Bad Blood (The X-Files)
Encyclopedia
"Bad Blood" is the twelfth episode of the fifth season
of the American science fiction television series The X-Files
. Written by Vince Gilligan
and directed by Cliff Bole
, it aired in the United States on February 22, 1998 on the Fox
network. The show centers on FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder
(David Duchovny
) and Dana Scully
(Gillian Anderson
) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-File
s. In this "monster of the week
" episode, Mulder and Scully must report to their supervisor, Assistant Director Walter Skinner
(Mitch Pileggi
) after Mulder kills a young man he believes to be a vampire. They realize that they have very different memories of the investigation.
"Bad Blood" was inspired by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
and featured guest appearances from Luke Wilson
and Patrick Renna
. The episode received positive critical reviews.
(David Duchovny
) kills a young man, whom he believes is a vampire
, he and his FBI partner, Special Agent Dana Scully
(Gillian Anderson
) must report to their supervisor, Assistant Director Walter Skinner
(Mitch Pileggi
). Before they do so, they attempt to get their stories straight.
Scully tells her version of the story via a flashback to the previous day. She arrives at work and Mulder tells her about a murder in Texas, which he believes to be the work of vampires. The agents travel to the small town of Cheney, Texas where they meet Sheriff Hartwell (Luke Wilson
). In Scully's story, Sheriff Hartwell is charming, while Mulder is insensitive and irritating. Mulder and Hartwell leave to investigate further while Scully autopsies the body. She discovers that the victim, whose last meal had been pizza, was incapacitated with chloral hydrate
. She returns to the motel room and orders a pizza but Mulder soon appears and sends her back to autopsy another body. She leaves him just as her food is delivered. When she finds that the second victim had also ingested chloral hydrate in a pizza, she realizes Mulder is in danger and returns to the motel room. She finds him about to be attacked by the pizza delivery boy, Ronnie. She shoots at Ronnie, who runs off into the woods. When she catches up to him, Mulder has gotten there first and hammered a stake into Ronnie's heart.
Mulder tells Scully his version. In his recollection, he is sensitive and polite to Scully, while she is dismissive and irritable, and clearly enamored with Sheriff Hartwell (who, in Mulder's version, is far less refined and has obvious buck teeth
). While Scully is performing the autopsy, Mulder and Hartwell get a call to go to the local RV park
, where there is "a situation". They find another dead body, apparently a victim of the same attacker. Mulder returns to the motel room; after Scully has left, he eats her pizza and realizes that he has been drugged. Ronnie enters, with glowing green eyes, and prepares to attack Mulder. Scully enters and shoots Ronnie, but the bullets have no effect. He runs out with Scully in pursuit. Mulder recovers from being drugged and chases after Ronnie. Back in the office, Scully says that no one will believe his story.
Meanwhile, a Texas coroner prepares to perform an autopsy on Ronnie's body. When he removes the stake, Ronnie wakes up and escapes. Skinner sends Mulder and Scully back to Texas to investigate. Scully stakes out the cemetery with Sheriff Hartwell, while Mulder goes to the RV park. As they wait, Sheriff Hartwell gives Scully a hot drink. He apologizes to her on behalf of Ronnie, and says that he makes them all look bad. He makes it clear that he too is a vampire and Scully realizes she has been drugged. Sheriff Hartwell's eyes turn green.
At the RV park, Mulder finds Ronnie. As he tries to arrest him, Mulder is surrounded by a group of people with glowing green eyes. He wakes up the next morning in the RV park, in his car. Scully tells him that she awoke in the cemetery. They are both unharmed and the vampires have disappeared. Back in Washington, they give Skinner their unified report.
, who had already written a number of episodes for the series; this was his fifth writing credit of the season. Aware that he had an episode to be filmed soon after the Christmas period of 1997, he had been working on a script that would involve a story being presented by Robert Stack
of Unsolved Mysteries
, with unknown actors playing Mulder and Scully. Under pressure to complete the script, Gilligan decided his idea would not work. He said, "I just couldn't figure out how to do it". With the help of co-executive producer Frank Spotnitz
, he came up with a new idea. Spotnitz was inspired by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
, called "The Night the Roof Fell In", in which the characters of Rob and Laura Petrie tell different versions of a fight they have had. Gilligan said of the idea, "I just thought it was a cool way to tell a story." With two versions of the same story taking up much of the episode, Gilligan knew that he would have to keep the plot simple and settled on a vampire story, that everyone would easily understand.
