Reception
"Emily" premiered on the Fox network on December 14, 1997. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 12.4, with a 19 share, meaning that roughly 12.4 percent of all television-equipped households, and 19 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 20.94 million viewers.
The episode received mixed reviews from television critics; many were more critical of the episode than "Christmas Carol". Todd VanDerWerff from The A.V. Club gave the episode an B and wrote that he did not "totally buy “Emily” even though I like large portions of" the episode. VanDerWerff wrote positively of "most of the Scully scenes", noting that Anderson "found some of the raw sense of hope and loss" that the shots required. However, he was critical of the episode's plot, arguing that it only "goes through the motions" and "is about everybody getting really worked up over a little girl we’ve just met." He concluded that "two-parter is strongest when it grabs hold of this notion. But it’s at its weakest when it turns into just another episode of The X-Files." John Keegan from Critical Myth gave the episode a 7 out of 10, and wrote "Overall, this episode was not as strong as the previous installment, largely due to the shift from in-depth character exploration to a rehashing of earlier elements of the mythology. Emily is a good plot device in terms of personalizing the conspiracy’s depredations just a bit more, but at times, it seems like the writers are victimizing Scully a bit more than necessary. Unlike the later mythology episodes, however, this one manages to avoid any unnecessary new elements."
Other reviews were decidedly more mixed to negative. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode three stars out of five. The two wrote that "Mulder catches up with the store and immediately this all becomes a little more formulaic." The two praised the episode's teaser, referring to it as "deathless prose", but were more critical of the plot, arguing that the episode "feels too soon to see yet more sequences of people standing around emoting as they watch the dying in the hospital", a reference to the show's earlier arc involving Scully's cancer. Shearman and Pearson, however, did compliment the performance of both Diewold and Anderson, and called the finale scene "wonderful". Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique, on the other hand, gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one star out of four. She heavily criticized the episode's characterization, noting that the episode's opening sequence was "ludicrous" and its revelations were "out of the blue". Vitaris reasoned that, because Scully had spent time with her mother, remembered fondly her sister, and reconnected her faith in God in "Redux II", "this development just doesn't track." Vitaris also criticized Mulder's antics, calling him a "thug" for beating up "an unarmed man and kicking him while he's down."
Read more about this topic: Emily (The X-Files)
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