UNCUT - The X-Files S2E3 - Blood

We've officially hit x-files episodes I've not seen! Let's goooooo! Loving this series.

Again as we were saying the stand alone episodes in S2 just improve so much. Here we have normal people committing crazed murders for no apparent reason. The subliminal messages seem to affect people who have an irrational fear or acute phobia to certain things possibly linked to the pesticide being sprayed locally. Great to see The Lone Gunmen back here always a brilliant addition to the show. The strangest piece of trivia surrounding this episode is the performance of Adult Movie actress Ashlyn Gere who plays the woman who murders the mechanic, and tries to slash and stab Mulder to death. She was active as a major hardcore porn star before, during, and after being in The X-Files, and puts in a great performance here. The tower scene here when Edward has the rifle is very reminiscent of Jonathan in Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode Earshot when he goes up the clock tower with the gun and Buffy has to talk him out of it. All in all this was a great single episode.

Elvis lives!

Good writing is something that was written decades ago and you can look at today and believe it could or is happening today. The talk of pitting people against each other so they don't look at the people at the top? Enjoying your channel so much I can't wait for what is coming. I have to jump at least one episode ahead!

I finally got around to watching this one and........it didn't work for me. I was honestly pretty bored watching this one. Loved the first 2, and some of the few early XF eps I DO remember are coming up, and I'm looking forward to those, but nothing here really captured my attention. I agree with the comments that the messages on the screens were just a side effect of the paranoia brought on by the chemical, but it's not well communicated. At least the cop seemed like a decent dude, going against the trend of small town asshole cops from S1. But overall in terms of entertainment value, I'd probably put this in the bottom 5 of the show so far. Just wasn't for me.

As I read some of the comments, yes Subliminal messaging was a big thing at the time. It was on people minds, since some believed we were being told that movie ads had subliminal messages to buy popcorn or sodas. Music have subliminal messaging in it. It was rumored that groceries store were hiding messages to buy current products in the music playing over head. Elevators music had them also. Jobs; the music overhead telling working to be more productive. People felt they were being control everywhere they went. So this episode was playing off of some peoples paranoia.

Not a favorite of mine, but still quite entertaining.

I forgot how good this is. X-Files is so incredibly well shot and create. The story makes enough sense to me. I think you're taking it too literally with the hacking. Nobody mentioned that. David has great comedy timing. He could easily have been in more comedy movies.

Great episode. X-Files still closed but Mulder and Scully find a way to combine their talents and work together anyways.

This episode can work, if you look at it as an Demonic Entity. The exposure of the victims to the chemicals made them susceptible to suggestions/communications from this 'entity'. It's fits better than government as the source, and explains the warning to Funsch on the bus and the final communication to Mulder at the end. William Sanderson does a great job, and is also well known for playing 'Larry' from the 80's sitcom Newhart

Definitely one of the weaker episodes but as you said very watchable. Even mid xfiles is worth watching

Subliminal messaging was popularized when James Vicary conducted a study by putting subliminal messaging to buy more popcorn and drink Coca-Cola into cinema movies, which increased sales significantly. Five years later James Vicary came clean that he had faked the whole thing. But despite coming clean with his hoax, subliminal messaging is a pseudo-science that has endured in the public consciousness.

My reading of the episode is it's absolutely saying the messages were all in the minds, a lingering effect of the LSD crops. Do they leave a bit of wiggle room so you *could* see them as real and a government conspiracy? Sure. But it's supposed to be a lingering doubt, not the main takeaway. If you don't want to take all the screen stuff literally, the episode gives you plenty of room to do that.

This is the first episode I ever saw. I was a little kid and it freaked me out when he got that message on the ATM. That really got burned into my pop culture memory.

Larry from Newhart, trying not to go "postal". Nice homage to mass murderder Charles Joseph Whitman by putting the sniper in the tower at a college. And yes, those DDT spraying events were real in the 1950s. Unique plot device, though it didn't really fall into the Monster-of-the-Week format to me (seemed too connected to reality, but that's okay). Well executed, nice direction - I like how they don't show us the murders; they let you fill in the gaps with your imagination. And the mechanic: death by oil spout - brilliant! Overall: excellent episode. A+ rating from me.

