Arcadia (The X-Files) - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"Arcadia" premiered on the Fox network on March 7, 1999. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.5, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 10.5 percent of all television-equipped households, and 16 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 17.91 million viewers. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on June 20, 1999 and received 1.02 million viewers, making it the most watched episode that week. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Mulder and Scully married! This could be the scariest 'X-Files' ever!"

The episode received mostly positive reviews from critics. Rob Bricken from Topless Robot named "Arcadia" the tenth funniest X-Files episode and noted the two levels of humor in the episode—the "blatantly hilarious" pairing of Mulder and Scully as husband and wife, and the "perfect parody" of the planned community way of life. Timothy Sexton from Yahoo! News named "The Arcadia Garbage Monster" as one of "The Best X-Files Monsters of the Week". 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 four stars out of five and noted that the inherent draw of the episode was "seeing Mulder and Scully go under-cover as a yuppie married couple." Despite the general praise for the episode, however, the two slightly criticized the ending, calling the final scene "rushed."

Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "B–" and called it "a solid example of the show’s mid-period form". However, he noted that the episode is not one of the series bests, unlike the way many fans portray it—due largely to the fact that "it allows us to see what it would be like if Mulder and Scully were a happily married couple"—and that "the episode’s monster is a little hard to figure out". Other reviews were more mixed. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files gave the episode a more mixed review, writing "after watching 'Arcadia', I feel like I just had a couple slices of pizza for dinner on Thanksgiving. Not bad, but hardly the feast I have come to expect." Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a mixed review and awarded it two stars out of four. Vitaris, despite praising David Duchovny's performance during the scenes wherein he "rebels against the rules", called the episode's main villains "stereotypes of self-indulgent, insulated suburbanites."