Blood
"If you're distracted by the fear of those around you, it keeps you from seeing the actions of those above."
I really enjoyed this episode! I was actually wrong about my recollection of the episode involving “Ah scary modern (90s…) technology”—technology is involved in the crimes in this episode, but that’s definitely not the core of the episode exactly. And it wasn’t hallucinogens exactly. I mean, that seems to be the effect that the pesticide ended up having on the people of the town, but hallucinations weren’t the intended effect. People weren’t getting high intentionally, is my point.
Maybe I was confounding certain parts of this episode with season 1’s “Ghost in the Machine”, which I did also enjoy but was a little sillier (but still terrifying!) on the scary AI computer software front.
To me, this really is one of the first episodes of the show that really goes against the grain of the previous episodes, which largely focused on “creepy” monsters or (too often…) the paranormal. Here we have a real psychological thriller of a story, and also a story that feels all too real; the storyline here is unfortunately 100% believable and actually all too…likely to happen somewhere?
Mulder also, thankfully, was back on a case, and we got The Lone Gunmen back! So while I do think this episode likely tends to get forgotten by many (including me…) among some of the more classic “monster” episodes and of course the mythology arcs, “Blood” really does feel like a core episode of The X-Files to me. Establishes for sure that uh, Mulder and The Lone Gunmen are not 100% crazy. Sometimes, unfortunately, they are right, and the government really is experimenting on you…
So, let’s get into a summary and some thoughts!
Murder Sprees in a Small Town: Case Summary
We begin the episode at a vague “Postal Center” in Franklin, Pennsylvania. The man we are focused on is working very hard typing in zip codes as envelopes go by, before he gets a paper cut just as his manger comes by to tell him…sorry, Ed, but we’ve gotta let you go. To which Ed has possibly the calmest reaction I’ve ever seen to someone getting laid off? He just finishes his water and goes right back to work!
…As I’m typing this, I’m suddenly wondering if the writers chose to have Edward Funsch be a postal employee because of the history of “going postal” and workplace violence committed by former and current postal employees.
For most of the episode, Ed is basically the exact antithesis to fired employees “going postal”. As I stated, he goes right back to work, though he is troubled by a sudden message appearing before him on the machine. “Kill ‘Em All.”
Moving on from Ed for a couple scenes, we find ourselves in a (very crowded) elevator, where one man in particular looks quite nervous. Similar to Ed in the previous scene, when he glances at an electronic display in the elevator, it heightens his apparent claustrophobia, telling him there is no air in that small space with all the people, and that the man should kill everyone in the elevator…so he can get all the air I guess? Apparently just with his bare hands according to Mulder’s statement, though there’s a lot of blood for no other weapon being used.
Apparently Skinner and others at the FBI have finally realized that Mulder is a good investigator and doesn’t deserve to be stuck on wiretapping duty, because someone finally passed him a real case. And it’s not even a “spooky” case! The police department in the town called the FBI requesting assistance trying to explain the sudden uptick in murders—a behavioral expert, like Mulder! In six months there have been 7 murders in this small, usually quiet farming town, with each of the perpetrators being subsequently killed by the police.
Which, side note—Sheriff Spencer terms this “suicide by cop” which…I don’t think is the correct term to use here? The killers didn’t seem to plan their crimes at all, but just “went crazy” (we’ll learn why) and refused to…drop whatever weapon they were (maybe?) using. I dunno, I’m not a psychology or criminology expert, so maybe I’m wrong here, but officers using deadly force to detain a suspect doesn’t seem to automatically equal “suicide by cop” to me. Though I could accept that the people who committed these sudden crimes, which they themselves probably don’t understand or can’t believe they are responsible for due to their heightened paranoia, perhaps do indeed want to die once they’ve seen what they did. So. Maybe.
Anyway. After some back and forth exposition with Scully reading e-mails from Mulder (they miss each other!!!), we join another person from the town: a woman this time, who has come by after dark to pick up her car from the mechanic. At the end I’ll get into why I don’t like this particular storyline, but regardless of my feelings, what happens is that the woman kills the mechanic in a panic, after receiving messages from the computers that the man is trying to rape her, as he keeps calling her closer and closer to “look at things”.
