‘Bad Blood’ is one of my favorite X-files episodes. It is very comical while still remaining creepy and keeping a classic X-files look. It occurs from the dates of February 10, 1998 to February 13, 1998 in the town of Chaney, Texas. Chaney is a small town about fifty miles south of Dallas and has a population of 361. This episode is written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Clifford Bole.
The episode begins in the forest on a dark night. A teenaged boy is running through the forest screaming for help as an unidentified man chases after him. The man catches up to his, holds him down, and pounds a stake through his heart. It turns out that the man is Mulder. Scully runs up to them and realizes that the boy is dead. She reaches into his mouth and pulls out fake fangs.
After the opening credits, we see Mulder sitting at his desk, present day. Scully walks in and they begin to argue about Mulder killing the boy, Ronnie Strickland. Mulder still insists that he is a vampire, despite the fake fangs. Scully is her usual, reasonable self, reminding Mulder that Ronnie’s family is suing the FBI for $46 million and that they are both in deep trouble. Mulder demands that Scully tells him what she saw. As she begins to speak, we change scenes to the same office, yesterday. "Yesterday morning when I arrived at work, you were, uh…characteristically exuberant."
Mulder slaps a plane ticket on his desk, exclaiming, "Hope you brought your cowboy boots."
He is talking very fast and is often speaking with a fake Southern accent. Scully on the other hand, is cool, calm, and collected. He tells her about six cow exsanguinations in Chaney, Texas in the past six weeks. There are two puncture wounds on each of their necks. Scully says that the wounds are from a syringe, and perhaps a cult is involved, while Mulder has another theory - vampirism. Scully asks him just why a vampire would prey on cows and then he replies that a human was also killed in the same way, a vacationer from New Jersey. She can’t understand why he didn’t tell her that at the beginning.
We are next in Peaceful Slumbers Funeral Home. Since Chaney is too small to "maintain a morgue facility," they have come here to view Dwight Funt, the victim Mulder spoke of earlier. The room is full of coffins. Mulder and Scully are standing next to the mortician. (The actor who plays the mortician also had small parts in ‘The Blessing Way,’ ‘Soft Light,’ and ‘Small Potatoes.’)
The sheriff, Lucius Hartwell, walks into the room and Scully can’t keep her eyes off him. As Mulder introduces Scully and himself, he has trouble remembering Scully’s name. The three leave to take a look at the Funt’s body and we can see that Hartwell likes Scully too.
Mulder and Scully now go to examine the body. Scully remains captivated with the sheriff throughout the scene. Mulder teases Scully about her ‘cult theory’ and she replies that her theory "has evolved." She now believes that someone thinks they are a vampire and so acts like one. Hartwell readily agrees with her. As Scully goes on, Hartwell hangs onto her every word as Mulder stands by, bewildered. Lucien walks over and squeezes himself between Scully and Mulder. "You really know your stuff, Dana," proclaims Hartwell.
Back in the office, Mulder protests, "Dana? He never even knew your first name!"
As Scully starts to speak again, she edits her story so that Hartwell now says, "Agent Scully, You really know your stuff."
Mulder then exclaims, "Have you noticed that this man’s shoes are untied?"
Scully obviously is thinking that Mulder is crazy. Yes, his shoes are untied, but so what? Mulder and the sheriff then leave to go to the town cemetery while Scully is left to do the autopsy.
Scully begins to speak into the micro tape recorder and then drops the scalpel. "Yee-haw," she mutters unenthusiastically. Later, she plops the heart on the scale and reads off, "Heart weighs 370 grams. Tissue appears healthy." She does the same with the left lung and the large intestine, weighing 345 and 890 grams, respectively. As Scully looks into the stomach, she sees that it contains pizza and gets hungry.
Text appears on the screen, ‘Davey Crockett Motor Court,’ as Scully continues her voice over. Mulder corrects her, and the screen title changes to ‘Sam Houston Motor Lodge. In her room, number 9, Scully puts money in the Magic Fingers and lies down on the bed. Mulder comes into the room, covered with mud. "Chloral hydrate," Scully says, her voice vibrating, as she sits up on the shaking bed.
