Young at Heart (The X-Files) - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"Young at Heart" premiered on the Fox network on February 11, 1994, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on January 12, 1995. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 7.2 with an 11 share, meaning that roughly 7.2 percent of all television-equipped households, and 11 percent of households watching TV, were tuned in to the episode. A total of 6.8 million households watched this episode during its original airing.

Director Michael Lange said that he "liked the script very much, and I think I stayed fairly close to the original draft. I liked it because it had a good spookiness to it. To me, the intriguing part was the doctor's research into being able to reverse the aging process, which I wish we could have explored more." Executive Producer Robert Goodwin considered the episode one of the most emotional episodes of the first season, due to the time spent working with Courtney Arciaga, the little girl with progeria. In a retrospective of the first season in Entertainment Weekly, the episode was rated a C, being called "far-fetched" and criticised for its unoriginal themes. Zack Handlen, writing for The A.V. Club, described it as "sloppy, poorly edited" and "thoroughly unexciting", pointing out the "forced" nature of the supporting characters' past involvement with Fox Mulder. Matt Haigh, writing for Den of Geek, expressed mixed feelings over the episode, comparing it to Quincy, M.E. and stating that it "just wasn't weird enough" for an episode of The X-Files. "Young at Heart" has been cited, along with the fourth season episode "Paper Hearts", as representing "the supreme irony and the hidden agenda of the series"—in both cases, Mulder, directly through his work on the X-Files, puts information permanently beyond reach by killing those who hold it, showing that "despite the fact that Mulder drives the car, he frequently ends up—and goes—nowhere".