Each season of The X-Files has one or two comedic episodes that give us a more playful dynamic between Mulder and Scully. The two always question each other and make each other better, but sometimes, they also have very different viewpoints of what happened during an investigation. Bad Blood takes this to a whole new extreme, giving us versions of events from both the male and female gaze. It also happens to be one of my all time favorite episodes. It’s easily in my top ten.
The two agents take turns getting their stories straight after Mulder killed a teenager he thought was a vampire but was wearing fake teeth. Scully’s version tells the story of how Mulder worked her too hard on the case, especially when doing a second autopsy after he kicked her out of her own hotel room as she waited in a pizza delivery. She also met the handsome local police officer, played by Luke Wilson. Mulder even laughed maniacally on her vibrating bed as he ate her pizza. During the second autopsy she finds that the victim had ingested pizza that contained chloral hydrate and she realizes that Mulder is about to be the next victim as he eats her pizza. She returns to the hotel to find a teenage pizza delivery boy, Ronnie, with Mulder. The boy runs off and the agents give chase. Before Scully can find him, Mulder manages to drive a stake into his heart.
Mulder’s version of events tells a tale of Scully being uncooperative and irritable when it came to working on the case and that the cop she was so smitten with talked like a hillbilly and had bucked teeth. Mulder had noticed that a victim had his shoes untied in both versions of the story and Scully ignored this notation both occasions. In Mulder’s version, the untied shoes meant the killer had some form of OCD where he needed things to be in a certain order and the untied shoes were a clue. As Mulder eats Scully’s pizza after she complained of having sore feet from the first autopsy, he realizes he has been drugged from the pizza and somehow manages to scatter sunflower seeds right as the pizza delivery boy is trying to kill him. Scully enters and shoots the boy but the bullets have no effect. Scully chases him out as Mulder fashions a wooden stake out of a chair and goes after them.
Back at FBI headquarters, Scully tells Mulder no one will believe his version of events but he believes that the teenager’s autopsy by the coroner will vindicate him. Problem is, after the coroner pulled the stake out of the boy’s chest, he rose off the table and disappeared. Skinner sends them back out to Texas to investigate. While Mulder goes to the RV park where Ronnie lives, Scully talks with the handsome police officer who gives her a cup of coffee or tea. As he apologizes for Ronnie and Scully quickly realizes she has been drugged, the officer makes it clear that he is a vampire as well and his eyes turn green. Meanwhile, Mulder is attacked by the people at the RV park. When he comes to, the RV park is empty. The vampires have moved on.
Now that Scully is on board with the vampire theory, they give their unified report to Skinner who is a bit dumbfounded.
I could talk for a week about all the things I love about this episode. I love the humor associated with Mulder and Scully’s different points of view and how each believes the other mistreats them in the retelling of their stories. Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny obviously had a lot of fun filming this episode written by Vince Gilligan. The title of the episode even suggests that the dynamic between the two agents can sometimes be adversarial but they always seem to find common ground when presented with the same evidence. It allows us into their heads so we see how they see themselves and each other. Even with the humorous aspects of this episode, this glimpse is very much a welcome one.
I also love that this episode truly subverts the male gaze by giving us Scully’s version of who the police officer was. Through her gaze, he was quite handsome and intelligent. I mean, put me in a room with Luke Wilson in uniform and I’m probably seeing the same thing. This isn’t the first time the show has done this. In season three, Scully meets a man in a tattoo parlor who she ends up having a short relationship with before realizing he is the killer in a murder mystery in his building. The series as a whole give Scully’s perspective on many things from motherhood to relationships to the paranormal. Her scientific background as well as her belief in God alters her world view so it differs from Mulders and that is a huge part of what makes this series so interesting to rewatch. I am always catching new details.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on March 10, 1997. I’ve mentioned it a few times in my blog as these two shows aired simultaneously. Almost a year after Buffy’s premiere, Bad Blood aired in February of 1998. the campy aspects of Buffy can be seen in some of the comedic Rashomon style of storytelling employed in this episode. The ’90s were filled with vampire films that included Blade, Interview With a Vampire, From Dusk Til Dawn, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos. Both Buffy and The X-files leaned into that popularity as the 1990 came to a close.
What this traveling band of vampires reminds me of is Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep with its nomadic band of True Knot, a cult like group who travel the country hunting people who “shine” so they can drink their energy for everlasting life. While the tone of Bad Blood is different from Doctor Sleep, I’d be really interesting in seeing how these vampires manage to travel around undetected by modern society. Do they have rich connections like the True Knot? Or are they just exceedingly careful and lucky that only Mulder caught on to what they were? Will Ryan Coogler give us a sequel episode? Probably not, but one can hope.
Luke Wilson didn’t segue into the horror or sci-fi genres often. Outside of Vacancy and Zombieland: Double Tap, this episode is one of the few forays into this type of story. He has, however, starred in some of my favorite films including Legally Blonde, The Family Stone, and The Royal Tenenbaums. I’d love to see him back in the horror genre though. Maybe even find out what happened to his roaming band of vampires in this episode.
The teenage pizza delivery boy vampire was played by Patrick Renna. A couple weeks ago I spoke about how much this show is engrained in the 1990s, and having Patrick Renna in this episode further enforces this. In 1993, Renna starred in two of my all time favorite films; The Sandlot and Son in Law. In 1995, he starred in a film the neighborhood kids I babysat at the time loved; The Big Green. By the time he starred in this episode of The X-Files in 1998, he was an actor I knew well and I loved seeing him in this episode. He hasn’t worked on anything since 2024, but he did work for many years in projects that would never reach the heights of the films I mentioned here. Still fun seeing him when he pops up in something, though.