At first glance, this murder seems different from the previous seven—it didn’t occur in a public place, and the killer ran off after committing the murder. And, I would argue that this murder could be seen as self defense (though it wasn’t) or at least could have definitely been argued that way by a good defense lawyer. But Mulder, the ever-observant investigator, knows that this murder is connected, because the perpetrator also destroyed an electronic display in the mechanic shop.
Later, when Mulder and Sherrif Spencer go to interview the woman, whose car was last worked on (Mrs. McRoberts), she again receives messages that Mulder “knows what she did” and she should kill him. Which she does try to do, but Spencer shoots her immediately. I suppose semi-good news in that now Scully has a body she can examine (though couldn’t she have examined our claustrophobic man) but also bad news because Mulder wanted to try to really understand what the woman experienced and what she was thinking.
Another side note: I can’t decide if this is just “the 90s” or the cops are bad at their jobs or don’t care—it doesn’t actually seem like deadly force was probably necessary in any of these cases? Whatever happened to shooting to wound the perpetrator so you can still question them, rather than going straight for the heart or a vital artery?
Well, at least Scully gets to do an autopsy: she discovers an enlarged adrenal gland, and blood levels of adrenaline 200x higher than normal, with the adrenal gland also showing evidence of extensive use, suggesting prolonged fear, stress, or anxiety.
And Mulder, on a morning job, finds some apparently suspicious flies that have been tossed onto a lawn? I’m not a farming or even gardening person (I do have 10 houseplants) but I admit I do not understand what the guy in the truck was doing with the flies? Are the flies now dead, and are supposed to be fertilizer for the lawns? Why is Mulder suspicious of the flies? Is this normal, or not normal?
Mulder I guess decides it’s worth a closer look, and brings one of the flies not to his trusted scientist Scully, but to his conspiracy buds: The Lone Gunmen.
The Lone Gunmen Return!
I don’t entirely understand why Mulder brings the fly to The Lone Gunmen, especially when he had been sending all of his thoughts to Scully, and he had her do an autopsy for him. I mean, I know she admitted back in “Darkness Falls” that she doesn’t know much about insects, but do The Lone Gunmen? Is one of them secretly an entomologist? (Byers does say “That is a Eurasian cluster fly. They infest vegetation like, uh, apples or cherries and can inflict a great deal of damage to crops.” Maybe he is secretly an entomologist. 👀) Or does Mulder think maybe the fly is implanted with a tracking device and knows Scully would think he’s crazy so instead goes to his conspiracy buds?
Well, whatever his reason, I am glad that The Lone Gunmen return, and they get to explain something to Mulder. It was refreshing to have people besides Scully explain something. Because unlike Scully, our conspiracy buds immediately recognize the “unknown” compound found on the claustrophobic man and Mrs. McRoberts: lysergic dimethrin (LSDM). Byers pulls out a whole folder on Toxic Pesticides, and he and Langly know all about this new chemical, an untested, unreleased pesticide. LSDM apparently attempts to “act” like a pheromone and invokes a fear response in the flies, causing them to fly away and leave the crops alone. And is apparently (?) nonlethal…which brings me back to my earlier question about what the fuck that guy in the truck earlier was doing with the flies.
Now, I want to point out here that the idea of a nontoxic pesticide that simulates “fear pheromones” is actually super interesting, but I’ll get into that more a bit later in a separate section.
First, Mulder has to bring up the important question: is it possible that LSDM affects people the same way, heightening their fear response? And then, like our lovable idiot that he is, Mulder decides to go get sprayed by the chemical himself, chasing after a helicopter spraying over a bunch of apple and cherry trees. For evidence.
Government Conspiracy, or Desperation?
Well, at the very least, Mulder does immediately bring himself to the hospital after he gets sprayed with a mystery chemical. Points for that, at least, even if it’s his fault. He wanted to become part of the experiment!
