We have all been afraid of hospitals and of possibly suffering doctor malpractice at some point in our lives, and like with many of its episodes that played around with common fears as part of the story, this show always seemed to know just how to dial them up to eleven! Among the many and awesome "monster of the week" stories, the occult-themed ones always shined in the fairly stark and grounded world of the show, perhaps because it was the closest it could get to outright fantasy without overdoing it and turning into something silly, and to some this one be be silly but I love it, I think it's easily one of the scariest, most unnerving episodes they ever put out. There's something that's deeply disturbing about seeing the do no harm oath being violated in such a visceral and brutal way - lipo, laser, acid, the scenes are all equally ghastly but I personally wouldn't say it's the gore that holds the episode together, I think it's the unsettling notion of doctors inexplicably turning on their helpless patients that helps to make it a compelling watch as you gradually come to understand why, sort of! In any case to me the bloody nature of the story helps to give it an extra atmosphere of danger and edge, nothing is what it seems in this particular plastic surgery where the rich go under the knife, and if you've never seen it before the plot does a good job of misdirecting you as to who's behind all the bloodshed. It seems like the board of the clinic are some kind of cabal, or that the snaggle-toothed nurse is doing it, but it turns out that she was only trying to protect the chosen sacrificial victims from the truly evil one, a warlock of sorts who's been unnaturally prolonging his life and vitality with a blood sacrifice every ten years, and for all anyone knows has already been doing so for a very long time. The merciless Dr. Franklin seems to hold all the cards and is always one step ahead of our agents and in the end is one of the few fiends who ever manage to outsmart them and escape to carry on with his murderous quest for eternal youth, maybe forever... Doc Franklin is an awesome one-shot villain and is the real highlight of the episode for me, his final line right at the end is creepy and ominous and ends it on a very satisfying note. So again I love this macabre X-Files romp of tortured patients and satanic doctors, I find it scary, compellingly dark, thrilling and brutal and it features a bad guy who actually wins. To me it was always a most excellent episode. x