Before we start, a couple content warnings for child abuse/referenced child sex abuse, suicide, and also…snakes. In case you are afraid of snakes. There is a pretty unpleasant snake scene.
Well that was…an episode. A very “meh” episode overall, in my opinion. There was nothing really bad about it, but honestly the whole thing felt kind of boring, at least on this rewatch for me? There isn’t really much of a plot to the episode, and almost all of the supposedly “scary” Devil/occult scenes mostly just felt cheesy and kind of hilarious.
I am somewhat surprised this episode overall seems to have such great reviews. Like, I mean, it’s fine. It’s a very run-of-the-mill Monster of the Week episode, and you know that the show had to do an episode about Satanic Panic/the occult at some point. But two reviewers decided it is apparently the 4th best episode of the series…and I’m sorry, WHAT?! There are so many episodes, both mythology and Monster of the Week, that are 1000x better than this one. Like, how on earth did those two reviewers rate this episode above Season 5’s “Bad Blood”, one of the funniest episodes of the show—which also has a pretty fun “twist” (we’ll get there in a couple of years 😉). And they rated “X-Cops” as only #20 on their list—I also very much think that episode (season 7) is 100x better than this one!
…Clicking through their list fully now, I personally would rank 17 of the episodes they chose above this one, along with several that aren’t even on their list. (If you’re wondering, my ones I’d probably rank lower are “Small Potatoes” and “Post Modern Prometheus”, both of which seem to be very popular episodes but are both actually quite gross and creepy when you dig into them. We’ll get to those in a couple of years too 😉 Maybe also “Home”, which I don’t remember much about but I know I try not to rewatch that one because it’s creepy AF)
Everyone has their different opinions of course, but it feels wild to claim that “Die Hand der verletzt” is the 4th best episode of an entire series. It’s fine, but it’s nothing ground-breaking. And I will say it is very possible the episode was scarier/perhaps ground-breaking when it aired in 1995, before “occult panic” type storylines were wildly overdone. But in the 19 years now since the episode aired, it just feels very stereotypical, and like nothing much exciting happened.
If you dig into it, there’s some good commentary on “performative religion”, which I’ll get into a bit. There’s also a little bit of a call out of some of the infamous “Satanic Panic” cases of the 80s (as I’ll also get into), though there I would’ve liked a bit more from Mulder and Scully on how all of those cases turned out to be false. Because the only somewhat “gross” part of this episode was that it did seem to kind of just…take advantage of those infamous cases and treat them like they were real, doing a gross disservice to the true victims in those cases.
But really, overall, just a “fine” episode for me. Not sure how much grand commentary I’ll have—though I always say that and end up writing 1000s of words, so I guess we’ll see.
Let’s explore the “Devil” that might be in this small New Hampshire town…
Occult Murders (?): The “Case”
The episode opens on what appears to be a very normal parent-teacher council meeting, run by conservative adults—they’re debating whether “Jesus Christ Superstar” is an appropriate musical for the high school to put on, and also question the suitability of “Grease” because it contains a curse word.
Similar (and even worse) conversations are happening 30 years later at every PTA and school board meeting across America.
You would assume, then, when these adults want to end the meeting by reciting a prayer, it would be some Christian prayer.
NOPE!!!!
They recite some clearly very “Satanic” prayer, calling upon the “Lords of Darkness” and “kings of the Underworld”.
This is…not your everyday American PTA meeting. 😱
We then join a group of high schoolers in the forest at night, at a random tree stump in the woods that is supposedly an altar commonly used for “occult” rituals. It’s pretty clear to me, at least, that the two teenage boys are just using this as an attempt to get the attention of the two teenage girls—scare them a little bit, and then be there to “comfort” them in the aftermath. They tore a page from a library book so everything would sound “authentic”, but I really don’t think either Jerry or Dave believe in the occult or really thought anything would happen. They probably even chose a stormy night expecting that something as mundane as lightning or whistling wind would be enough to scare the girls “into their arms”.