While at the hospital, Mulder figures out that yes, this town is purposely spraying this new, untested, unreleased pesticide on its crop fields. But, while Mulder’s brain immediately jumps to “this population is being experimented on by the government!”…I genuinely do not think that is the case here. There is no question that the government has experimented on people in the past (with the most well known case being the testing of LSD on unknowing populations), in this particular case, at the base level, it really feels like the county supervisor was just desperate to stop pests feeding on the crops that are the area’s livelihood.
LARRY WINTER: This county lives on money generated from its crops. The irradiated flies were not effective. The delays to get approval to spray would have caused millions in crop damage. Look at the hell they raised in California over malathion. Meanwhile, people's lives were being ruined by a... a damn bug.
Now, there is the question of why the spraying was done in secret. That certainly seems suspicious. But, from the perspective of the county supervisor at least, I think that was probably to keep people from worrying—even though they probably should have…
All in all, I feel this was done by a misguided, desperate county supervisor who just didn’t ask enough questions. He was told the chemical was safe—either by the company who makes the chemical, or maybe by a larger government organization? And his only goal was to prevent crop damage by the flies…which appeared to work?
Now, I could believe that maybe either the chemical company or a larger government organization wanted to use this small town as a sort of working experiment, but even then, I don’t buy Mulder’s whole “the government is doing this to experiment with mind control/subliminal messages” thing. It’s much more likely and entirely believable that the chemical company wanted a large working experiment, to see whether it worked when applied to a large area…and they just hadn’t done enough prior testing to see that the chemical also causes fear in other organisms.
It was still very wrong for the chemical company to insist on the safety of its product, and for the county supervisor to just blindly and freely spray an untested chemical near a populace without really asking if it was safe for humans. But I don’t sense any true ill intent here. Just misguided trust and desperation.
And I think this is backed up by the fact that the county supervisor pretty quickly agreed to stop the spraying, when confronted by the Sheriff with evidence of its likely affects on the populace—which is worse, 23 murders in 6 months, or some dead crops?
Fear and Intrusive Thoughts
Now, while I don’t buy Mulder’s theory that this is an experiment on mind control/subliminal messages/the effects of fear on a population, I do strongly identify with his above statement.
Sometimes The X-Files gets too real.
Because on a large scale…uh…the goal of many governments is exactly this: To stoke small(er) fears in people, such that they are afraid of their neighbour, or some country across the ocean, rather than being afraid of what their own government is doing. It’s the reason why many officials stoke fear about illegal immigrants taking jobs or doing crimes: If you’re angry or afraid of someone less fortunate than you, then you aren’t looking at the fact that the rich are the ones hoarding money and resources. Just as one example.
Soooooooo again, I don’t think that was actually the intention in this particular case, but this is one of the most real “conspiracy theories” Mulder has ever said.
Now, moving on to how fear worked in this episode. I really strongly feel that the writers and directors did an incredible job of portraying how debilitating and…well, frightening, intrusive thoughts and paranoia are. I say this as someone who suffers from anxiety and has had panic attacks in the past.
Following our postal worker—Ed Funsch—throughout the episode was a particularly good choice, and the actor does an incredible job. We only see our other two paranoid killers very briefly, but we see Ed receiving messages that heighten his natural phobias and fears several times. And it is clear that he is very troubled by these messages, and doesn’t understand why he is seeing messages telling him to kill people! He fights against the messages several times, even after he has purchased a gun from a shopping mall (Ah…America…)
Like, yes, his final decision to go shoot a bunch of people from a clock tower at the community college is insane. But it very clearly wasn’t a split-second decision. The messages he was receiving, combined with his heightened fear of blood + knowing the government wanted to take his blood…to put it simply, drove him crazy.
We all have intrusive thoughts similar to the messages the people in this episode received, sometimes. But what must it be like to not just have that thought, but to also read that thought from some electronic display? Over and over and over again for several days? Especially when that message is playing on your natural, base anxieties?
Horrifying.
Skeptical Scully
Just a brief note here on Scully. Mostly because I’m annoyed that she said Mulder’s blood test results after he was sprayed by the chemical disproved his theory that it was causing the townsfolk to be paranoid and then act out their fears violently.
