And so, in honor of the Germans showing up - hi, everybody! Um, any of you read English? - thanks to that news article in Golem.de, I'm gonna write up a fresh survey I haven't done before.
If you know the history of the 'Shipper Surveys, it's that I started them in Season Five meaning the first four seasons were skipped. While I've gotten a handful of Season Ones done, I've barely touched the other Two through Four years.
So there's a Season Four episode that is thematically appropriate for having Germans show up:
Unruhe
1) The episode opens with a troubled young woman stressing over getting a passport made, and going to a store to get the photo made. Realizing she left her wallet in the car, she rushes outside to retrieve it from her waiting boyfriend, only to discover her boyfriend is DEAD due to a painful amount of STABBING, and that a guy with a hood is behind her ready to kidnap her. While that's going on, the photo guy in the shop discovers that the photo is developing not into a standard head shot but is developing into a creepy comic book cover art with the woman screaming in terror. You realize:
A) The lady who did the Topps comics covers - Miran Kim - better get royalties for that photo.
B) Uh, Sprechen Sie Deutsche? No Habla Angles.
C) Dana's gonna have another bad week of being a kidnap victim. Again. Sigh. Fox better be ready with the hand-holds and hot tea!
2) The case gets assigned to Mulder and Scully because of the possible paranormal act of psychic photography. You:
A) Regret you never took a class on psychic photography in college, getting a standard journalism class on news photography in which you got an A (yes, I am bragging).
B) Regret you never did well enough in the college class on Beginning German in which you had to drop out (mutter grumble)
C) Regret you never got to see Katara and Zuko hook up. ...oh wait, wrong 'Ship.
3) The kidnapped woman is found stumbling down a street, incoherent. The doctors discover she's the victim of an ill-performed lobotomy, using a practice that had an ice-pick shoved into the eye (eeeeeeeeeek) that causes damage to the brain. Scully picks up on the fact that the woman is speaking German, especially the word "unruhe". You guess:
A) That Scully didn't flunk out of college-level German, because the Enigmatic One DOES NOT FAIL EVER.
B) That the proper translation of "unruhe" is, uh... um... Oh, I can't cheat here and skip to Google Translate, can I? No? This is what I get for flunking out of college-level German.
C) That Dana and Fox are in a relationship, hence the constant need to 'SHIP THEM! Don't let the NoRomos tell you otherwise!
4) Unfortunately another woman's been kidnapped and likely facing the same fate as the first one, since Victim Number Dwi (that's two, right?) is strapped to a chair facing someone speaking German to her and waving a pointed stick. You shout:
A) "Better hurry up and get that German Trout prepared for some slapping of the Monster of the Week, Scully!" Wait, are there trout in Germany?
B) "Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!" (pause) Oh God, why are all the Germans glaring at me like that...?
C) "Fox! Tell Dana you TRUST her!" What? HE SHOULD.
5) While Mulder digs into the photographic evidence showing the images contain the face of an old man and another dark figure looming nine feet tall, Scully tracks down one connection between the two women: a construction company renovating various buildings. Scully arrives at one site, bumping into a worker (Look kids! Pruitt Taylor Vince!) who just happens to work in stilts that make him nine feet tall. As Scully gets a phone call from Mulder about her needing to be on the lookout for a nine-foot tall creepy guy, you realize:
A) This is a good time for Action!Scully to break out her poses for the action figure they need to make for the 2016 merchandise push during the upcoming revival.
B) What's the German phrase for "Oh Crap"?
C) Fox should have also told Dana over the phone what he's wearing. That's what couples do over the phone, right?
6) Quick, everybody, time for a chase through an abandoned work site! Only this time, the suspect is armed and wearing stilts! You take that last bit in and:
A) Laugh your ass off because when's the last time a suspect wore stilts?
B)
7) They catch Stilt-Man-Wannabe. Mulder and Scully dig up the information on the suspect Gerry Schnauz, who turns out to have some psychological issues coping with an abusive German-born father who abused his sister. Mulder interrogates how Gerry beat his father with an axe handle in 1980, and how Gerry's sister committed suicide in 1980. MULDER: "God that was a bad year, what else happened in 1980, Gerry?" SCHNAUZ: "Well, John Lennon got shot!" You shout back:
A) "Don't you dare drag the Beatles into this! They had nothing to do with it!"
B) "The Walrus Was Skinner!"
C) "Fox, Start crooning 'Love Me Do' to Dana!"
8) Scully leans in to question Schnauz, who looks at her as if for the first time and mutters "You look... troubled..." And Pruitt Taylor Vince does that thing with his eye (which is a neurological disorder he suffers from) that just makes him seem soooooooo unsettling, leading you to admit:
A) THIS IS FORESHADOWING.
B) I NEED HELP MAKING JOKES IN THIS PART OF THE SURVEY, WRITTEN IN GERMAN! ANYBODY KNOW ANY GOOD X-FILES JOKES IN GERMAN?!
