Reception
"Roadrunners" first aired in the United States on Fox on November 26, 2000. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 8.3, meaning that it was seen by 8.3% of the nation's estimated households. The episode was viewed by 8.37 million households, and 13.6 million viewers. The episode ranked as the 38th most-watched episode for the week ending November 26. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the episode made its first appearance on television on March 1, 2001 on Sky1. "Roadrunners" was the seventh most watched program that week and received 0.67 million viewers. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "A desolate town. A bizarre cult. A horrifying ritual. And Scully may be the next victim."
Critical reception to "Roadrunners" was mixed to positive. Den of Geek writer Juliette Harrisson named the episode the "finest stand-alone episode" of the show's eighth season. Harrisson praised the character development in "Roadrunners" and noted that the episode "effectively brings together as partners." 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 note that, "for the first half-hour, this works as a slow burn horror story ... It's the transition of Gillian Anderson's performance from wry exasperation to outright paranoia ... which makes this so effective." Shearman and Pearson did, however, slightly criticize the cutting of John Doggett's role to a minimum.
Not all reviews were positive. George Avalos and Michael Liedtke of the Knight Ridder Tribune wrote that the episode's slug "continued the series' fine tradition of monsters that made us queasy as we squirmed in our seats". Despite enjoying the gore and the reality of Scully's isolation, the two were critical of the cult's motivations, writing that "we were given absolutely no clue as to why the Utah cult members believed the slug represented the Second Coming of Jesus Christ." The two ultimately concluded that "Roadrunners" fell "well short of a classic." Sarah Stegall highly criticized the episode, calling it "a bad mix of The Fly and The Kindred, with plenty of X-Files classic paranoia but none of the finesse we've seen before." Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a scathing review and awarded it no stars out of four. She heavily derided the plot, sarcastically referring to Doggett as a "man's man" and the parasite a "phallic-shaped giant slug". Furthermore, she criticized Scully's actions to go off on an assignment without telling her partner. Dave Golder from SFX criticized the episode and called it a retread of the first season episode "Ice".
Read more about this topic: Roadrunners (The X-Files)
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