SCULLY. You are a scientist!!!! Mulder was sprayed by the chemical once, and you tested him the very next day. The other people were exposed to the chemical for months, and the chemical had time to build up in their bodies and cause the long-term effects.
Comparing Mulder’s blood tests to those of the autopsies is not apples to apples, Scully. Come on.
Also, again, I have to point out that Mulder’s “this is a government experiment!” in this episode is one of his least out-there conspiracy theories. He is not theorizing that this has anything to do with aliens or the paranormal. As a scientist, you should also be skeptical of this untested chemical, and I wish Scully had backed up Mulder more here with the county supervisor.
Instead, our good Sheriff Spencer had to take on that job.
Sheriff Spencer being a bro
Bless. While Scully was rolling her eyes about Mulder’s conspiracy theories, Sheriff Spencer was all “Not in my town! These murders need to stop!”
He even asked to see Scully’s test results, and he is the one who then showed the test results to the county supervisor…which Scully should’ve been the one doing!
And he convinced the county supervisor to stop spraying, and to test the town to see if anyone else had high levels of adrenaline or other evidence of too much chemical exposure.
(Side note: one of the less believable parts of this story is that they actually managed to test everyone in the town except 25 people just by telling people to go get their cholesterol checked. Especially since this is a farming town, and farmers are notoriously not enthusiastic about going to the doctor)
DDT: A Case Study on Overzealous Pesticide Use
I’m now going to go into a couple of long rants about pesticides and scientific testing. If you aren’t interested in my research and thoughts, you can skip ahead to the “Completely Platonic Coworkers” section 😉
Because The Lone Gunmen brought it up as an example of the government freely spraying chemicals without proper testing, I now feel the need to touch on it: DDT.
DDT first started being widely used around the world in the 1940s, and it did seem to be effective in the goal of eradicating insects—mosquitoes in particular—and thus also eradicating or drastically reducing diseases spread by those insects. The huge push to use DDT was initially primarily a military campaign—the US was worried about diseases spread by mosquitoes, such as malaria, infecting soldiers fighting on the Pacific front in WWII. In fact, DDT almost became a symbol of patriotism? From this article: “Some advertisements asked Americans if they were ‘prepared to fight both enemies,’ mosquitos and the Axis, while others depicted Uncle Sam defeating Hitler with one hand and malaria-transmitting mosquitos with another.”. What. The. Fuck.
That…very weird military campaign also meant that people in the US became weirdly fascinated with the chemical, and when it became available to farmers after WWII ended, they enthusiastically sprayed it on their crops and orchards. Despite there not being any actual testing, the FDA decided this was safe. Vibes, I guess? Even though scientists were already raising concerns about how DDT could affect both humans and the environment—this was a chemical, after all, that lingered, which is partly why it was so useful. You could spray it on an area and insects would die for days after, just because there was still some of the pesticide on the plant/ground/whatever. Which uh, also means that any human eating a crop sprayed with DDT would…consume DDT. Not to mention breathing it in. And that’s just considering the possible effects of DDT on humans—what about everything else that lives in the area being sprayed? If it’s so effective at killing insects, what about the beneficial insects that we might need around? What about birds and reptiles and mammals that play an important role themselves in controlling insect populations?
Well, it turns out: Uh, yeah, DDT was very effective at killing mosquitoes, though they also fairly quickly developed resistance to the chemical. But DDT was also killing other important animals and basically leading to the path of destroying whole ecosystems. The main effect of DDT was on bird populations, as it caused thinning of the shell on eggs of many species, thus leading to fewer birds being born, and ultimately drastic population declines.
I bring this up because The Lone Gunmen, in their short little spiel, focused on the health effects of DDT. And yes, there is evidence that DDT exposure causes a higher cancer risk and other health problems, which certainly did partially lead to the ultimate ban of DDT in the US and around the world. But the bigger picture with DDT was its terrible environmental effects, and those are what really do need to be considered whenever a new pesticide is being developed or studied. Yes, you do of course want to make sure the chemical is safe for humans to be exposed to, but it is also vital to consider the whole ecosystem. Will this chemical only kill insects, or will it have larger effects? What if the chemical gets washed off into lakes and rivers—what happens to that ecosystem, that may be far away from where the spraying occurred?
