"Familiar" is the eighth episode of the eleventh season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files.
In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate the brutal animal attack of a little boy in Connecticut, while suspecting darker forces are at play.
At a park in Eastwood, Connecticut, a little boy named Andrew sings a theme song from a children's show while playing with his "Mr. Chuckleteeth" toy.
While Andrew's mother, Diane, is distracted by a phone call, the boy spots a life-sized version of Mr. Chuckleteeth meandering in the forest.
Because the killing of a law enforcement officer's child puts the case under FBI jurisdiction, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate.
While the town gathers to mourn the death of the boy, Mulder goes to the house of Chief Strong, head of the local police.
Back at the police department, Rick searches the sex offender database and finds a man named Melvin Peter.
Mulder confronts Chief Strong and forces him to admit that he has been unfaithful to his wife, knows witchcraft is involved and that Peter is not their suspect.
At the park, a crowd gathers to watch Rick brutally beat Peter, who denies killing the children.
[3] Van Allen spoke of his inspiration for this episode in an interview: "I've always been creeped out by children's television show characters, like Teletubbies.
"Van Allen's idea for "Mr. Chuckleteeth" came from an old British kids TV series called Jigsaw, where one character is named Mr.
[5] Matt Fowler of IGN called the episode "a solid, self contained monster-of-the-week creep out, that went really dark at times, but faltered a bit under unnecessary, and muddled, messaging" and scored it a 7.4 out of 10.
[6] Liz Shannon Miller of IndieWire said "It’s genuinely impressive how much “Familiar” felt like a vintage “X-Files” episode, given that both its writer (newcomer Benjamin Van Allen) and director (veteran Canadian Holly Dale, the second woman hired to direct this season and fourth total across the show’s 218 episodes) have never worked on the show before now.
Clean and direct in its standalone approach, it wasn’t the most twisty of mysteries, but did deliver the sort of supernatural weirdness we remember fondly from the show’s earliest years.
In "Familiar," The X-Files went back to the classic monster-of-the-week format with Mr. Chuckle Teeth, a toy based on a character from a children's series who comes to life and murders people.