She tells Mulder that the victim had been knocked out with chloral hydrate. She thinks this definitely proves her theory right. Mulder then tells Scully she has to go back and do another autopsy, this time of Paul Lombardo, the second victim. She is very angry about this but leaves the room in a huff. After Scully walks out of the room, she meets Ronnie who is delivering a pizza that she evidently ordered. She tells him that Mulder will pay for it.
Back at the funeral home, Scully is in her scrubs doing the second autopsy. She slaps the organs into the scale. The large intestines slides out onto the floor while Scully watches it, not caring. She seems to have a lot of neck pain. Her cell phone rings and she answers it. "Scully."
On the other end she hears only breathing and hangs up. She looks into the stomach and sees that he to has eaten pizza. She puts two and two together and realizes that Mulder could be in danger from the pizza he has eaten. Although it appears that she rushes back to the lodge, she must not have been too worried - she first changed back into the clothes she had been wearing earlier, as we now see. Scully kicks open the door to the room with her gun drawn. The pizza box slides off the still-vibrating bed. Scully sees Mulder’s feet on the other side of the bed and Ronnie stands up, hissing. Scully fires at him but he gets away.
Scully walks over and tries to wake up Mulder by gently slapping his cheek. Half asleep, Mulder begins to sing the ‘Shaft’ song in a tuneless voice. Back in the office, Mulder protests that he never did that, but Scully just gives him a knowing look and continues. "Long story short. Though my first four shots obviously missed Ronnie Strickland entirely, with my fifth I was able to shoot out a tire on his car, forcing him to escape on foot."
Scully goes on to finish the story with Mulder catching up to Ronnie and "overreacting." Mulder says she is just afraid to tell the truth because she doesn’t want to look stupid like he does. He then launches into his version of the events. He begins with the scene in the office, but this time, he is the calm one, almost meek. Scully is an exaggerated version of herself and very sarcastic. After he shows her the slides, he quietly presents her with his theory. She exclaims, "Well, it’s obviously not a vampire."
"Well, why not?" he replies.
"Because they don’t exist?" she answers rudely, acting as if he is a first grader.
Now we are in the funeral home, but with Mulder’s point of view. Mulder makes the observation that there are an awful lot of caskets. Although earlier, Scully claims that Chaney is too small to have a morgue, in Mulder’s version, he asks the mortician why a town of just 361 would need so many caskets. As the sheriff walks in, Scully is smitten. He has enormous buckteeth.
In the exam room, Scully almost swoons over Hartwell and his horrible teeth. Hartwell also acts like a complete idiot and Mulder has to take over for the two as Scully’s mind is somewhere else. Mulder goes into a technical spiel, listing different kinds of vampires and their characteristics as Scully yawns. Then Mulder notices the untied shoes.
Mulder and Lucien are now in the cemetery. Mulder tells the sheriff all about his vampire theory. Then Ronnie drives by in his Gremlin, and Hartwell waves to him. It is now nighttime and Mulder is poking around the cemetery with a flashlight. Scully interjects, "You were going to tell me what was meaningful about finding untied shoelaces."
"I’m getting to it."
Mulder is now spreading sunflower seeds around the cemetery. He offers some to Hartwell, accidentally spilling some. Hartwell declines, but picks up one of the fallen seeds and tosses it away. Mulder then explains to him what he is doing. He explains that one fact common to almost all vampire stories is that they are all obsessive compulsive, that is, if they see a bunch of seeds on the ground, they have to pick them up. The same is true with a knotted rope. That’s why the shoelaces made Mulder convinced of his theory. Suddenly, Lucien gets a call over his radio that there is a situation at the RV park.
The two go there and it turns out there is a run-away RV. Mulder tries to shoot out the tires, but misses every time. This seems suspicious, as Scully shot out the tires of Ronnie’s car after being knocked down with only one shot, but Mulder couldn’t shoot out the tires of a slow-moving RV with an entire clip. Mulder goes on, "I then tried a different approach."