Looking back, I think the initial very widespread use of DDT had mostly good intentions (though I still side-eye the US government being so happy about it largely because it protected soldiers). Malaria is a terrible disease, and mosquitoes are quite possibly the deadliest animal in human history with all the diseases they transmit. And DDT did indeed play a role in eliminating malaria in many places, including the US, which is a good thing! But you have to consider the cost, and unfortunately in the case of DDT, personally I think that the negative effects it had on human and environmental health for decades after its use don’t really outweigh the positive role it played in helping to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitoes.
But, eliminating malaria is important, right? And there are definitely many cases when a pesticide is desperately needed, either to eradicate a disease or to stop drastic crop losses caused by flies, moths, caterpillars, or other insects. On a base level, pesticides aren’t evil, and neither are chemicals. Chemicals are everywhere, and their effects are highly dose-dependent!
I guess my final point is this: Whenever a new discovery is made that seems really great, it is so so sooooooo important to study its effects in detail before just deciding to go spray it everywhere. You can’t just test the effects a pesticide has on an insect. How do other organisms react? What about a human exposed to the chemical? And it’s important to do such studies for an adequate amount of time, to really see the long term effects. Which, yes, will mean that it takes a looooooong time for new pesticides (or drugs!) to be approved, but that’s how to do this responsibly.
If that had been done with this “LSDM” chemical, maybe researchers would have figured out that, hey, it isn’t just the flies that react with fear! Look, that mouse is also suddenly paranoid! And wait…so am I, working with this chemical every day!
“The Odor of Fear”: Are Safe(r) Pesticides Possible?
That long history and rant about DDT and pesticides (…sorry?) brings me to a related topic: the theory behind this “LSDM” chemical in the episode is super interesting! If I’m understanding Langly correctly (and he’s understanding the research he read correctly 😉), LSDM doesn’t kill the insects. Instead, it simulates a natural chemical that the flies release when they sense danger, so whenever a fly comes in contact with a plant sprayed with LSDM, it freaks out and basically does the “swim away!!!!” scene from Finding Nemo with all of its friends.
In theory, LSDM is much safer! Its intended effects aren’t to kill anything at all, but just prevent the flies (and possibly other insects) from feeding on and devastating crops. But what I believe happened with LSDM is that scientists discovered it (some “normal” way) and then separately realized “Hey, I left this beaker of LSDM outside, and no flies come near it!” It doesn’t seem that, at the current moment, anyone tried to figure out why the flies are deterred by the chemical, and it definitely doesn’t seem like anyone tried to figure out how other organisms react.
Basically, I’m saying: not enough research was done.
Because the theory of a pesticide that is basically a synthetic “fear pheromone” is super interesting!!!! And if created, tested, and researched appropriately, could be really effective at only deterring a target insect, without affecting other insects, animals, or humans. Because pheromones are species-specific…unlike the LSDM chemical that I’m guessing was just a random discovery, and not synthesized specifically for pesticide use. Research on naturally released “fear chemicals” is actually currently being done, but importantly, while the scientists involved are very excited about it, they are being cautious and moving forward with lots of tests before releasing it.
The idea of basically creating a synthetic pheromone and using it to elicit a reaction from the animal isn’t new, either. If you’ve ever used the Feliway diffusers for cats, those are based on the natural “friendly” pheromone that cats release when they are happy and comfortable in their environment and with the other people/animals around them. And, I actually just remembered that over a decade ago (a decade?!) in my organic chemistry lab we synthesized (or attempted to! 😉) a fruit fly pheromone and tested its effects. I just found my old lab report (because yes, I’m the weirdo that keeps her old school things on a hard drive) and apparently I did successfully create my fruit fly pheromone and attracted flies with it.
Anyway. All this to say: Don’t be scared of new discoveries or new pesticides, but I do encourage a healthy degree of caution and research. As scientists do. And governments should listen to scientists and not just release things because they sound great in theory.
