Mulder: Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic make-up and a really high tolerance for being second-guessed and start pumping out the little uber-Scullies.
Scully: What about your family?
Mulder: Well, aside from the need for corrective lenses and a tendency to be abducted by extraterrestrials involved in an international governmental conspiracy, the Mulder family passes genetic muster.
Written by: Glen Morgan & James Wong
Directed by: Kim Manners
Original Air Date: October 11th, 1996
Principal Setting: Home, Pennsylvania
Episode Summary:
Scully and Mulder investigate the death of a newborn baby found in a shallow grave in a rural area of a small town in Pennsylvania. Mulder finds a baseball and is really enjoying reminiscing his childhood playing baseball as a child and is not really listening to a word of Scully’s diagnosis of the crime scene. Later as Scully does an autospy on the baby, she discovers multiple birth defects from extra limbs and DNA chromosomes.
In a shout out to The Andy Griffith Show, we meet Sheriff Andy Taylor. Sheriff Taylor is very reluctant to investigate the house nearest to where the baby’s corpse was found to maintain the low crime, small town feel. He tells the agents the three brothers that live there are simple folk, the product of generations of inbreeding in the Peacock family. When the Sheriff and his wife are brutally murdered, all evidence points to the Peacock boys and the agents want to find the truth on what is really happening in the house. What they discover is beyond disturbing, and they quickly realize they should have left this “home” alone.
Personal Commentary:
Among X-Files top episodes you will find “Home” at the top due to it being the single most disturbing, creepy episode in the entire series. I tend to think it is a bit overrated, but I do agree it’s very creepy and graphic, especially the scene when the Peacock’s go murder the Sheriff as “Wonderful! Wonderful!” by Kenny James is blasting on their car radio. The end house interrogation scene is also very tense as the agents weave through the many booby traps in the house.
The cinematography is excellent as it uses shadows to hide the deformed faces of the Peacocks for most of the episode. Overall a very disturbing, hard to watch episode seeing the gruesome effects of incest, sprinkled with some humorous Scully and Mulder banter. I also appreciate Mulder being a baseball fan.
Episode Grade: B+
Featured Video:
Fun Facts:
- The episode was banned from Fox after its first airing due to its sensitive and somewhat taboo subject matter, as it’s the only episode that Fox has never aired as a rerun. It is also the only episode to receive a TV-MA rating in America.
- This episode is one of the few X-Files episodes to contain mass media songs in it. During the primal beating of the deputy sheriff and his wife, the radio inside the Peacock family vehicle prominently plays the song “Wonderful! Wonderful!” performed by by Kenny James (Johnny Mathis did not give the producers permission to use his version).
- Gillian Anderson was dating with Adrian Griffiths, who plays one of the Peakcocks.
Faces You May Recognize:
No extras that you will recognize due to the superb deformity makeup.
201 Days of the X-Files Blog 
I had a hard time watching this one; disturbing and absolutely revolting. I had to watch something else afterward to get those images out of my head. Interesting that they never chose to rerun this episode but I can see why.
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