So, I mean, a little bit gross on the boys’ part, but really the sort of weird shit that all teenagers do, especially in small towns, and especially in the pre-Internet era.
Unfortunately for the boys, it seems like there really is something odd in these woods…Upon reciting the “prayer”, rats suddenly appear (I suppose could be normal…but so many at once…). Jerry runs after one of the two girls, and as he has almost caught up to her, flames suddenly appear out of the ground and a hand grips his throat.
We (thankfully) do not see Jerry get murdered or the mutilation of his body, but apparently whoever killed him removed his eyes and heart. The sheriff clearly thinks that “witches” or “occultists” were responsible for the murder. While he is certainly spooked and superstitious, I will grant the sheriff that the removal of certain body parts from a victim does indeed sound ritualistic in some manner. Perhaps not necessarily a murder done by “devil worshippers” (or the real Devil), but I do discount Scully’s later claim that this is a “routine homicide”.
Scully, this boy wasn’t just shot or stabbed or choked…essentially, he wasn’t “just” murdered. Whoever killed him mutilated the body in what is apparently a very specific manner. There is something unusual happening in this town, whether it is actually occultists of some sort, or “just” a serial killer/psychopath. It’s definitely good that the sheriff called in the FBI if he felt his small team couldn’t do the full investigation themselves.
Naturally, the 3 teenagers who were with Jerry in the forest become the first suspects. Mulder and Scully question them, but very quickly release them? Sure, there’s no real evidence to link any of the three to the murder of their friend, but they were the only ones out there in the forest that we know of. None of them mention seeing the “entity” that appeared to kill Jerry, so what are Mulder and Scully supposed to think?
And sure, I guess they are “just teenagers”, and they do all seem very frightened of something. But it still seems absolutely wild to me that all three of them would just immediately be released back to class. Maybe there isn’t enough to arrest any of them (and yes, we will learn they weren’t responsible…or were they…in some way….) but? Really? Just immediately release them, without apparently looking further into any of their backgrounds?
Sure. Real solid investigation you’re starting out with, Mulder and Scully.
Anyway. Moving on to the next “weird” happening. We join students in the science lab, where they are told their final exam will be based on the successful dissection and diagram of a fetal pig. One of the two girls who was in the forest (Shannon) appears very distressed by this activity, which by itself isn’t terribly unusual, especially in a high school biology class. After her partner cuts open the pig, Shannon has a “vision” of the pig’s heart beating, and the pig moving around and squealing.
As this happens, the substitute science teacher, Mrs. Paddock, looks on dispassionately, though the rest of the class is very clearly distraught and horrified by their classmate’s outburst.
Later, Mrs. Paddock does attempt to comfort a still distraught Shannon. She has calmed down from her vision, but panics again when told that her “father” will come to pick her up.
Aaaaaaaaaand here is where we join Shannon recounting supposedly “repressed” memories of her stepfather involving her in satanic rituals and sexual abuse. And this is where I say “oh, gross” because as I’ll get into later “repressed” memories were a big part of the infamous “Satanic Panic” cases and almost every. single. one. turned out to be false and often coerced. So, uh, the writers just using those false memories that caused a lot of real harm to real people back in the 1980s to move their story along just feels…real gross. Especially because the parents in this story do appear to be involved in some sort of “occult” rituals, even if they don’t do the apparent “full rituals” that would require child abuse. Like…why did you have to make it sound like any of this is real? Why?????!!!!
Ugh.
Well, seemingly later that same day after school, Shannon is back in the biology lab with a fetal pig so she can still complete her final exam. For some reason, Mrs. Paddock leaves a student alone in the biology lab with sharp implements.
OK, I mean, clearly Mrs. Paddock’s “reason” was so she could go do a ritual in her office, using Shannon’s bracelet to gain control over her body and force Shannon to kill herself—slitting her wrists with the scalpel.