Luke Wilson
guest starred as Sheriff Hartwell; he had previously worked on 1998 comedy film Home Fries
, which had been scripted by Vince Gilligan. Former child actor Patrick Renna
played Ronnie Strickland. He said of the part, "before we started I asked if Ronnie was pretending to be a moron. They told me, 'No. He's really just a moron.'"
network. In its original broadcast, it was watched by 19.25 million households, according to the Nielsen ratings
system. It received an 12.0 rating/17 share among viewers meaning that 12.0 percent of all households in the United States, and 17 percent of all people watching television at the time, viewed the episode. The episode was one of eight featured on Revelations, a DVD released prior to the release of the 2008 movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe
.
In a 2000 review of season 5 for the New Straits Times
, Francis Dass called the episode "an absolute gem. The most hilarious X-Files episode I have ever seen." Rebecca Traister of Salon.com
called it "possibly the best X-Files episode of all time". In a 2008 review of the Revelations DVD, which contained "Bad Blood", Erik Henriksen of The Portland Mercury
praised the way the writers "managed to tweak their genre formulas" and said of the episode, "It's witty and quick and features a great performance from Luke Wilson". In a review of Revelations for the Reading Eagle, Gina McIntyre called the episode "a hilarious riff on how [Mulder and Scully] view each other". Gillian Anderson has described "Bad Blood" as one of her favorites of the series, commenting "Oh, yes! I loved that episode. As far as I'm concerned it's one of our best ever. I think it really showed how well David and I can work together". Review website IGN
named it the eighth best standalone X-Files episode of the entire series.
The X-Files (season 5)
-Episodes:Episodes marked with an asterisk are part of the series' mytharc. Episodes with a double asterisk are part of the series' Alien Mythology....
of the American science fiction television series The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
. Written by Vince Gilligan
Vince Gilligan
Vince Gilligan is an American writer, director and producer. He is the creator of the highly acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. Gilligan has also worked on the hit series The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen. He is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University...
and directed by Cliff Bole
Cliff Bole
Cliff Bole is a director of a number of American and Canadian television programs. He has directed episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie's Angels, V: The Series, Baywatch, The X-Files, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager among others...
, it aired in the United States on February 22, 1998 on the Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
network. The show centers on FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder
Fox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
(David Duchovny
David Duchovny
David William Duchovny is an American actor, writer and director. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and as Hank Moody on Californication.-Early life:...
) and Dana Scully
Dana Scully
FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
(Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-File
X-file
On the television series The X-Files, an X-File is a fictional case that has been deemed unsolvable by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The files constitute an unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream that is more or less concerned with unexplained phenomena. -First X-Files:The very...
s. In this "monster of the week
Villain of the week
"Villain of the week" is a term that describes the nature of one-use antagonists in episodic fiction, especially ongoing American genre-based television series...
" episode, Mulder and Scully must report to their supervisor, Assistant Director Walter Skinner
Walter Skinner
FBI Assistant Director Walter Sergei Skinner is a fictional character in the American FOX television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence...
(Mitch Pileggi
Mitch Pileggi
Mitchell Craig "Mitch" Pileggi is an American actor. Pileggi is known for playing FBI assistant director Walter Skinner on the long-running popular series The X-Files. He also had a recurring role on Stargate Atlantis as Col. Steven Caldwell...
) after Mulder kills a young man he believes to be a vampire. They realize that they have very different memories of the investigation.
"Bad Blood" was inspired by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom that initially aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from October 3, 1961, until June 1, 1966. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. It was produced by Reiner with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff....
and featured guest appearances from Luke Wilson
Luke Wilson
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
and Patrick Renna
Patrick Renna
Patrick Renna is an American actor who began his career in the film The Sandlot playing Hamilton "Ham" Porter. Since then, he has appeared in over 25 feature films as well as numerous guest-starring and recurring roles in award-winning television series such as Boston Legal and The X-Files among...
. The episode received positive critical reviews.
Plot
After FBI Special Agent Fox MulderFox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
(David Duchovny
David Duchovny
David William Duchovny is an American actor, writer and director. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and as Hank Moody on Californication.-Early life:...
