The Rain King

Plot

On Valentine's Day in Kroner, Kansas, Sheila Fontaine and Daryl Mootz get into an argument. Fontaine had put their engagement news in the paper, but Mootz had wanted to keep it a secret for as long as the drought makes business poor. After the argument, Mootz goes for a drunken drive but crashes after heart-shaped hailstones wreck his car.

Six months later, Mulder and Scully arrive in Kroner by request of the mayor. For several months a terrible drought has plagued the region. However, Mootz, now styling himself as "The Rain King", seems to have the power to control the weather. For a hefty sum, he is able to make it rain. Mulder and Scully obtain a client list and head to the local television station to talk to the weatherman, Holman Hardt. Hardt admits that while Mootz's talents are odd, he appears to truly have the power to control the weather. Mulder and Scully, both skeptical, attend one of Mootz's rituals. Despite their preconceived notions, Mulder and Scully witness Mootz bring rain to a dry farm.

Mulder and Scully check into a motel, where a cow crashes through the roof of Mulder's room. After the incident, a tearful Sheila confesses that the cow might have been her fault. She admits that she's experienced a strange history of weather-related phenomena, and believes that she can unconsciously control the weather. Mulder assures her otherwise. During the conversation, Hardt over-hears that Mootz was drunk the night of the accident, and is relieved. Immediately, Mootz's rain powers seem to disappear.

It is revealed that Holman Hardt is actually the one controlling the weather. All of the bizarre weather was the side-effect of his long-silent love for Sheila. He felt guilty that his weather-related problem caused Mootz to crash his car, so he would cause it to rain for Mootz. Once he realized Mootz had been drunk the night of the accident, however, he stopped. Unfortunately, Mulder begins to unintentionally attract Sheila, resulting in a massive thunderstorm that materializes due to the meteorologist's emotions. At the town's high school reunion, however, Hardt admits his love for Sheila, who accepts him. The storm stops, and Hardt and Sheila live happily ever after.

Writing

"The Rain King" was the first episode written by then-new X-Files writer Jeffrey Bell. Bell, who never intended to work in television, sent the production staff three script ideas because he was a fan of the show. The staff agreed to buy one—which eventually became "The Rain King"—as a freelance script. Bell worked with Frank Spotnitz, John Shiban, and Vince Gilligan to edit the script by "boarding" it, a process where note cards are used to flesh out the story. The group of men pitched the story idea to series creator Chris Carter in August, and Bell was later hired as a show writer.

The script went through considerable changes. Bell was unaware that his character of Daryl Mootz would "steal the show". In addition, the relationship between Holman and the FBI agents grew stronger in subsequent drafts. In the final draft, Bell attempted to parallel the emotional state of Mulder and Scully with Hardt. He said, "Here you have a guy who's affecting the weather because he's repressing his emotions [...] and who better to help him than two people whose emotions are repressed and never express their feelings for each other?"

Filming

The scene in which Daryl Mootz crashes his car after being hit with heart-shaped hail was filmed on a "lonely road" near Grapevine, California. The road was so seldom used that the Caltrans highway officials reportedly had no problem shutting down the entire road for the crew to film the scene. Director Kim Manners was very happy with the way the filming turned out, although he did note that the hardest shot to get was of the car crashing into the pole, because the car kept correcting itself and crashing at an undesired angle.

Ilt Jones, the series' location manager, decided to use Piru, California as a stand-in for Kroner, Kansas—a fictitious city named after Bell's college roommate. "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" would later be filmed in the same town. The climactic scenes in Kroner's high school were filmed at an actual abandoned high school in Culver City, California. Corey Kaplan and her art team were tasked with turning the derelict gym into a believable reunion set.

Effects

Property master Tom Day and costume designer Christine Peters were tasked with making a one-legged version of Clayton Rohner, who portrayed Mootz. Day constructed a fake prosthetic leg and Peters created a harness that pulled Rohner's actual leg out of the camera's sight. The harness was later described as "painful".

The scene that featured a cow crashing through Mulder's roof was elaborately orchestrated. Initially, Jones approached the owner of a motel called the Sierra Palona Motel and requested that it be used in the episode. A deal was made that stated that the production staff could cut a hole in the roof for the episode in exchange for a brand-new roof after the episode was filmed. Duke Tomasick, The X-Files construction coordinator, later said that the "fun part" was "calling local roofers and explaining just what kind of damage they'd be repairing for us".

Special effects producer Bill Millar acquired several cows, put them in a field, and photographed them for reference. Using digital technology he animated one of the cows to create the effect of it being sucked upwards. Finally, a "cow puppet" was dropped on a re-creation of Mulder's motel room at Fox Studios. Millar noticed that the cow puppet's color was different than his computer generated cow, forcing him to quickly change the color. Kim Manners later stated that his biggest regret with the episode is that he did not have David Duchovny respond "Got milk?" after the cow crashed through his roof.

Broadcast and reception

"The Rain King" premiered on the Fox network on January 10, 1999. Following its initial American broadcast, the episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 12.5, with an 18 share—meaning that roughly 12.5 percent of all television-equipped households, and 18 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 21.20 million viewers. "The Rain King" was both the highest rated episode of Season 6 and the last episode of The X-Files to be viewed by more than 20 million viewers. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on April 25, 1999 and received 0.75 million viewers, making it the third most watched episode that week. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Mulder's been abducted, infected, and discredited. Tonight, he faces his greatest peril ever... a woman in love."

Critical reception was mostly mixed, with results ranging from negative to positive. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files wrote positively of the episode, saying, "'The Rain King' was cute. Very cute. […] And yet I never found myself suffering from cuteness overload. In fact, I laughed and smiled the entire way through." Starpulse named "The Rain King" as the ninth best X-Files episode and praised the lighter approach to the paranormal, saying that the episode was an "ingenious way to use the paranormal motif of the show for something other than thrills". Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "B+" grade. Despite criticizing the show for "filming in the land of sunshine and lemon drops" and "border[ing] on that overly twee independent movie vibe", Handlen noted that "the episode’s essential sweetness has enough snarky asides from our heroes […] that it never goes completely off the rails." He did, however, note that the episode's placement, after a string of several humorous episodes, hurt its reception; he argued that, had it appeared in an earlier, darker season, the entry would now be viewed as "a cock-eyed classic".

Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, gave the episode a mixed review and rated the episode three out of five. The two praised the scene featuring the cow getting sucked up by the tornado, calling it "really, very funny" and "comic genius", but noted that "a romantic comedy cannot work by flying cows alone." Shearman and Pearson cited casting flaws as to why the episodes as not able to live up to its potential. Other reviews were more negative. In a review of the seventh season episode "Brand X", Sarah Kendzior from 11th Hour Magazine cited "The Rain King" as one of the worst episodes of The X-Files. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a mixed review and awarded it two stars out of four. Vitaris heavily criticized the "flying cow" scene—noting that the scene was both "poorly executed" and "offensive" for turning the death of a creature into a joke—as well as the final scene, which, according to her, featured a "false pastel sky". Andy Meisler, in The End and the Beginning noted that the episode was poorly received by fans on the Internet.