Bad Blood (The X-Files)

"Bad Blood"
The X-Files episode
Ronnie Strickland prepares to attack Agent Mulder
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 12
Directed by	Cliff Bole
Written by	Vince Gilligan
Production code	5X12
Original air date	February 22, 1998
Guest stars
Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner Luke Wilson as Sheriff Hartwell Patrick Renna as Ronnie Strickland Forbes Angus as Funeral Director Marion Killinger as Detective David Major as Vampire Brent Butt as Coroner
Episode chronology
← Previous "Kill Switch" Next → "Patient X"
List of Season 5 episodes List of The X-Files episodes

"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-Files. 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 was first broadcast in the United States on February 22, 1998 and received a Nielsen rating of 12.0, being watched by 19.25 million viewers. It received positive critical reviews.

Plot

After FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder (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.

Production

Luke Wilson appeared in this episode as Sheriff Hartwell.

"Bad Blood" was written by Vince Gilligan, 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.'"

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 Fox network. In its original broadcast, it was watched by 19.25 million viewers, 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.

The episode received positive critical reviews. 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". Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club wrote a positive review of what he described as one of his "top five favorite X-Files". He called the script "very smart" and compared the story to the plot of Rashomon. He said "Yes, 'Bad Blood' can be goofy, but it's a good kind of goofy, the kind that pokes holes in characters in ways that just make them more lovable." 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. Rob Bricken from Topless Robot named "Bad Blood" the funniest X-Files episode. An article in The Montreal Gazette listed "Bad Blood" as the ninth best stand-alone episode of the series.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Badley, Linda (2000), "Scully Hits the Glass Ceiling: Postmodernism, Postfeminism, Posthumanism and The X-Files", in Helford, Elyce Rae, Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 9780847698349 
• Kord, Susanne; Krimmer, Elisabeth (2005). Hollywood Divas, Indie Queens, and TV Heroines: Contemporary Screen Images of Women. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742537088. 
• Meisler, Andy (1999), Resist or Serve: The Official Guide to The X-Files, Vol. 4, London: HarperCollins, ISBN 9780002571333 

External links

• "Bad Blood" on The X-Files, an external wiki
• "Bad Blood" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Bad Blood" at TV.com