Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the X-Files episode “Home” (Season 4, Episode 2).
Abandoning the spacey conspiracy thriller narrative, the ’90s phenomenonThe X-Filestranscended genres, part cop show, part soap opera, part murder porn, and, on occasion, even full-blown horror. One of the best examples of the show’s longevity is the legacy of the particularly unpleasant 1996 installment, “Home.” Yeah,thatone. Less a fun “monster of the week” romp, this episode took on more of a Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven vibe of blood-and-guts horror, even if the TV-MA-rated episode didn’t show anything explicit. In the long-running show, this one moment would be the one time that Chris Carter and gang would go over the line in the sand with censors, all thanks to a tightly-knit family and their devotion to strengthening family bonds.
Directing duties fell to regular Kim Manners, who put his own flourishes on the “lost” episode. Fans might have forgotten the character names or actors, but the imagery in one of thescariest TV episodes of all timehaunted the nightmares of many an impressionable child for decades to come. Stranger still, that wasn’t supposed to be the last of them; the inbred Pennsylvanian plot was finally quashed by the huffing of vengeful censors some years later. Had the writers prevailed, we’d have seen the show’s creepiest story branch out into multiple series to further develop the lore. Yup, the most heinous, revolting characters in all ofX-Filesrogues' gallery almost got their own extended canon.
‘Home’ Is a Disturbing X-Files Episode
The X-Files
From the intro scene of a deformed fetus buried under the home plate of a local sandlot baseball diamond, you know the show was not pulling any punches, setting a weird tone that even Chris Carter didn’t usually go near. For those unacquainted, the show had cornered the market on grand guignol and all things outlandish, with the bonus of being far more comprehensible thanDavid Lynch’sTwin Peaks.
The entire premise of the show was underpinned by a prolonged tragedy involving Fox Mulder’s sister and a very grandiose conspiracy. No one could fault the show’s effectiveness in the early season, especially for the tangential filler episodes that delved into random serial killers, sewer monsters, and occultist poultry farmers. “Home” was conceived as just that type of viewer-satisfying diversion from the show’s heavier psychodrama concerning Fox Mulder’s dysfunctional and broken childhood.
That’s not how it played out. Once the Fox censors got one look at the show and the script, packed full of incest, brutal beatings, and a child buried alive, they put a stop to the proceedings, but only after playing up the outrage factor. In a memorable appeal toX-Filesfans (who referred to themselves as X-Philes, non-ironically), the network bid adieu to the episode in ominous adverts for the show, tempting edgy kids and adults to “Remember the house your parents warned you to stay away from? This Friday [dramatic pause], you’ll understand why.”
However tame the show seems now, the gross-out violence was evidently radical at the time. Never mind the fact that the scenes of murder by the Peacock brothers (George, Sherman, and Edmund) are barely shown. The “freak of the week” format of the show likely did it no favors either. The episode has absolutely no bearing on the larger narrative or timeline of the show’s central conflict, rendering it dispensable.
The X-Files: The Most Messed-Up Episodes
The X-Files had a wide range of styles and stories throughout 218 episodes, but the disturbing and more messed-up ones are some of the best.
X-Files Took Inspiration From Horror Classics in ‘Home’
After its first airing in 1996, new parent-guidance ratings were put into place by networks in the United States. Running afoul of these scores, Morgan and Wong’s baby, pun intended, was doomed. The taboo material gathered dust in a warehouse of 20th Century Fox Television. Perceptive fans of the show will quickly point out that the writers' nod to old-school horror is no anomaly, taking heavy inspirationfrom horror classicslikeThe ThingandFrankensteinover its run. This particular episode took some cues from Wes Craven’s grimy, low-budget filmThe Hills Have Eyes.
That’s far from the end of thebehind-the-scenes drama. Unwilling to let such a provocative idea sit wasted, Morgan revealed to theSci-Fi Flix Magazinein 1998 that he wrote a follow-up to the original episode. Morgan was a writer on the Chris Carter-created programMillenniumby this juncture – a sister project adjacent toThe X-Filesproper. He wished to incorporate this dangling plot thread into his new show, knowingX-Filesfans would be intrigued.
Throughout the run ofMillennium, numerous characters and plots from the main show were carried over and elaborated, often by the very same writing staff that had created those characters on iconic episodes ofThe X-Files, including the Jose Chung character. Another spin-off,The Lone Gunmen, ran for a season, riding on the success of the Chris Carter program, though Fox hated it.
Continuing the voyage of Matriach Peacock (played by Karin Konoval) and her only living son, this new script would have seen the protagonist ofMillennium, Frank Black (played by Lance Henriksen), investigating the family, now on the lam. Once again, the Fox folks put their foot down, to the chagrin of Morgan. By the time he got news of the rejected idea, he was in the pre-production stages. His extensive planning wound up in the dumpster. The fault of this revival was likely chalked up to the show’s lack of leverage with Fox, i.e., their ratings were a tiny fraction ofThe X-Files,and the network hated this spin-off too. The Peacock saga ended ona tantalizing cliffhangerout of spite as much as anything else.
15 TV Shows That Were Canceled More Than Once
Second chances are rare in the world of TV, but some shows prove that with persistence, even cancellation can’t keep a good series down.
‘Home’ Wasn’t Meant to Be Controversial
It’d take three more years for it to see the light of day. It only aired once and was removed from any further scheduled reruns until 1999. The hype ofthe banned episodeand TV-MA rating placed it in unique territory for a show that adhered faithfully to the TV-14 designation. Director Manners responded to the backlash as an inevitable reaction to the subject, though he still did not understand what the big fuss was about. Hetold an interviewerback in the ’90s:
“I think the people who didn’t like ‘Home’ didn’t know what they were disturbed by. I think they were disturbed by every child’s first fear in life, which is that there’s something under the bed. And the fact that mom [Mrs. Peacock] was under that bed was what disturbed people the most.”
Manners defended the episode and tone as reminiscent ofDraculaor any of the classical monster films, albeit with a unique twist, one all the more scary because it transposed that gothic horror to boring, small-town USA. And nothing so unsettled and delighted viewers more than anX-Filesepisode set in the vicinity of their obscure, ignored area of the country. In truth, “Home” was banned precisely because it nailed the show’s winning formula too well, mixing the psychologically grotesque with the otherwise dull procedural crime genre, producing a nasty yet grounded take on the bureaucratic-federal-agents-versus-evil trope that was the secret sauce ofThe X-Files.
One of the inbred freaks of that episode, played by John Trottier, was taken aback by the network’s response: “The funny thing about ‘Home’ is that while we were doing it, I don’t remember it being controversial.” For Trottier and most of the set, the bleak, sinister tone wasn’t apparent as they toiled in 16-hour-long workdays for two weeks—in his case, in heavy makeup.
Although nothing graphic is shown, the idea of the incestuous murderers quietly living next door stood out among the glut of fantastical monsters and supernatural shenanigans. Wong and Morgan would return decades after the show wrapped up its first iteration, writing new adventures for Agents Scully and Mulder in the 2010s but never returning to the characters in “Home.” Few episodes would match the gnarly, twisted take on Americana found in the 1996 program that served as one of thedefining moments of the show. It’s a shame so few could appreciate it at the time.X-Filesis streaming on Prime Video and Hulu and is available to rent on iTunes and Google Play.
