"Drive" is the second episode of the sixth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on November 15, 1998. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Drive" earned a Nielsen household rating of 11.0, being watched by 18.5 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received largely positive reviews from television critics. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In the episode, Mulder is trapped in a car by a seemingly deranged man, and Scully races to determine if the man is suffering from a deadly illness—and if Mulder is in danger of becoming the next victim of some sort of government conspiracy. The episode was written by Vince Gilligan, directed by Rob Bowman, and featured a guest appearance by Bryan Cranston. Gilligan cast Cranston to play the antagonist because he felt he could successfully humanize the role. Cranston's success in "Drive" later led to his casting as Walter White in Gilligan's AMC series Breaking Bad. Plot In a live news report, a high-speed car chase comes to an end in the Nevada desert. Assuming it to be a kidnapping, police pull the female passenger from the car and place her into the protective custody of a police vehicle. The driver, Patrick Crump (Bryan Cranston), is pushed to the asphalt and handcuffed. The woman, his wife, begins violently banging her head against the police car window. As the news chopper catches all of this on film, the woman's head explodes, sending a spray of blood across the window. Mulder and Scully get wind of this bizarre car chase as they're doing work in Buhl, Idaho investigating possible domestic terrorism. Mulder coerces Scully into taking a detour to Elko, Nevada on a hunch that this may be an X-File. Crump, who has started to develop symptoms of a sickness, is put in an ambulance. Mulder, wishing to speak to Crump, follows the ambulance and ends up being kidnapped by Crump, who has escaped from the police. Mulder realizes that Crump is suffering from a painful sensation of pressure building in his head and that the only