Season 1, Episode 5—The Jersey Devil
This review contains spoilers.
“I heard the same story when I was a kid, too. Funny thing is, I believed it.”
A corpse with gnawed-off body parts discovered outside Atlantic City is thought to be the work of the legendary Jersey Devil, a creature that’s been roaming the nearby woods since 1947. Mulder’s insistence on investigating the murder after stepping on jurisdictional toes creates friction between him and the detective on the case—and puts the thought in Scully that having a normal life outside of the X-Files might prove difficult.
While not technically a bad episode, “The Jersey Devil” is a highly disappointing one. The writing is adequate, but it’s an undeniably misleading episode in the sense there is no Jersey Devil. The murder was committed by what turns out to be very human member of a feral family. There’s nothing remotely supernatural about “Jersey Devil,” and while we’ll see more bait-and-switch episodes in the future, this one just feels like it pulls too many punches.
Rating: 👽 👽
