The X-Files had a very specific reason for the shaky cameras and overall less polished look of one particular episode. Written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, season 7, episode 12 "X-Cops" is a fictional crossover with the reality documentary soap series Cops. The show follows real-life law enforcement officers as they go about their daily duties filmed, as each episode proclaims, "on location with the men and women of law enforcement." Vince Gilligan was a fan of the series and had pitched the idea of Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) appearing on the show as far back as season 4. The idea was rejected by X-Files creator Chris Carter as too goofy, but eventually Gilligan got his wish during season 7, which many believed would be The X-Files last.
"X-Cops" is not the first X-Files episode to crossover with another television series. Law and Order when the actor Richard Belzer guest starred in season 5, episode 3 "Unusual Suspects" in character as John Munch from both Homicide: Life on the Street and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Earlier in the same season as "X-Cops," Mulder and Scully also met another Chris Carter creation, Frank Black (Lars Henriksen), in an episode that resolved the story arc of Carter's Millennium, following the show's cancellation. Mulder and Scully also famously appeared in a very special episode of The Simpsons in 1997. Unlike those shows, however, Cops is a reality tv show and not a fictional drama series, so the production team on The X-Files had to take a very different approach to making "X-Cops" from these previous crossovers.
As each episode states, Cops is filmed on location with law enforcement officers, so X-Files Agents Mulder and Scully's "appearance" on the show had to be filmed on videotape rather than film. The X-Files was typically shot on film, so this was a significant downgrade in visual aesthetic, but it was crucial for maintaining authenticity. Authenticity was at the core of every visual decision made by the episode's director Michael Watkins, who also brought in a cameraman and editor from Cops to shoot and blur footage that would make the finished episode look like Cops, rather than The X-Files. Watkins also barred the usual X-Files camerapersons from participating in rehearsals for the episode, so that they would organically respond to events as if they were working on a real-time documentary shoot. While the shaking cameras and fuzzy videotape might look bad to modern audiences, it's perfectly tailored to make "X-Cops" look and feel as realistic as possible.
In writing "X-Cops," X-Files and Breaking Bad writer Vince Gilligan was mindful of the fact that he was writing an episode of Cops rather than The X-Files. As such, the monster-of-the-week, a werewolf, can't be shown in full. If it did, it would ruin the authentic feel of the episode, if Mulder and Scully had encountered a werewolf on camera in the world of The X-Files, a shady figure within the FBI would surely have impounded the footage. The X-Files team looked to the found-footage handheld horror film The Blair Witch Project for inspiration on how to hint at—rather than fully depict—the werewolf creature.
Found-footage horror films have become ubiquitous in the years following the release of The Blair Witch Project in 1999, but this episode of The X-Files from 2000 felt genuinely groundbreaking at the time. Found footage was a fresh new way to tell a Mulder and Scully monster-of-the-week story. This was also a postmodern take on the increasing popularity of reality television. "X-Cops" is still a much-loved episode today, and the choices to make the visuals as fuzzy, poorly lit, and shaky as possible only add to the authentic atmosphere of this classic episode.