The X-Files 20th Anniversary Blogging: "Bad Blood" (February 22, 1998)

A couple of weeks ago, in my review of the thriller Surveillance (2008), I discussed Akira Kurosawa’s Rashoman (1950), a landmark cinematic effort that involved a murder, and four differing witness accounts of that moral and legal transgression. 

Those who remembered the crime in the film included a bandit, a wife, a woodcutter, and a samurai (whose viewpoint was recounted from the “Other side” by a medium.)

As the movie established, no definitive account of the crime could be produced because everyone had seen the same events, but interpreted them differently.  The Japanese film thus suggested that there is no such thing as objective truth. 

Rather, there are multiple, subjective truths, and all of them are based, in some sense, upon personal “self-interest” according to Kurosawa’s work of art.

Vince Gilligan’s “Bad Blood” is one of the ten finest X-Files episodes produced, and a deliberate -- and humorous -- variation on Rashoman and its thematic approach. 

To wit, in this story, Scully and Mulder each present their personal version of an investigation in Texas that went awry, and proceed to find very little in terms of meaningful common ground. 

Yet the episode reaches a surprising and positive conclusion as well. 

Even though they see the world (and each other…) very differently, Mulder and Scully’s viewpoints also prove valuable in parsing clues, and understanding the nature of a crime/killer.

Delightfully, in “Bad Blood,” Mulder and Scully reveal not only how they view their sparring partner, but how they view themselves as well.  As “outside” (objective?) viewers, it is left to us -- the audience -- to determine whose version of reality is closer to the canon characters we experience each week. 

Regardless of where you may land regarding that answer (and my wife steadfastly insists Scully’s viewpoint is closer to reality than Mulder’s is…), “Bad Blood” emerges as a valuable tale because it explores the little myths that we all construct around our lives. 

After botching an investigation and fatally staking a suspect in the heart, Mulder (David Duchovny), learns that he, Scully (Gillian Anderson), and the F.B.I. are being sued for 446 million dollars in a wrongful death suit.

Preparing to go before Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) to make their final, grim reports on the matter, Scully and Mulder go over their respective stories, and find much to differ about.

The truth about what happened in Cheney, Texas is not easy to discern, and the agents describe vastly different experiences there. 

Mulder suspects that a local a pizza delivery boy was a vampire, and the perpetrator of at least two murders. 

Scully, meanwhile, maintains that cultists may have been involved. 

As the agents quarrel regarding their differing interpretations, they learn that the pizza deliver boy’s body has disappeared from the morgue, and they return to Cheney to investigate…

“Bad Blood’s” Rashoman template has been employed on genre television before -- and to notably weak effect in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season entry, “A Matter of Perspective” -- but the principle of presenting multiple, subjective “accounts” of an adventure works brilliantly on The X-Files because of the series very structure. 

After all, The X-Files is designed as an exploration of the unknown as seen through two lenses -- skepticism and belief -- and thus an episode that explores the personalities and frissons behind those belief systems is entirely fitting, and within the parameters of the format.

In its humorous efforts to explain “essentially, exactly, the way it happened” in Cheney Texas, “Bad Blood” provides funny and sharp insight into the characters of Mulder and Scully.

Throughout the series, we have witnessed these two very different investigators work together, debate matters of science and superstition, and cleave to one another in times of crisis and trauma.  But “Bad Blood” explores how these characters see each other on a day-to-day basis, and the results are funny and even revelatory.

To wit, Scully views Mulder as “characteristically exuberant” over the discovery of things that seem to reinforce his world view (things like cattle mutilations).  Mulder, meanwhile, sees himself as knowledgeable and deferential. 

In Scully’s version of reality, Mulder steam-rolls over her in a rush to get to Texas.  In his version, he tiptoes around her, and provides the necessary keys to solving the case.

And how does Mulder see Scully? 

In his version of the events, she is caustic, snippy, and perpetually out-of-sorts, complaining about going to Texas, and refusing to entertain the possibility that vampires exist. She is reluctant to do an autopsy, and condescending regarding his belief in vampires.

In Scully’s version, however, she is agreeable, put-upon and down-trodden.  She doesn’t get to enjoy her pizza or her motel bed’s “magic” fingers, and without complaint performs the autopsy tasks at hand.

Essentially, then, Mulder and Scully each possess exaggerated views of themselves and each other. 

When Mulder learns that Scully believes the local sheriff is attractive (and called her “Dana…”), he amends his tale to play up the sheriff’s southern-bumpkin-ism.  Mulder’s vision of a buck-tooth, dim-witted sheriff results in some of the episode’s funniest moments, in my opinion.  They seem borne out of Mulder’s jealousy, and upset that Scully doesn’t remember things the way he does.

So in short, Mulder and Scully each see the other one as kind of…bossy, while viewing themselves as paragons of restraint and equanimity. 

This is not an alien equation to longtime partners -- in marriage or on the job -- I hasten to add.

Yet “Bad Blood” doesn’t just tear down Scully and Mulder.  It reveals their core intelligence and knowledge.  Mulder’s oddball notion about vampires and obsessive compulsive disorders, for instance, proves spot-on, and Scully successfully determines the identity of the killer through her two autopsies, and an understanding of the corpses’ stomach contents. 

What the viewer takes away, then, is that though Scully and Mulder are flawed human beings, they are also, importantly, clever, curious, knowledgeable investigators.

I also enjoy this episode very much because it is another story (like “3”) that de-romanticizes vampires, and comes up with a new way to “parse” these old-fashioned monsters.  Specifically, The X-Files and “Bad Blood” -- as early as 1998 -- seem to recognize the next iteration of the vampire myth on television. 

The undead of Cheney, Texas report themselves to be good, hard-working American citizens.  “We pay taxes. We’re good neighbors,” the sheriff (Luke Wilson) insists, and indeed, this is the template we have come to see in the last decade, in programming such as True Blood (2008 – 2014) and The Vampire Diaries (2009 - ).

In all these stories, the vampires are not monsters (“It’s not who we are, anymore…”), but rather a social minority attempting to assimilate into mainstream American culture, but having trouble, occasionally, policing their own.

In some ways, “Bad Blood” feels like an episode of The X-Files that was absolutely destined to be made, because it puts us in the shoes of each protagonist, and asks us to consider their judgment and vision.   The episode is so damned funny because it holds nothing precious, nothing sacred.  Scully and Mulder’s flaws are on full display here and fully recognized by the storyteller.  The flip side is that their virtues also come to the forefront quite powerfully.  Where most X-Files episodes boast a kind of clinical distance from the subject matter as Scully and Mulder walk us through evidence, science, and theory, “Bad Blood” is heightened, exaggerated, silly, and therefore, in some sense, intimate.   For one glorious hour, we get to see Mulder and Scully through Mulder’s eyes, and through Scully’s eyes.

It’s a perspective I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

Next week: another fantastic season five episode - “Folie a Deux.”