Schizogeny - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"Schizogeny" premiered on the Fox network on January 11, 1998. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 12.9, with a 19 share, meaning that roughly 12.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 19 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 21.37 million viewers.

The episode received mixed to negative reviews from critics, with several reviewers dubbing it one of the worst episodes of the series. Francis Dass of the New Straits Times Press referred to it as "one of the weaker episodes" of the fifth season. The A.V. Club reviewer Todd VanDerWerff gave "Schizogeny" a D–, and wrote that "'Schizogeny' just might be the very worst episode of The X-Files", noting that "the tone is off." Furthermore, VanDerWerff felt that "the more Scott and Wollaeger try to continue explaining this and tie it into the idea of child abuse, the less it attains any of the power or tragedy they want it to have." Starpulse, in a run-down of the best and worst episodes and villains of the series, named the killer trees the worst monster-of-the-week and wrote, " proved that even the X-Files' writers can come up completely dry on their scary creeps sometimes." Critical Myth's John Keegan gave the episode 4/10, and, while praising the "interesting concept" of the episode, concluded that it was filled with "odd inconsistencies, is definitely not one of the better episodes of the season." 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 three-and-a-half stars out of five. The two wrote positively of the first part of the episode noting that "director Ralph Hemecker the eeriness to the fore, and this a more honest-to-truth scary slice of X-File than has been offered in ages." Shearman and Pearson, however, argued that the episode's references to Psycho and its "lack of explanation" result in the episode approaching "nonsense." Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a mixed review and awarded it two stars out of four. She wrote that, "the plot of 'Schizogeny' is more tangled than the episode's paranormal root system, but underneath lies some powerful themes."