I think this is as close as the X-Files has gotten (so far) to a perfect standalone episode. The direction is excellent. The pacing is tight. Mark Snow goes nuts with the score. There's a creepy mystery that's never fully resolved AND it's even creepier now with the rise of AI. It's everything I want from this show and everything this show is perfectly equipped to do.

That was either the X-files or the X-Men TAS opener... Quality too low to tell 🤪

Per the DDT Pesticide film footage...i grew up in Tampa Fl in 60s...trucks spraying DDT would go up and down city streets spewing clouds of DDT to help eradicate mosquitos....us kids would chase the trucks flaying our arms in the clouds of pesticide

Imo its all in everyone's heads, including Mulder's. Chalk up the way everyone is seeing messages in digital displays as a shared delusion caused by the chemicals they've been exposed to. There's real world substances that can cause consistent thematic hallucinations amongst different people like this. And Mulder seeing the ALL DONE message on his phone? He believes the government was involved, so he hallucinates something that lines up with that. Our subconsciouses can be capable of some crazy stuff ...Or it really was a government experiment. I just think the accidental, unmalicious possibility is better and more fun in this case

I always loved that "Blood" is kind of a stand-alone "pure" conspiracy episode. It feels like it SHOULD be a mythology episode because hints at this larger chemical testing conspiracy, but in the end, it just wraps up with that nice little: "All Done. Bye Bye." And it's like: who the fuck was even doing this, haha. I love it. It's not aliens. It's not a monster. It's just this dark little deadly experiment inflicted on innocent people. It's almost like a proto-Black Mirror episode with the tech read-outs. Anyway, I feel like this one's such a simple, pure little bon-bon of X-Files paranoia-porn, and it's really underrated. Can't wait for what's coming up... 🤘🏼

The craziest part of the episode is how that blood donation lady rang his doorbell with hyper-aggression. Settle down, lady!

I always felt the implications are the govt thru lsd and something are hacking their minds not the devices. But ya still is very unclear.

To underestimate "The Powers That Be" is exactly how they get away with what they do. If men were meant to fly, God would have given us wings. Transmitting moving pictures through the air over great distances....in your dreams. By splitting the atom, they can make one bomb that is more powerful than all of the combined munitions exploded in WW2.....what have you been smoking? Feeding a digital message into any random digital display....seems like child's play. But of course, any rational thinker knows that such things are pure fantasy. So many things are impossible....until they aren't. Or maybe, the messages were just delusions in each person's own mind created by the LSDM. Ohhhh, the X-Files. We are just not allowed to know some things. ......And that's OK. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clark

Mulder's theory is the only thing wrong with the story as far as I'm concerned. I love this episode, it's one of my all time favorite standalones. If Mulder hadn't said that he thinks the messages are sent purposely, there wouldn't be an issue. I don't think there's an issue even as it is. It's just his theory. Scully was wrong in previous episodes plenty of times, so Mulder can be wrong in this one, too. I don't think the writer (Darin Morgan) intended for the audience to believe that conspirators are sending messages to an ATM, a wristwatch, a calculator, a microwave or a wrist watch, among other devices. Regarding the bus, Ed is probably suspecting that someone might be onto him, so subconsciously he sees those messages in the display at the time. That's my personal take. I mean the lady saw a warning that the mechanic would rape her, but there is no evidence to support that he actually wanted to do so. The ending of the episode has Mulder seeing "his" fear, which is exactly his theory, that this was a controlled experiment. So the ending -- the conspirators sending him a message -- was the substance affecting him by showing him a message being sent by "them", the conspirators. I hope my interpretation makes some sense to those who have a problem with the story. The substance invokes a fear response, with paranoia and everything else to go with it, and its properties make you see "messages" related to your fears. Throwing in digital devices into the story is IMO intentionally done to throw people off at the start of the episode, making them suspect AI and other stuff, until it's finally revealed that it's the substance behind it all. In all honesty one of my favorite standalones, and that one line by Mulder ("The messages were relayed purposely") is responsible for the confusion.

The woman killed the mechanic by stabbing him with an oil can opener spout. They are pretty much obsolete because motor oil comes in plastic bottles now. These spouts had a sharp arrow on the end to puncture the can then poor the oil out. She punches it into his chest and blood comes out of it. I think the bit is a little dated now.

This is one of those X-Files episodes the more times you see it the creepier gets