a Nielsen rating of 9.9, with a 17 share, meaning that roughly 9.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 17 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. This totaled 14.86 million viewers. The episode received mixed to positive reviews from critics, ranging from largely positive to negative. Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an A−, calling it "gorgeously shot", citing the "lush, smoky gaming sequences" in particular. Television Without Pity ranked "Hell Money" the eleventh most nightmare-inducing episode of the show noting, "If there’s one thing you don’t want to mess with, it’s the Chinese mafia. Especially the branch that dresses up like Slipknot and either a) burns you alive, if you’re lucky, or b) forces you to participate in a haunted organ-harvesting raffle only to slowly carve you up and sell your vital organs on the black market, whether you like it or not." 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, and called it a "hard episode to love [but] sincere and purposeful". The two praised the conceit of the episode, arguing that by presenting the situation from the Chinese immigrants—members of an alien culture—and Chao's point of view, "Mulder and Scully seem clumsy and arrogant. And by implication, the audience are made to feel just as arrogant." Other reviews were more mixed. John Keegan from Critical Myth gave the episode 5/10, noting "Overall, this episode attempted to make a mundane murder case interesting by forcing the agents to interact with an 'alien' culture. Unfortunately, the structure of the episode gave the audience answers long before the agents discovered them, making the bulk of the episode an exercise. By not taking the theme far enough or deepening the mystery, the writers ultimately fail to reach their goals." Reviewer Emily VanDerWerff from The A.V. Club gave the entry a C+ and wrote that the episode "was also fairly bold for its time, providing a whole subplot that's mostly told through subtitles [but] it feels like a series of shocks that are strung together along a pretty standard story setup." Ultimately, VanDerWerff concluded that, "the major problem with 'Hell Money' is that it feels, at times, like a backdoor pilot for a new series starring B.D. Wong as corrupt detective Glen Chao." Paula Vitaris from