TVSquad

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of classic TV shows.

(S01E03 & S01E21) We almost take it for granted these days that a DVD set of our favorite shows will be forthcoming. We might not always agree with the scheduling, but it's a pretty safe bet that most everything we watch in the coming season will be arriving on DVD eventually. It wasn't like that back in the wilds of 1993. But things were about to change.

I'm not sure if The X-Files was the first show to embrace the home video market, but it was the first one that I took notice of. And it was the first one that I actually bought ... on VHS. That gorgeous three tape box set in the picture is one of three that I have, and each of them carry a whopping six episodes on their oh so delicate tapes. For X-Files week, I dusted this one off and fed my VCR the tape containing "Squeeze" and "Tooms," two of my favorite early episodes.

(S01E03) Forget the werewolves, the green bugs, the camoflauge forest-dwellers, the inbred pig people and the aliens. You, Eugene Tooms, are the scariest monster ever to grace The X-Files.

Squeeze is the first MOTW (Monster of the Week) episode of The X-Files and it's a doozy. The writers take us off the government-covers- up-aliens-on-earth storyline and focus on a major freak who has ten-inch long fingers and rips the livers out of five victims every 30 years. The experts at The X-Files wiki say FOX requested the script change-up away from aliens. Apparently, the idea came when one of the writers saw an air duct outside their office and wondered whether someone could sneak up inside it. Tooms' obsession with liver came from creator Chris Carter's recent trip to France where he ate a lot of foie gras. That, and the liver is just a funny organ.