But what is wild here is that no one questions at all why Mrs. Paddock left a student alone with sharp instruments. Lady, even if your office is only 5 feet away from the actual lab, you never leave any student alone in a science lab!!!! There’s chemicals, glass, scalpels. What the fuck!!!! Why doesn’t Scully, the scientist here, think her behaviour was at all odd or out of character for a supposedly very dedicated and “old fashioned” teacher? You have to watch your students!!!!
*sigh*
After Shannon’s apparent suicide, the occult-worshipping Parent-Teacher Council decides that the story should be that Shannon killed Jerry because she was jealous of another girl, and then killed herself because she couldn’t live with what she’d done. They don’t want their own occult worship to get out, and they also don’t seem to want to believe that any of the “rituals” they have done could have awakened something darker than they were prepared for…
But, one of those occult-worshippers is Shannon’s stepfather (Jim), who cannot live with blaming his daughter for events his beliefs might have caused. Jim willingly admits to performing various “satanic” rituals, and even involving the children in those rituals because “young blood is pure” (🤮). After the rituals, the adults apparently used “hypnosis” to repress any memories the children might have had of what occurred. Jim insists emphatically that they never abused the children sexually which is…nice, but uh, my dude, you definitely were still abusing your children!!!! Even just giving them drugs or some sort of weird hypnosis treatment without consent is abuse, dude!!!! And if you’re treating them to repress memories so often, it’s no wonder that things got twisted in Shannon’s (and like others’) mind as some “memories” came to the surface!
Again, I’ll get into this a bit more in my later “fact checking Satanic Panic” section, but this is gross to me. In the “real” Satanic Panic cases, there was no evidence at all of child abuse or occult worship. And so I say once more: it is gross and insensitive to use these stories but then claim that occult worship was happening. Stop perpetuating the panic, even just for a “fun” TV story!!! 😭
After hearing this gross story, Mulder receives a phone call “from Scully” in trouble, and decides apparently that the best way to arrest his one suspect is to handcuff Jim to a pipe in his own basement and then leave him alone????
I do not think that is FBI protocol, Mulder.
Well, the end of the episode is even more chaotic and confusing than the earlier scenes were, so to try to sum up: The snake from the biology room attacks Jim in the basement, apparently under Mrs. Paddock’s control. The rest of the occult-worshipping PTC hears this and decides they are being punished for not believing enough or offering “sacrifices” to the devil, so Mulder and Scully must be killed in an offering to appease the “Devil”. But just when one of the remaining men is about to shoot them both, something takes over his body and he shoots himself instead.
(Note: it is unclear what happens to the 3rd man or the woman on the occult-worshipping PTC)
Finally, Mulder and Scully seem to come to the realization that Mrs. Paddock might be the person who was behind everything…it was her snake, after all, and she was the only other person in the building who could’ve been doing rituals, supposedly?
But when they enter back into the biology lab…it is empty, with the message “Goodbye. It's been nice working with you” left on the blackboard.
Mrs. Paddock, whoever she was, and whatever powers she had over others…has left the town. These devil-worshippers cannot be saved.
Conjuring the Devil Herself
To me at least, it seems fairly clear that Mrs. Paddock is supposed to be the Devil (or perhaps Lilith, or some other demonic messenger), who was conjured into the town and is now…seeking revenge on her followers for not being faithful enough?
That latter part is where I’m a bit unclear.
It seems that the teenagers were the ones who likely accidentally conjured the Devil with their little ritual in the forest. She did appear right after their ritual, and not anything the parents did.
Most likely, the Devil killed Jerry out of anger for conjuring her without meaning to, or without believing in her powers?
But it’s the rest of Mrs. Paddock’s actions as the “Devil” that are more unclear to me. Does she kill Shannon because she realized Shannon was starting to remember some of the occult rituals—was Mrs. Paddock conjured during some of those and she was afraid to be remembered? Or does she kill Shannon to punish Jim, her stepfather, for not believing enough and not being fully faithful—he claims they never gave full sacrifices that the traditional rituals demanded of his “faith”.
