In "Entertainment Weekly"'s 1996 retrospective of the first season, "Squeeze" was rated B+; it was called "an important episode", and Hutchison's portrayal of Tooms was described as "profoundly creepy". However, Thomas Sutcliffe of "The Independent" was more critical, deriding the premise in a 1994 review, as "entirely ludicrous", and sarcastically described Mulder's deduction of Tooms' abilities as "clearly another triumph for the deductive method". A 2008 article in the "Vancouver Sun" listed "Squeeze" as one of the best stand-alone episodes of the show, saying, ""The X-Files" became known for its creepy, monster-of-the-week episodes, and Squeeze was the one that started it all", and that, together with "Tooms", it "remains one of the scariest things ever seen on television".