

Mulder noticed a salt ring around the crime scene creating a magic circle, further fueling his witchcraft theory. Strong admitted to committing adultery and thought he was being punished for it. Meanwhile, Eggers found the sex offender and starting to beat him up. Once an officer stopped him, the crowd continued before Mulder and Scully stopped them. Fed up, the Eggers shot the sex offender in the head and killed him. Unfortunately, the sex offender was innocent as he wasn’t in the area when the first murder occurred.

Eggers then confronted his wife Diana (Sharon Taylor) about sleeping with Chief Strong. She left him and got into an accident when she saw her son on the road. After going to Strong’s house, he followed a Mr. Chuckleteeth around until Strong killed him. After not finding Strong at his house, Mulder and Scully returned to the original crime scene. Strong got there first and was killed by a hell hound when he caught his wife Anna (Erin Chambers) casting a spell to curse her husband for what he did to her but she unintentionally was the cause of everything that happened. 

Once Mulder and Scully got to Anna, it was too late as she burst into flames with the book she used unharmed.

Overall, this was a decent episode with an interesting premise that got lost under the slightly convoluted story behind it. At least it spawned such nightmare inducing creatures as Mr. Chuckleteeth and the Bibbletiggles. All these case of the week episodes have been fun but with two episodes left, as much as it is difficult to say, it’s time to wrap things up.

Score: 7.5/10

If you liked this, please read my other reviews here and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, follow me on Instagram, and also like me on Facebook.

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