The X-Files Episode That Only Happened Because Breaking Bad Creator Was Stonewalled

According to Gilligan, when he turned the script in for “Pusher” to Chris Carter, he told the X-Files creator it was “the best work” he would do for the show. Carter brushed this off, insisting he expected his writers to keep getting better, but regardless it speaks to what Gilligan invested in the story.

On a special feature for The X-Files Season 3 DVD collection, Gilligan explained that “Pusher” started off as a movie script he failed to sell. Once he got on board for The X-Files, he reworked the script for the show.

“Pusher” is a monster-of-the-week episode in which the “monster” is a lot more charismatic. Robert Wisden plays Robert Patrick Modell, a contract killer who manages to make all his jobs look like suicides.

Calling himself Pusher, Modell has the inexplicable ability to convince people to do whatever he wants, including hurting themselves or others. Early in the episode, he convinces an FBI agent to set himself on fire, and later convinces a secretary working at the FBI to attack Assistant Director Skinner (Mitch Pileggi).

Pusher’s abilities make him kind of like the villain Kilgrave in Jessica Jones. But he isn’t quite as powerful as David Tennant’s Marvel villain, and his powers usually manifest with a more poetic and hypnotic mechanism.

For example, Modell is arrested in the cold open of “Pusher,” and he frees himself by convincing the officer driving the squad car transporting him to drive the car into the path of an oncoming 18 wheeler.

Now if someone like Kilgrave or Professor X wanted to do that, they would just tell the cop “pull into the path of the truck so it hits us.” Instead, Pusher instead keeps repeating the word “cerulean” and saying things like “cerulean is a gentle breeze.”

This convinces the cop not only to pull in front of the truck that is colored cerulean blue and actually says “CERULEAN,” but that the truck isn’t even there.

Pusher also isn’t as powerful as Kilgrave or characters like him. He only seems to be able to, as Mulder puts it, “put the whammy” on a single victim at a time and it tires him out quickly. After he convinces an agent to immolate himself, for example, he’s captured only because he’s too tired to drive away.

“Pusher” is about as tense as the series ever gets, with Mulder and Scully at a loss with how to deal with Modell. Rather than debating whether or not he has this uncanny ability, the pair focus on stopping him by discovering how he does what he does.

The episode ends with Pusher forcing Mulder into a nail-biting game of Russian Roulette in a hospital ICU, and it’s so intense Fox’s censors almost refused to let it air.

“Pusher” isn’t the last time we see Modell. Robert Wisden returns to reprise the role in Season 5 for “Kitsunegari,” this time joined by Diana Scarwid as the msyterious Linda Bowman.

“Pusher” has one of the more infamous blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos in the history of The X-Files. When Modell infiltrates the FBI HQ with nothing but a piece of paper with “PASS” written on it in his lapel, for a few seconds you can see Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame behind and to the right of Modell, talking to a woman.