to play Sheriff Hartwell; he had previously starred in the comedy film Home Fries (1998), which had been scripted by Vince Gilligan. Local Vancouver comedian and actor Brent Butt played the coroner. Patrick Renna played Ronnie Strickland. He said of the part, "Before we started I asked if Ronnie was pretending to be a moron. [The writers and producers] told me, 'No. He's really just a moron.'" The out of control RV was created by the show's special effects coordinator, David Gauthier; a secondary steering wheel was rigged up so that a stunt driver could steer the car from the back of the vehicle, out of the camera's sight. Wilson and Renna were fitted with faux vampire teethwhich were sardonically labelled "funny fangs"courtesy of special effects makeup coordinator Toby Lindala. Wilson later recounted that they fit comfortably in the actor's mouth, musing, "The retainers I had to wear as a kid never fit as well." In order to create the glowing green eyes of the vampires, fluorescent material was glued to the actors' eyelids. However, because they were unable to see, this gave the vampires a "somewhat vacant" stare. The corpses with fangs marks were created by makeup artist Laverne Basham. In order to create a suitable model for the bite marks, Gilligan bit the back of his hand "to show [Basham] exactly what he wanted." Themes According to Susanne Kord and Elisabeth Krimmer, "Bad Blood" explores the dynamics of the relationship between Mulder and Scully by "develop[ing] the dysfunctional potential of [their] routine interactions." In "Scully Hits the Glass Ceiling: Postmodernism, Postfeminism, Posthumanism and The X-Files", Linda Badley suggests that The X-Files often subverts the concept of the male gaze through the whole series and "Bad Blood" includes an example of this, allowing Scully to be the one that gazes at Sheriff Hartwell. Michelle Bush, in her book Myth-X, described the episode as allowing the viewer "a peek inside [Mulder and Scully's] heads" by showing how they see themselves and each other, as well as "their insecurities about their attractiveness to the other". The title "Bad Blood" can be applied to the tension between the two characters in the episode. She described how in each of their stories they try to describe themselves in the way the other would find attractive. Reception Ratings "Bad Blood" was first broadcast in the United States on February 22, 1998, on the Fox