“Tooms” is episode twenty-one of season one of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night at Druid Hills Sanatorium, Baltimore, Maryland. The view pans past the nametags on several locked doors and it comes as no surprise, given the episode’s title, that it stops on one marked ‘Tooms, Eugene Victor’ who was caught in “Squeeze”. Tooms is looking through the slit in the door and starts reaching through for the lock when a doctor enters the corridor along with an orderly. The doctor knocks on the door and it turns out that Tooms is still inside. The doctor, Monte, tells Tooms he wanted to see how he was feeling. That Tooms thinks he won’t get out but Dr Monte has looked at the details from the doctors at the hearing tomorrow and they share Monte’s opinion that Tooms is ready to re-join the community. He will be released. A terrible idea.
At the FBI, Scully is meeting with Assistant Director Walter Skinner (his first appearance) as the Cigarette Smoking Man stands and smokes in the corner. AD Skinner is quite displeased with Scully’s reports. Scully tells him the nature of the cases precludes orthodox methods. No, she isn’t saying that their cases require separate standards to the rest of the Bureau, but the reports do need to be read with an open mind. Besides, their conviction rate is 75%, well above the current Bureau standard. According to Skinner, that is their only saving grace. Scully asks, rather pointedly, what more is required. More reports and conventional investigation by the books. Scully replies that conventional investigation may decrease their rate of success.
Tooms psychological status is being gone through by court-appointed expert witnesses. Mulder is also there. The various witnesses support Tooms being fine. Tooms himself is watching Dr Monte in a creepily disturbing manner. Mulder is also called to testify and he is brought short on mentioning other cases as there is no evidence linking Tooms to crimes other than the attack on Scully. Who arrives at this point. Mulder starts testifying on Tooms being involved in 19 homicides over a century and him being a genetic mutation. This goes down as well as expected.
After testifying, Scully approaches Mulder and he asks her if they would have taken him more seriously if he wore the grey7 suit. He didn’t care how he sounded as long as he told the truth. Scully tells him she was meeting with AD Skinner. Tooms is, no surprise, released from the sanitorium into the custody of a couple.
Mulder says to Scully that Tooms will kill again, as he needs one more, but not the old couple. That’s too obvious and Tooms didn’t stay hidden for a hundred years by being obvious. Mulder is going to keep an eye on Tooms and wants Scully to link Tooms to the older murders. Scully replies that those were 60 years ago. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Scully replies that this will require unorthodox investigation methods and Mulder tells her not to bow to bureaucratic pressure. Tooms passes at this point, smiling at Mulder as he does.
Tooms is back at his job with Baltimore Animal Regulation and sees a woman before he gets back into his van. He starts fixating on her and walking towards – but Mulder steps in his way.
Scully is back at Lynne Acres meeting with former detective Frank Briggs again. Briggs is not happy; if Tooms gets away this time, Scully will be nearly Briggs’ age next time Tooms takes a life. Briggs helped them last time and she wonders if he can this time too. They need to prove Tooms was involved in the killings Briggs investigated. There must be something. There is.
Back in 1963, all five victims were found at the crime scenes, as were all four of Tooms’ most recent. When Briggs was a sheriff in 1933, only four victims were found. There was a fifth missing person but no body was found. Briggs thinks there must be something that linked Tooms to that victim. An old-fashioned hunch. He thinks the body is in the cement poured as a foundation to a chemical factory. So, Scully takes Briggs, and some ground penetrating radar and operators – which she explains to Briggs – to the factory. Briggs is not that impressed with the description as to how GPR works. Guesswork. He uses some of his own guesswork and calls out a location where he thinks the body is.
Tooms is watching for more potential victims and Scully’s team find a skeleton where Briggs guessed. Mulder has been watching Tooms for some time now, and it’s making him tired. With a skeleton, that can now be investigated for links to Tooms. Tooms is also watching Mulder and plans to set him up.
The Cigarette Smoking Man speaks for the first time this episode. Not much, but he speaks.