) kills a young man, whom he believes is a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
, he and his FBI partner, Special Agent Dana Scully
Dana Scully
FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
(Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
) must report to their supervisor, Assistant Director Walter Skinner
Walter Skinner
FBI Assistant Director Walter Sergei Skinner is a fictional character in the American FOX television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence...
(Mitch Pileggi
Mitch Pileggi
Mitchell Craig "Mitch" Pileggi is an American actor. Pileggi is known for playing FBI assistant director Walter Skinner on the long-running popular series The X-Files. He also had a recurring role on Stargate Atlantis as Col. Steven Caldwell...
). Before they do so, they attempt to get their stories straight.
Scully tells her version of the story via a flashback to the previous day. She arrives at work and Mulder tells her about a murder in Texas, which he believes to be the work of vampires. The agents travel to the small town of Cheney, Texas where they meet Sheriff Hartwell (Luke Wilson
Luke Wilson
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
). In Scully's story, Sheriff Hartwell is charming, while Mulder is insensitive and irritating. Mulder and Hartwell leave to investigate further while Scully autopsies the body. She discovers that the victim, whose last meal had been pizza, was incapacitated with chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate is a sedative and hypnotic drug as well as a chemical reagent and precursor. The name chloral hydrate indicates that it is formed from chloral by the addition of one molecule of water. Its chemical formula is C2H3Cl3O2....
. She returns to the motel room and orders a pizza but Mulder soon appears and sends her back to autopsy another body. She leaves him just as her food is delivered. When she finds that the second victim had also ingested chloral hydrate in a pizza, she realizes Mulder is in danger and returns to the motel room. She finds him about to be attacked by the pizza delivery boy, Ronnie. She shoots at Ronnie, who runs off into the woods. When she catches up to him, Mulder has gotten there first and hammered a stake into Ronnie's heart.
Mulder tells Scully his version. In his recollection, he is sensitive and polite to Scully, while she is dismissive and irritable, and clearly enamored with Sheriff Hartwell (who, in Mulder's version, is far less refined and has obvious buck teeth
Overbite
Overbite refers to the extent of vertical overlap of the maxillary central incisors over the mandibular central incisors.Overbite may also refer to:* Overbite , an extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser....
). While Scully is performing the autopsy, Mulder and Hartwell get a call to go to the local RV park
RV park
A recreational vehicle park or caravan park is a place where people with recreational vehicles can stay overnight, or longer, in alloted spaces known as "pitches"...
, where there is "a situation". They find another dead body, apparently a victim of the same attacker. Mulder returns to the motel room; after Scully has left, he eats her pizza and realizes that he has been drugged. Ronnie enters, with glowing green eyes, and prepares to attack Mulder. Scully enters and shoots Ronnie, but the bullets have no effect. He runs out with Scully in pursuit. Mulder recovers from being drugged and chases after Ronnie. Back in the office, Scully says that no one will believe his story.
Meanwhile, a Texas coroner prepares to perform an autopsy on Ronnie's body. When he removes the stake, Ronnie wakes up and escapes. Skinner sends Mulder and Scully back to Texas to investigate. Scully stakes out the cemetery with Sheriff Hartwell, while Mulder goes to the RV park. As they wait, Sheriff Hartwell gives Scully a hot drink. He apologizes to her on behalf of Ronnie, and says that he makes them all look bad. He makes it clear that he too is a vampire and Scully realizes she has been drugged. Sheriff Hartwell's eyes turn green.
At the RV park, Mulder finds Ronnie. As he tries to arrest him, Mulder is surrounded by a group of people with glowing green eyes. He wakes up the next morning in the RV park, in his car. Scully tells him that she awoke in the cemetery. They are both unharmed and the vampires have disappeared. Back in Washington, they give Skinner their unified report.
Production
"Bad Blood" was written by Vince GilliganVince Gilligan
Vince Gilligan is an American writer, director and producer. He is the creator of the highly acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. Gilligan has also worked on the hit series The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen. He is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University...
, who had already written a number of episodes for the series; this was his fifth writing credit of the season. Aware that he had an episode to be filmed soon after the Christmas period of 1997, he had been working on a script that would involve a story being presented by Robert Stack
Robert Stack
Robert Stack was an American actor. In addition to acting in more than 40 films, he was the star of the 1959-1963 ABC television series The Untouchables and later served as the host of Unsolved Mysteries.-Early life:...
of Unsolved Mysteries
Unsolved Mysteries
Unsolved Mysteries is an American television program, hosted by Robert Stack, from 1987 until 2002, and later by Dennis Farina, starting in 2008...