It’s probably the latter reason, and that’s also why Jim is killed. Yes, he talked to the FBI and told Mulder about the rituals, further exposing how much of his faith he had lost and how useless Jim and the others would likely be to the “Devil’s cause” or whatever. Hence why…she also decided to kill one of the other men on the PTC? But…not the others?
Also unclear why she didn’t allow Mulder and Scully to be sacrificed, supposedly to try to finally please her and keep the remaining occultists “safe” from retribution. My best guess would be that the murder of two FBI agents would draw far too much attention to the town, but Mrs. Paddock very easily could’ve left by then, leaving her “lost” worshippers to take the blame. Unless the Devil just really doesn’t want any of the “real” rituals and believers to come into the news. Best if the Devil stays a secret?
Anyyyyyway. Mrs. Paddock is an interesting enough character, and it was a rather nice mini “twist” to have the most old-fashioned seeming adult in the school be the one who was really behind every strange event (and again, was possibly/probably actually the Devil herself come to seek…revenge?)
But uh, personally, all of the scenes with Mrs. Paddock doing various rituals were not at all scary??? They mostly just made me want to laugh with how overdone everything felt. Like…that scene of her eyes suddenly becoming snake eyes while she was apparently controlling the python? 😂 You’re trying a bit too hard there, directors.
I will though note once again it is very possible these scenes seemed scarier in 1995, and now the “occult” type stories have been so overdone that it’s hard for me to find 1990 special effects with “spooooooooky” music actually scary. I know I had similar feelings when I finally watched The Blair Witch Project in undergrad…that’s not a scary film, it’s hilarious.
Overall, though, there are much scarier episodes of The X-Files. I’d argue that “Irresistible” from last week is one of the scariest because it’s so real.
But, maybe I’m just too jaded by the horror that is real life to be scared by occult rituals with spooky music.
Performative Religion: The Parent-Teacher Council
JIM AUSBURY: “We never physically hurt them. We'd slip over the ancient rituals that we didn't want to do.”
If Mrs. Paddock/the Devil did indeed come to town and stay to punish her worshippers for “not believing enough”, this is some very interesting commentary on most of modern religion, but especially modern Christians.
It is oh so common for modern Christians—especially evangelicals—to pick out only the parts of the Bible that they agree with, and ignore everything else that God or Jesus apparently said, if it doesn’t fit with their personal beliefs.
Going even a little farther, it is very common for “Christians” to pray only when they need to, and not go to Church all the time or follow all of the “rituals” asked of them by the Bible.
Basically, for the vast majority of society, “traditional” religion has been so watered down it would be unrecognizable to many early followers. But that doesn’t stop some people (*cough* Evangelicals *cough*) from still hiding behind their “religion” to stop anything in society that they don’t believe in or agree with.
Fact Check: The History of “Satanic Panic”
Ohhhhhhh boy. Satanic Panic.
I actually don’t want to dive too far into the weeds on this because I do not need to fall down conspiracy rabbit holes or start getting all sorts of weird search suggestions. I’ll give a little bit of history to explain why parts of this episode do rub me the wrong way, but I also highly recommend the Behind the Bastards series of podcast episodes on this for a full history.
Probably the most (in)famous case is the “McMartin Preschool trial”, during which staff at the preschool were charged with hundreds of acts of sexual abuse of the children at the school/daycare. This started with one of the mothers (who, as you will hear if you listen to the podcast, is definitely mentally ill) claiming that the staff were abusing her son, which he apparently confirmed though only after a lot of questioning and prompting by his mother. Keep in mind he was like…3 years old, so.