C) FOX TRUSTS DANA! DANA TRUSTS FOX! TEA IS LOVE!
D) SKINNER'S FIST! ...what, I need the newcomers from Germany to know there's an occasional D) answer that involves AD Skinner from time to time.
9) In typical X-Files fashion, the police are unable to keep Schnauz in custody, because he uses his psychic powers with photographs to freak out the officer detaining him and break free. Later, Schnauz goes rampaging into the photo store where the first victim was captured, and steals the camera equipment. Scully goes with other cops to secure the crime scene, but while nobody else is looking Schnauz stabs her with his drug needle into her foot while hiding under a police car. You:
A) Scoff at the notion someone can fit under a 1990s police car. Not unless that cop car was using monster truck tires or something.
B) Try your shot at a German phrase. Ich beschuldige Außerirdische für mein Bier zu stehlen! (causes international incident)
C) Worry that Dana is gonna need a whole lotta tea when this all done.
10) Mulder searches for clues tracing Gerry Schnauz's tormented past with his father. Arriving at an abandoned dentist's office where... wait, what? The abusive German father was a DENTIST?! Oh, now they're just shamelessly ripping off Marathon Man. I can't even. Can you?
A) Shut up, we're missing valuable Scully time. Back to the scene where Scully breaks free of her ropes and beats up the MOTW!
B) What's German for "shameless stereotyping"?
C) Hey, would Marathon Man be a good date movie for Dana and Fox? (gets told no) Scheiße!
11) Scully wakes up to find herself tied to a dentist's chair and Gerry nearby talking to her in German. If he starts asking "Is it safe?" I really think somebody ought to sue. Anyway. Scully answers back with the German she learned in college, talking to the psycho before she gets stabbed in the really painful spot in the eyeball ow ow ow ow ow ow. You watch all this and discern:
A) If Scully had learned French back in college she'd be in a truckload of Scheiße right about now.
B) That interrogation scenes in German just have really unsettling implications, okay?
C) Dana romancing Fox in German is gonna be awkward. Should she learn a more exotic language like, oh, Welsh?
12) Mulder goes chasing after another clue: the photos all show tombstones in the background, meaning Schnauz is hiding in a cemetery somewhere. Figuring he'd go to where his sister is buried, he goes racing out there and notices an RV van. You:
A) see B)
B) see C)
C) Have a flash-forward to writer Vince Gilligan's future television magnum opus Breaking Bad and realize he's got a thing for villains living out of RV vans. I mean, it keeps cropping up. Dude, what was your childhood like? Way too many road-trips from hell or something?
13) Schnauz, wanting to understand one last thing, starts taking pictures of himself using the camera he stole from the shop. He takes more and more, and is disturbed by each one. He finally holds one up to Scully (we can't see it) and demands to know what it means. SCULLY: "It means you need help, Gerry." SCHNAUZ: "No. (picks up the lobotomizer) It means I'm running out of time." YOU:
A) AAAAAAAAA NO!
B) Ach Du Lieber Gott!
C) FOX! HURRY! DANA NEEDS A HAND-HOLD!
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| Note to the Germans: You MUST go and visit Shaenon's Monster of the Weekwebsite, it's waaaaaay funny and awesome and sh-t. |
14) Mulder bursts in, still holding his gun instead of dropping it like always, and shoots Schnauz before he can puncture Scully's eyeball (WHEW THANK GOD). As he helps untie Scully from the chair, they both get to see what the final few photographs Schnauz took reveal: They are all images of him lying dead on the floor of the RV. You:
A) Insist that the next Monster of the Week episode should involve Mulder getting kidnapped and HIS eyeballs threatened!
B) Start humming Badfinger's "Baby Blue" in honor of Vince Gilligan's other RV-loving psychopath Walter White.
C) Are grateful Dana and Fox are going to have a chance to talk about this over another cup of hot tea.
15) The final clip of the episode is Scully ruminating on the demons that haunt the minds of the monsters that hunt us. You ruminate over:
A) If Scully is ever gonna get her own damn desk.
B) If German is really that hard a language to learn. YES. YES IT IS.
C) If the photographer at Dana and Fox's inevitable wedding is going to get any psychic pictures of the honeymoon night. ...what?
If you more often than not answered:
A) You are a member of the Blessed Order of St. Scully the Enigmatic, awaiting the return of the show and wondering if the site's ever gonna get updated!
B) You are a visitor to this blog site from Germany, wondering where the hell the alien episode recaps are at, and why this German-born Wattenberger, Whattenburg, Whataburger fellow can't speak a lick of his great-grandfather's national tongue! SHAME on YOU, Wartenberg...!
C) You are a 'Shipper of Dana and Fox, whose universal language is SQUEE whenever your favorite couple shares a cup of tea and chats about trust during an alien autopsy. SIGH...
And seriously, German peoples, go visit Shaenon's site.
What do you think, sirs?
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