Broadcast and Reception
"Paper Hearts" premiered on the Fox network on December 15, 1996, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on November 12, 1997. The episode's initial broadcast was viewed by approximately 16.59 million people, which represented 16% of the viewing audience during that time.
Both Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny consider this among the best episodes of the fourth season. Composer Mark Snow was nominated for an Emmy award for the music he produced for this episode. He said of the episode's music, "It was a different kind of texture for the show. Light, magic, nothing terribly threatening". Snow received many requests for a recording of the music used at the end of the episode.
Website IGN named "Paper Hearts" their sixth favorite "standalone" episode of the show, calling it "creepy and unsettling", and claiming Noonan's character was "one of the most disturbing villains to make an appearance in the series". Noonan's acting has also been praised by Vince Gilligan, who says the "understated" manner in which Roche is portrayed "sends chills down spine every time". The A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff reviewed the episode positively, rating it an A. He felt that Noonan's performance was "terrific", noting that the actor "makes Roche into one of the series' great human monsters"; and believed that the episode's premise was important to developing the character of Mulder further. The website later named the episode the sixth best example of a television dream sequence, noting that it "suggest how this methodical man might puzzle over cold cases in his subconscious". The article also complimented the entry's metaphor that laser pointers were Mulder's mind that pointed "out bits of evidence his conscious brain missed all those many years ago." Starpulse named it the second best episode of the series.
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