The Truth Is Right Here: These Are Vince Gilligan’s Top 10 ‘X-Files’ Episodes

Scully has the hots for Luke Wilson? Ask any real X-Files fan for their “Top 5” best episodes and “Bad Blood” will be on all the lists. It is, hands down, the funniest episode of the entire series. Mulder and Scully have to get their stories straight after Mulder straight up murders a pizza delivery kid who may, or may not, be a vampire by driving a stake through his heart. We see the investigation unfold first from Scully’s point of view… with Mulder acting like an unhinged weirdo and a smoldering sheriff (Luke Wilson) flirting incessantly with the flattered agent. Then Mulder tells his side… Scully is a whiny little nag and Luke Wilson is a bumbling redneck with “big buck teeth”. In the end, both sides of the story collide in a hilarious showdown between the agents and a cult of vampires. Icing on the cake: A drugged Mulder singing the theme song from “Shaft”.

[Watch “Bad Blood” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

Bryan Cranston stars in this episode as an average man who suddenly gets sick and goes absolutely crazy. Sound familiar? That’s because this is how Vince Gilligan first met Walter White. The show starts with Cranston’s character car-jacking Mulder and making him drive at gunpoint. His head hurts terribly and he claims it will literally explode if they stop driving. (LITERALLY! EXPLODE!) The faster the car goes, the less pain he has. Why? Probably because he was a guinea pig to a government experiment gone wrong. But, yeah, basically the entire episode takes place inside a car with Mulder and future Walter White. But Cranston’s performance is do damn good, and haunting, that it’s worth the ride.

[Watch “Drive” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

“Mango Kiwi Tropical Swirl. Now we know we’re dealing with a madman.” One of the best and most unique X-Files episodes ever, the agents encounter a killer who murders with… his words? He says “Light yourself on fire”, you light yourself on fire. He says “You’re having heart attack”, you have a heart attack. He says, “Mulder, shoot Scully in the face”… well, I won’t spoil it. Let me just say there’s a Russian roulette scene that’s on par with The Deer Hunter.

[Watch “Pusher” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

Vince really knows how to tap into the horror of “average” Americana. A worker sitting in his cubicle is suddenly convinced that his boss is a giant cockroach sucking the life out of his co-workers. So he does the classic American thing, he takes everyone hostage at gun point and demands TV air time to expose his monster boss. Mulder is sent in to help negotiate for the hostages. Obviously this gunman is crazy, right? There’s no such thing as a giant blood-sucking cockroach, right? It would seem this way until Mulder, realizing he’s also just a drone working for suits, also starts to see the cockroach. A great “monster of the week” episode that’s clever, scary, and offers fantastic commentary on Mulder’s role as just another office worker.

[Watch “Folie A Deux” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

Walter White into Heisenberg. Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman. Eddie Van Blundht into Fox Mulder. This is another classic Vince script about a washed-up nobody who “breaks bad” and causes havoc. The main bad guy, Eddie Van Blundht, was born with a tail—like a legit tail—but beyond that never amounted to anything else. So when a group of babies in a small town are born with tails, Mulder and Scully track Eddie down but find it difficult to capture him. Because it seems he can physically morph himself to look like whoever he wants. And so when he captures Mulder and locks him in a basement, he morphs into… Agent Mulder. The rest of the episode is basically “Mulder” trying to seduce and bone Scully and, at least for awhile, it actually seems like Scully is DTF.

[Watch “Small Potatoes” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

I am so damn glad Vince Gilligan was like, “Wait, what if Mulder and Scully were on that show COPS?” Because the result is just as amazing as you may expect. The whole thing is shot, edited and acted EXACTLY like an episode of COPS… except for the fact that, instead of running after shirtless gangbangers, they’re chasing a werewolf.

[Watch “X-Cops” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

Vince Gilligan has always had a dark side. Anyone surprised by just how dark Breaking Bad got has to go back and watch this episode that revolves around a psycho who stalks, kidnaps, and then lobotomizes young women (with an icepick through the eye socket, no less). The “X-File” is that any cameras near the kidnapping scene suddenly have images of the victim on them… surrounded by terrifying ghosts and demons. Vince introduces a long-overdue story element: Scully getting fed up with Mulder’s obsessive antics and basically saying “F you and F this case.” That is until she goes missing and her image appears in a nearby photo booth.

[Watch “Unruhe” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

Another classic “average joe” story from Vince involving a fast food worker who has a slight problem… he’s mutant who needs to eat human brains in order to survive. Also, Vince introduced a “twist”… the whole story is told from the monster’s point of view and Mulder and Scully are thus the antagonists. As such, Vince succeeds once again at introducing sympathy for monsters.

[Watch “Hungry” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

If you got 3 wishes, would 1 of them be for “more Breaking Bad episodes”? Because Vince made this episode about a magic genie in a bottle and it totally rubs me the right way. A divisive episode for sure, but with Vince writing AND directing this one, you get nothing short of 100% weird and hilarious. Including a scene where (SPOILER) someone wishes for world peace and suddenly EVERY SINGLE PERSON on Earth disappears.

[Watch “Je Souhaite” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

“My friend was murdered. Who thought this could happen at The Brady Bunch house?” There are no “half measures” with Vince, especially when he’s the writer AND director. As such, this episode is a total “full measure” of balls-out wacky weird. It involves a series of murders at a house that looks exactly like the house from the “The Brady Bunch”. And living in this house is Ben from Lost who is obsessed with said classic TV sitcom. There’s so many reasons why this episode shouldn’t work: There’s no Mulder. It’s during the weakest season of X-Files. There’s no Mulder. It’s the 2nd to last episode of X-Files ever. New agents Doggett (just ok) and Reyes (ugh) are there. And, also, there’s no Mulder. But, you know what? Props to Vince to creating one of the most unique stories ever to grace the X-Files universe.

[Watch “Sunshine Days” on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video]

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Steven Greenstreet wishes he was a mutant just so Mulder and Scully would talk to him. You can follow him on Twitter at: @MiddleOfMayhem.