Patient X (The X-Files) - Reception

Reception

"Patient X" premiered in the United States on the Fox network on March 1, 1998. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 12.6, with a 19 share, meaning that roughly 12.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 19 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 20.21 million viewers. Veronica Cartwright was nominated in the category "Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series" in the 1998 Emmy Awards for her performance in this episode and its follow-up, "The Red and the Black". The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth.

Critical reception to the episode was largely positive. Television Without Pity ranked "Patient X" the eighth most nightmare-inducing episode of the show, citing, in particular the abuse of Dmitri. The article noted that "If The X-Files has taught us anything, it’s that if a G-Man asks us if we know anything about anything and we foolishly say yes, our mouths and eyelids will be sewn shut and we will be brainwashed to kill on demand." The A.V. Club reviewer Todd VanDerWerff gave "Patient X" an B+, and wrote that the episode "feels epic, in a way the mythology episodes do at their best". However, VanDerWerff noted that "The problem with breaking the status quo on a TV series is that your audience is always going to know in the back of its head that the status quo isn’t really broken." He reasoned that the audience never fully believed that "Mulder could lose his belief in the all-consuming alien conspiracy" or accept the idea that "Scully could find herself dabbling with belief in ." Despite these set-backs, however, he noted that "Patient X" was the episode where the series' mythology "gets moving again, after chasing its own tail throughout much of season four and reaching a sort of climax in the opening episodes of season five." 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. The two described the tone of "Patient X" as "truly visceral", citing the faceless men incinerating people as well as the mutilation of the innocent Dmitri, who was "at the wrong place at the wrong time". Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson praised the episode for "shift the goalposts" and allowing Mulder and Scully to switch roles as the believer and skeptic. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a moderately positive review and awarded it two-and-a-half stars out of four. Vitaris praised the episode's premise, writing, "'Patient X' is a rare episode in that it actually advances The X-Files mythology, with the news of a vaccine to combat the black oil". However, she was critical of the episode's reliance on shock value, noting that the "camera seems to take a perverse delight in death, pain, and mutilation, with the distressing effect of numbing the viewer to the horror."