Mulder is shown hanging onto the back of the RV for dear life as it he is pulled along behind it. He finally lets go and lands in a mud puddle. When the RV runs out of gas, Mulder opens the door to find the dead Lombardo. Even the shoes were untied.
Mulder returns to Scully’s motel room and she screams at him, not even noticing how muddy he is. She continues to complain but finally concedes. Just as she is leaving, she notices the mud all over him. Ronnie then knocks on the door. Mulder is obviously pleased, and pays for the $12.98 pizza with thirteen dollars. The pizza is from Aunt B.’s. Mulder is having trouble eating the pizza on the vibrating bed when he looks over and sees that his shoes have been untied. It’s too late, and he falls off the bed. He dials the phone but can only groan. Scully mutters, "Creep," and hangs up.
Ronnie comes into the room and his eyes are glowing green. Mulder throws some sunflower seeds and Ronnie reaches down to pick them up, extremely annoyed. Mulder tries to stand up but slouches over, out cold. When he comes to, Ronnie is bending over him. Ronnie looks up at the sound of Scully’s voice and she fires her gun. The shots hit him squarely in the chest but he still leaps at her, apparently unharmed. The opening scene of the show replays. "Mulder, it’s not just me." Scully says. "Nobody in their right mind will ever believe that story."
We are now in the Dallas Fort Worth Pathology Lab. A coroner is about to do an autopsy on Ronnie. He speaks into the tape recorder, "Case 0026198, Ronald Lavelle Strickland. Probable cause of death…gee, that’s a tough one."
He pulls the stake out and walks over to a nearby table. His back is to Ronnie as Ronnie sits up on the table. The coroner hears a noise and turns around. Ronnie licks his fangs, finds he has none, and attacks anyway.
Back at FBI headquarters, Mulder and Scully are waiting on a couch for the meeting with Skinner to start. "Mulder, please keep reminding him you were drugged." pleads Scully.
They go into the meeting. Mulder pipes up quickly that he was drugged. Skinner says he wants them back in Texas and tells them what happened with Ronnie. Skinner says the coroner is not dead but his neck was gnawed on. After they leave, Scully says, "But…he was dead."
"I noticed that," Mulder replies
"With a stake through his heart."
"I noticed that too."
Mulder and Scully are now back in the cemetery searching for Ronnie. Scully voices her opinion that Ronnie couldn’t be a vampire - he had fake fangs, didn’t he? Mulder replies that fangs are rarely mentioned in folklore. He says that Ronnie probably did watch Dracula one too many times, he just happened to be a real vampire.
The sheriff pulls up in his car. They walk up to the gate to meet him, Scully beaming. He does not, in fact, have buckteeth. Mulder leaves Scully and Hartwell there to go to the RV park, whispering to Scully, "Don’t say I never did nothing for you," in a Southern accent.
In his car, Hartwell pours coffee for Scully and she drinks it. They begin to talk about vampires. Hartwell says he needs to apologize for Ronnie. "He makes us all look bad. He’s just not who we are anymore." Scully realizes she’s been drugged and sees that his eyes are glowing green.
Meanwhile, Mulder walks into a RV and sees a coffin there. He opens it and Ronnie is inside, listening to headphones. Ronnie tries to get out but Mulder slams the lid down and sits on it as Ronnie desperately tries to escape. He starts to read him his rights and then stares out the window at a crowd of glowing-eyed people. He grabs two breadsticks and forms a cross in front of him as he walks out but it doesn’t works. The vampires continue to advance on him and there is absolutely no way to escape.
The next morning, Mulder and Scully awake in the sheriff’s car. Scully is wearing the sheriff’s coat. Neither remembers what happened or how they got there. Mulder checks both Scully’s and his necks but there are no bite marks. Mulder looks around the trailer park but no trailers are there because all the vampires have evidently left. Scully stoops to tie Mulder’s untied, muddy shoes.
Back at the meeting, Skinner is not amused. "That is essentially, exactly the way it happened," says Mulder.
"Essentially," replies Scully.
The screen fades to black. Mulder adds, "Except for the part about the buckteeth."
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