Until next week, the truth is out there and so are these vampires.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
Each season of The X-Files has one or two comedic episodes that give us a more playful dynamic between Mulder and Scully. The two always question each other and make each other better, but sometimes, they also have very different viewpoints of what happened during an investigation. Bad Blood takes this to a whole new extreme, giving us versions of events from both the male and female gaze. It also happens to be one of my all time favorite episodes. It’s easily in my top ten.
The two agents take turns getting their stories straight after Mulder killed a teenager he thought was a vampire but was wearing fake teeth. Scully’s version tells the story of how Mulder worked her too hard on the case, especially when doing a second autopsy after he kicked her out of her own hotel room as she waited in a pizza delivery. She also met the handsome local police officer, played by Luke Wilson. Mulder even laughed maniacally on her vibrating bed as he ate her pizza. During the second autopsy she finds that the victim had ingested pizza that contained chloral hydrate and she realizes that Mulder is about to be the next victim as he eats her pizza. She returns to the hotel to find a teenage pizza delivery boy, Ronnie, with Mulder. The boy runs off and the agents give chase. Before Scully can find him, Mulder manages to drive a stake into his heart.
Mulder’s version of events tells a tale of Scully being uncooperative and irritable when it came to working on the case and that the cop she was so smitten with talked like a hillbilly and had bucked teeth. Mulder had noticed that a victim had his shoes untied in both versions of the story and Scully ignored this notation both occasions. In Mulder’s version, the untied shoes meant the killer had some form of OCD where he needed things to be in a certain order and the untied shoes were a clue. As Mulder eats Scully’s pizza after she complained of having sore feet from the first autopsy, he realizes he has been drugged from the pizza and somehow manages to scatter sunflower seeds right as the pizza delivery boy is trying to kill him. Scully enters and shoots the boy but the bullets have no effect. Scully chases him out as Mulder fashions a wooden stake out of a chair and goes after them.
Back at FBI headquarters, Scully tells Mulder no one will believe his version of events but he believes that the teenager’s autopsy by the coroner will vindicate him. Problem is, after the coroner pulled the stake out of the boy’s chest, he rose off the table and disappeared. Skinner sends them back out to Texas to investigate. While Mulder goes to the RV park where Ronnie lives, Scully talks with the handsome police officer who gives her a cup of coffee or tea. As he apologizes for Ronnie and Scully quickly realizes she has been drugged, the officer makes it clear that he is a vampire as well and his eyes turn green. Meanwhile, Mulder is attacked by the people at the RV park. When he comes to, the RV park is empty. The vampires have moved on.
Now that Scully is on board with the vampire theory, they give their unified report to Skinner who is a bit dumbfounded.
I could talk for a week about all the things I love about this episode. I love the humor associated with Mulder and Scully’s different points of view and how each believes the other mistreats them in the retelling of their stories. Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny obviously had a lot of fun filming this episode written by Vince Gilligan. The title of the episode even suggests that the dynamic between the two agents can sometimes be adversarial but they always seem to find common ground when presented with the same evidence. It allows us into their heads so we see how they see themselves and each other. Even with the humorous aspects of this episode, this glimpse is very much a welcome one.
I also love that this episode truly subverts the male gaze by giving us Scully’s version of who the police officer was. Through her gaze, he was quite handsome and intelligent. I mean, put me in a room with Luke Wilson in uniform and I’m probably seeing the same thing. This isn’t the first time the show has done this. In season three, Scully meets a man in a tattoo parlor who she ends up having a short relationship with before realizing he is the killer in a murder mystery in his building. The series as a whole give Scully’s perspective on many things from motherhood to relationships to the paranormal. Her scientific background as well as her belief in God alters her world view so it differs from Mulders and that is a huge part of what makes this series so interesting to rewatch. I am always catching new details.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on March 10, 1997. I’ve mentioned it a few times in my blog as these two shows aired simultaneously. Almost a year after Buffy’s premiere, Bad Blood aired in February of 1998. the campy aspects of Buffy can be seen in some of the comedic Rashomon style of storytelling employed in this episode. The ’90s were filled with vampire films that included Blade, Interview With a Vampire, From Dusk Til Dawn, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos. Both Buffy and The X-files leaned into that popularity as the 1990 came to a close.
What this traveling band of vampires reminds me of is Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep with its nomadic band of True Knot, a cult like group who travel the country hunting people who “shine” so they can drink their energy for everlasting life. While the tone of Bad Blood is different from Doctor Sleep, I’d be really interesting in seeing how these vampires manage to travel around undetected by modern society. Do they have rich connections like the True Knot? Or are they just exceedingly careful and lucky that only Mulder caught on to what they were? Will Ryan Coogler give us a sequel episode? Probably not, but one can hope.
Luke Wilson didn’t segue into the horror or sci-fi genres often. Outside of Vacancy and Zombieland: Double Tap, this episode is one of the few forays into this type of story. He has, however, starred in some of my favorite films including Legally Blonde, The Family Stone, and The Royal Tenenbaums. I’d love to see him back in the horror genre though. Maybe even find out what happened to his roaming band of vampires in this episode.
The teenage pizza delivery boy vampire was played by Patrick Renna. A couple weeks ago I spoke about how much this show is engrained in the 1990s, and having Patrick Renna in this episode further enforces this. In 1993, Renna starred in two of my all time favorite films; The Sandlot and Son in Law. In 1995, he starred in a film the neighborhood kids I babysat at the time loved; The Big Green. By the time he starred in this episode of The X-Files in 1998, he was an actor I knew well and I loved seeing him in this episode. He hasn’t worked on anything since 2024, but he did work for many years in projects that would never reach the heights of the films I mentioned here. Still fun seeing him when he pops up in something, though.
Until next week, the truth is out there and so are these vampires.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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