Our “Completely Platonic Coworkers”
No real overt flirting in this episode, but a couple cute moments:
Scully knew Mulder was going to bring up aliens, and then is surprised when he dismisses them immediately!
She gets a little bit of a defensive look when the county supervisor dismisses Mulder as “spooky”.
She flew in the middle of the night to do tests on Mulder herself! Sure, the hospital could’ve done the tests, but I bet she missed him and wanted to help
The 90s™
Early 90s laptops. Although nice to see Scully has some portability when she’s working in the lab and isn’t stuck to the giant desktop of last episode!
Our first close-up look at Mulder’s early 90s cell phone. He has to pull out the antenna to make a call!
Goofs/Bloopers/Fun Facts
First, I do want to start out with my two gripes about the episode. Honestly, it’s refreshing that I only have two and they are fairly small; often even when I like the episode I find science to criticize/fact check, but here the writers did a pretty good job.
So, gripes:
I am not really a big fan of the “rape fear” storyline. Our two male characters get more “normal” phobias in claustrophobia and hematophobia, while our female character just “had a paranoia about rape”. I particularly didn’t quite like how they portrayed her episode of heightened paranoia. That mechanic was being creepy! She was alone in your shop, at night, and you kept calling her closer to you to “show her things” that she probably wasn’t going to understand. Yes, yes, I know he wasn’t planning on raping her and was actually being nice (not just saying “oh you need 5 other repairs” but showing her the problem), but honestly, in that moment particularly, her fear was rational. Now, the better response would’ve been to run away and not grab a wrench and kill the mechanic. But. I dunno. They don’t necessarily overdo the storyline, but it just rubbed me the wrong way a little bit that the female character just had a “heightened fear of rape”…like almost any woman would alone in a mechanic’s shop at night??
The ending scene at the Franklin Community College. Our remaining paranoid dude (Ed Funsch) climbs the clock tower and begins shooting people from it. Just. Feels a little too on the nose, almost an exact reenactment of the UT Austin shooting in the 1960s.
Moving on from those two “major” gripes, which I still can get past and enjoy the episode, have some smaller “goofs” and some fun facts:
Real crime of this episode is that it appears Mrs. McRoberts was going to microwave her English muffin. She gets a bag out of the fridge and walks over to the microwave?!?! Not the toaster? Granted, it doesn’t seem she ends up microwaving it since the microwave sends her messages to be afraid of Mulder but. Microwaving bread?! To jail! (/s) 😂
Accidental Canada flag while they’re driving down the road in Pennsylvania
The doorbell buzzing that drives Ed Funsch mad is spelling out KILL in Morse code
The episode was partially inspired by writer Glen Morgan’s personal hematophobia
After playing “Flukeman” last episode, this is the first episode that Darrin Morgan contributes to a script, though he wasn’t a main writer
Overall Thoughts/Summary
Episode rating: 9/10. And I’m sticking with it! I think this episode does a really good job of having a fast-paced storyline, strong characters, and a really solid plot overall. Once again they don’t try to explain the science too much, but instead include the history of things like DDT spraying and LSD experimentation to demonstrate the reality and possibility of what is happening. I’ve read others criticizing the somewhat disjointed storyline, especially if you take it from the perspective of our surviving paranoid townsman (Ed Funsch), but honestly, I think that’s the point! What is happening to the people of this town is confusing and terrifying and doesn’t make sense to them! Personally I really felt everything along with the townspeople; the directors did an excellent job of portraying the fear and paranoia caused by the pesticide spraying.
Also, having The Lone Gunmen return and explain what was (likely) happening to Mulder was an excellent decision. I love our favourite conspiracy dudes.
X-files cases “solved” to date: Case was definitely solved this time, and it even seems like Mulder was able to convince the town to stop spraying! I hope they continued to monitor the populace for a little while after, just to be safe.
Anyway, we’re at 2/3 cases solved this season, and 22/27 total so far.
Next week we have “Sleepless”, which I genuinely have no memory of. I know Krycek makes his first appearance, and from the title I think maybe the story involves sleep deprivation? But this one really will be a fun journey—not sure if my few memories of the episode means it’s good, bad, or just a “meh” episode.