Bad Blood

Dude, this is probably one of my favorite episodes ever. I clearly remember driving to work on the Monday after it aired, thinking about it and just cracking up. Then I started bawling because I hated that particular job and I wanted to die.

We fade up on a dark field. Plonky pseudo-horror music pings in the background as a kid runs roughshod across the landscape, frantically looking over his shoulder from time to time and yelping pathetically for help. "Chaney, Texas. February 10," scrolls across the bottom of the screen. The kid stumbles from the open field into a grove of trees. "Help!" he yells. "Somebody help me!" A dark figure in a trench coat chases him into the woods.

More chasing, more screaming. "Help! He's going to kill me," screams the kid. This actor is in those Sobe commercials now, and I can't see him without thinking of this episode. Which I guess is good if Sobe is aiming for the vampire/pizza delivery boy demographic. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Chasing. Chasing. Yelling. Running. "Go away!" The kid yelps over his shoulder. "Aiiiiiiiieeeeee! Help! Argh! Arrrrrggggfff!" he grunts and screams. "Please help me!" he squeals, as the pursuer gains on him. The kid trips and falls. Mulder -- for the pursuer is, in fact, our hero -- leaps on him and stabs him with a wooden stake, then drives the stake deeper into the kid's chest with a handy nearby rock. "Mulder," Scully cries, finally trotting onto the scene. Mulder looks up at her like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. If the cookie jar is a teenage kid with a stake through his heart. The kid, needless to say, is dead, albeit with an unusual lack of blood. Scully kneels, open-mouthed, next to the body. "Look at that!" Mulder crows, gesturing toward the kid's pointy incisors. "Huh? Huh?" he asks triumphantly. Scully's hair, by the way, looks spectacular in this episode. She leans in and wiggles the kid's fake plastic vampire teeth right out of his mouth. Concerned, she looks down at them and then up at Mulder. The "uh oh" expression on Gillian Anderson's face in this shot is absolutely priceless. Mulder looks as disappointed as he does horrified. "Oh, shiiiiii--" he begins.

And we go to the credits. Frankly, it's mind-boggling to me that the same man who wrote this episode also wrote "Roadrunners" (a.k.a. "Attack of a Banana Slug That Is Actually the Reincarnation of Jesus. No, Really. No. Really"). Ah, well. We all have off days, right? Vince Gilligan, I officially forgive you. This episode, plus "Memento Mori," makes it all okay. And we're all just pretending "Jump the Shark" never happened, right? Everyone knows Carter forced you to kill the Lone Gunmen.