This prompted a letter being sent to other parents of the school, telling them to question their children to ask if they ever experienced anything at the school. Not the greatest investigative technique…
Hundreds of children were interviewed by a very controversial child psychologist, whose methods were highly suggestive, and she encouraged children to speculate about imagined events…and then later claimed the children actually remembered these imagined events as having really hapepened. Beyond the supposed sexual abuse, children “remembered” such bizarre events as flying on a hot air balloon during school hours with their teachers, children being murdered (…but no kids reported murdered or missing?!?!), and apparent “secret tunnels” where the abuse occurred. Investigators looked for secret tunnels and rooms and, unsurprisingly, did not find any…
Further investigation revealed that the child psychologist was very likely implanting “false memories” through her questioning techniques. Some of these children did seriously believe some of what they said—young children are indeed very vulnerable, and it is hard to pick apart whether a memory is real or not! And, unfortunately, it is quite easy to implant a false memory in someone’s mind.
Almost every case of “Satanic ritual (sexual) abuse” was proven to be false, but not before real harm was done to those accused. The McMartin family’s name was forever tarnished, though they were declared completely innocent (as none of the events actually occurred). Other parents who were accused of similar “satanic ritual crimes” had their children taken away from them and put in foster care, and in some cases they were never reunited with their children. Even when allegations were found to be false or completely unfounded; some children still believed their “repressed memories” were the real ones.
There is a lot more reading one can do on this mass hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s, but to sum up: It was very fucked up, and has made it more difficult to seriously investigate real cases of child sexual abuse, especially in cases that do involve repressed memories. Because it actually can be quite common for victims to go into a state that allows them to forget an abusive act, and remember it later—not just children, but other victims as well. But all of this hysteria and “research” done by the controversial child psychologists in the 80s makes it a lot more difficult to pick apart repressed memories and figure out what is real.
Anyway, this is all basically just to say that I really did not like Mulder’s mentions of “repressed memories” without comment on how they can be false, or implanted. He just…takes it at face-value that Shannon (and some others) must really be remembering things that happened to her as a child.
MULDER. You are a psychologist, you should know when to be skeptical!!!!
…Then again, Mulder himself seems to really believe hypnosis is a great tool and uses it for himself and Scully, so. He’s a psychologist and great criminal profiler but he also…has some very fringe psychology beliefs, clearly.
I also really don’t like, as stated earlier, that the parents in this episode really did use their children in their occult rituals, and then used hypnosis (and drugs???) to repress their memories. It just…feels like the writers are giving too much credence to the “Satanic Panic” stories, and feels gross to me in retrospect. Why did you have to involve the children at all?!?! They could’ve very easily had the parents indeed be occult/devil-worshippers, but they didn’t need to lend any credence to children being involved in such rituals without their consent.
Come on, writers.
I will grant that the writers make mention of Shannon mixing up the reality of what she was involved in as a child with “that crap that's on Geraldo and the tabloids”. One point granted for briefly recognizing that Satanic sexual abuse “cases” are bullshit…but 10 points subtracted for still using the children in rituals in your story, giving credence to some of “that crap” some people still really do believe happened.
The X-Files is a comedy
Poor toads didn’t have their parachutes
Mulder teasing the local sheriff about his fear of “devil music”
Our “Completely Platonic Coworkers”
There isn’t too much here, sadly. And episodes without cute Mulder-Scully interactions will always be a bit lower on my lists 😉
We did at least get this cute moment of Mulder attempting to protect Scully from being shot even while his hands are tied behind his back and he can only roll over:
The 90s™
Again, I’d argue that almost the entire (vague…) plot of the episode is very 90s: panic over apparent “occult worshippers”, heavy metal music corrupting kids, thinking that witchcraft and abuse of kids is actually happening… (although, uh, I guess we’ve moved on from the “Satanic” part mostly, but more recent “Pizzagate” and “Wayfair” conspiracies show we haven’t moved on from the latter conspiracy belief…)
But for a more light-hearted “Hee, hee, the early 90s were so cute with their internet searches” (but also honestly impressive that this small high school in nowhere, New Hampshire had such good internet?)