, with unknown actors playing Mulder and Scully. Under pressure to complete the script, Gilligan decided his idea would not work. He said, "I just couldn't figure out how to do it". With the help of co-executive producer Frank Spotnitz
Frank Spotnitz
Frank Spotnitz is an award-winning American television writer and producer, best known for his work on The X-Files television series.-Biography:...
, he came up with a new idea. Spotnitz was inspired by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom that initially aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from October 3, 1961, until June 1, 1966. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. It was produced by Reiner with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff....
, called "The Night the Roof Fell In", in which the characters of Rob and Laura Petrie tell different versions of a fight they have had. Gilligan said of the idea, "I just thought it was a cool way to tell a story." With two versions of the same story taking up much of the episode, Gilligan knew that he would have to keep the plot simple and settled on a vampire story, that everyone would easily understand.
Luke Wilson
Luke Wilson
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
guest starred as Sheriff Hartwell; he had previously worked on 1998 comedy film Home Fries
Home Fries
Home Fries is a 1998 film directed by Dean Parisot, starring Drew Barrymore, Luke Wilson and Jake Busey. The script was originally penned by writer Vince Gilligan for a film class at New York University...
, which had been scripted by Vince Gilligan. Former child actor Patrick Renna
Patrick Renna
Patrick Renna is an American actor who began his career in the film The Sandlot playing Hamilton "Ham" Porter. Since then, he has appeared in over 25 feature films as well as numerous guest-starring and recurring roles in award-winning television series such as Boston Legal and The X-Files among...
played Ronnie Strickland. He said of the part, "before we started I asked if Ronnie was pretending to be a moron. They told me, 'No. He's really just a moron.'"
Themes
According to Susanne Kord and Elisabeth Krimmer, "Bad Blood" explores the dynamics of the relationship between Mulder and Scully by "develop[ing] the dysfunctional potential of [their] routine interactions." In "Scully Hits the Glass Ceiling: Postmodernism, Postfeminism, Posthumanism and The X-Files", Linda Badley suggests that The X-Files often subverts the concept of the male gaze through the whole series and "Bad Blood" includes an example of this, allowing Scully to be the one that gazes at Sheriff Hartwell.Broadcast and reception
"Bad Blood" was first broadcast in the United States on February 22, 1998, on the FoxFox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
network. In its original broadcast, it was watched by 19.25 million households, according to the Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
system. It received an 12.0 rating/17 share among viewers meaning that 12.0 percent of all households in the United States, and 17 percent of all people watching television at the time, viewed the episode. The episode was one of eight featured on Revelations, a DVD released prior to the release of the 2008 movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a 2008 science fiction-thriller directed by Chris Carter and written by both Carter and Frank Spotnitz. It is the second feature film based on The X-Files franchise created by Carter, following the 1998 film...
.
In a 2000 review of season 5 for the New Straits Times
New Straits Times
The New Straits Times is an English-language newspaper published in Malaysia. It is Malaysia's oldest newspaper still in print , having been founded as The Straits Times in 1845, and was reestablished as the "New Straits Times" in 1965. The paper served as Malaysia's only broadsheet format English...
, Francis Dass called the episode "an absolute gem. The most hilarious X-Files episode I have ever seen." Rebecca Traister of Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
called it "possibly the best X-Files episode of all time". In a 2008 review of the Revelations DVD, which contained "Bad Blood", Erik Henriksen of The Portland Mercury
The Portland Mercury
The Portland Mercury is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Portland, Oregon. It serves to chronicle the ever-changing Portland music scene, and generally includes interviews, commentaries, reviews, and concert dates...
praised the way the writers "managed to tweak their genre formulas" and said of the episode, "It's witty and quick and features a great performance from Luke Wilson". In a review of Revelations for the Reading Eagle, Gina McIntyre called the episode "a hilarious riff on how [Mulder and Scully] view each other". Gillian Anderson has described "Bad Blood" as one of her favorites of the series, commenting "Oh, yes! I loved that episode. As far as I'm concerned it's one of our best ever. I think it really showed how well David and I can work together". Review website IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
named it the eighth best standalone X-Files episode of the entire series.