All Things - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"all things" was originally broadcast on the Fox network in the United States on April 9, 2000. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 7.5, with a 11 share, meaning that roughly 7.5 percent of all television-equipped households, and 11 percent of households watching television, were tuned into the episode. It was viewed by 12.18 million viewers. The episode first aired in the United Kingdom on Sky1 on July 9, 2000 and received 0.58 million viewers and was the seventh most-watched episode for that week for that channel. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "What is she hiding?"

Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "C" and called it "a curious failure". He felt that the writing was "pretentious" and composed of "some weird, weird bullshit". VanDerWerff wrote that, although the episode was not successful, there is something "pure and unadorned at its center that I can’t outright hate it". Furthermore, he admired the show and Anderson for "making the attempt". Kevin Silber of Space.com gave the episode a negative review. He was critical of the script and characterization and said "nothing much seems to happen, and what does occur is substantially driven by coincidence and arbitrariness". He did not like the character of Colleen and disapproved of Scully's philosophical "reverie", calling it "facile, and hard to reconcile with the determined rationalism she's displayed over the years in the face of events no less strange than those that occur here".

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 one star out of five, calling the premise and characters "dull". The two criticized Anderson for looking at the "minutiae of life too intensely", which resulted in many of the actors and actresses coming off as "ciphers". Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson were critical of Anderson's directing style, calling it "pretentious" and noting that the plot's significance was drowned out by needless "flourishes". Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one star out of four. She called Anderson's directing "heavy-handed" and bemoaned the storyline because, according to her, it "plays havoc with Scully's motivations and character as established in the past seven years".

Not all reviews were negative, however. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations, gave the episode a largely positive review and called it "wonderful". He praised Anderson's tenacity to present a darker moment from Scully's past—her affair with a married man—and favorably compared the episode to "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" in terms of character development. Kinney Littlefield of The Orange County Register wrote a moderately positive review of the episode, and wrote that the "wistful, meditative episode" was "not bad for Anderson 's first directing effort". He did, however, note, that it was not as "sly as the episode about an alien baseball player that Duchovny directed awhile back". While the episode received mixed reviews from critics, fans of the show reacted generally positively to "all things". The X-Files staff received calls and letters explaining that viewers, "loved the vulnerability and quiet determination that Scully revealed in the unusual episode".