Goofs/Bloopers/Fun Facts
Well, let’s begin first with one of the funniest bloopers—poor David Duchovny getting blasted in the face by the drinking fountain water, from this video:
Now, this episode does have several notable goofs. A couple of which I questioned briefly earlier, but I want to list them all out here:
Mrs. Paddock throws a preserved fetal pig in with the python?!?! That pig is full of formaldehyde, it’s not food! You’re going to poison your snake!!!
Again, I question why on earth everyone thinks it is just fine that Mrs. Paddock left a student alone in a science lab with a sharp instrument in her hand
If a python really was consuming a human, it would not and could not start at the feet, especially not at just one leg as occurs here. The snake would get stuck at the hips/groin…
The “Coriolis effect”
Well, for one, this effect has very little effect on small basins like a water fountain
But regardless, in the Northern hemisphere, the theory states that drains in the northern hemisphere drain in a counter-clockwise direction which is EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE
The fountain is draining in the right direction, Mulder…
I again question why Mulder and Scully let the 3 teenagers go so quickly, and didn’t seem to do any further investigation into them at all—do they have any violent history? Any evidence that they (the only people known to be in the woods with Jerry) could have been responsible? I know they’re teenagers and I think there are more rules about arresting/holding people under 18, but seriously they seemed to talk to all of them for maybe 5 minutes before shrugging and letting them go
And Mulder deciding that handcuffing a man and leaving him alone in his basement was the best option in front of him. *sigh*
Thankfully, this episode does also have some fun facts!
Crowley High School is likely an homage to Aleister Crowley, an English occultist
The first episode directed by Kim Manners, who would go on to direct over 50 episodes of the show
The actor who played Jim was actually terrified of snakes and couldn’t speak during the scene where he gets eaten. Bonus though was that his real fear meant they didn’t need to apply fake sweat to his face during the scene
The phrase "Die Hand die verletzt" is German for "the hand that wounds". This comes from the prayer the PTC are reciting at the start of the episode
They used real toads in the scene where toads fall from the sky!
They tried to use rubber ones but they bounced so much it just looked hilarious, and of course the rubber toads also couldn’t hop away
The toads were only dropped a very short distance, with camera angles used to make it look like the toads were truly “falling from the sky”
The episode was written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, who subsequently left the show for a couple of seasons
The message left on the blackboard (“Goodbye. It's been nice working with you.”) was likely also a little message from Morgan & Wong to the rest of the show’s crew
Overall Thoughts/Summary
Episode rating: 6.5/10. I know I spent a fair amount of time questioning various aspects of this episode, but really, it’s a perfectly fine episode of The X-Files. There’s nothing spectacular about it, but it’s good enough for what it is. I still say that I find genuinely nothing about this episode actually scary. To me, it’s much more funny than scary, and I’m not sure if that’s what the writers were going for. It’s an enjoyable enough watch overall, but definitely not one I find myself going back to, and definitely not the “4th best episode of the entire series”.
X-files cases “solved” to date: Hmm. I’m not quite sure where to put this one. I suppose Mulder and Scully do finally expose the group of occult-worshippers in town, who seemingly really did abuse children (even if not sexually), so that’s something. And at the very very end they seem to realize “Mrs. Paddock” was behind everything that happened, but they don’t actually catch her or figure out what the “force” causing all the strange events was.
I want to give them 1/2 a solved case…they can take back to Skinner the fact that they exposed a “real” child abuse occult-worshipping group? And hopefully the remaining 2 were arrested (again, we don’t see if they are killed by “Mrs. Paddock” or what…we ultimately hear 3 gunshots so does dude with gun kill the others???? Or???)
10/14 (30/38 overall).
Next week we have “Fresh Bones” which I think involves some sort of voodoo storyline…that hopefully isn’t terribly culturally offensive in retrospect?
Happy Pride month everyone, from Scully: