Unruhe

Episode by Vince Gilligan, directed by Rob Bowman

Internal dating: Scullya journal entry at the end of the episode is dated October 11th 1996.

Traverse City, Michigan A woman goes into the drugstore to get a passport photo taken while her boyfriend pulls the car around back. She smiles for the camera, but when she goes to pay, discovers she has no money. The druggist sets the photo aside to develop while she gets some money from the car. As she walks around to the parking lot, a figure in a yellow slicker brushes past her roughly. The woman grasps her shoulder and starts to act disoriented. She calls out for her boyfriend, but when she reaches the car, he's slumped in the driver's seat, blood coming from his ear. She falls as another car drives up and a person in a yellow slicker approaches her. Inside the drugstore, the druggist pulls the developed photo from its backing. He stares at the photo, which shows the woman screaming.

Mulder is driving while Scully looks at the photo; it is part of a file she has in her lap. The woman, Mary LeFante, has been missing for three days; there is no hair or fiber evidence available due to rain; and the man's autopsy shows that his brain was pierced by a long, sharp object through the ear. No ransom demand has been made. Scully asks why they've been brought in and Mulder indicates the photo. She says that she thought the photo was taken by whoever abducted Mary, but Mulder explains that it was taken by a 65 year old druggist before her abduction.

In the drugstore, Mulder and Scully question the druggist about his camera. Scully prowls around checking where the film is stored - right over a space heater - and notices that the film is out of date. When the druggist walks away, it becomes obvious that one of his legs is in a brace of some sort. Mulder jokes with Scully about the druggist as a suspect. Scully advances the theory that the film itself is damaged. Mulder asks, "So you think that would make it look like she posed screaming for a passport photo?" As she continues with her idea, Mulder listens to her, nodding, a half smile on his face, until she trails off, seeming to realize how thin it is. She asks for his theory; he says he doesn't have one.

At Mary's residence, Mulder and Scully talk to a postal inspector who tells them that Mary was a postal employee who was a suspect in mail theft. Mulder wonders, "Why stab her boyfriend through the ear? The magic was gone?" He looks around, searching for a camera. Scully asks why. Finding a Polaroid camera in a closet he says, "Stand back, Scully, it's loaded." While taking pictures of his gloved hand, he tells her about psychic photography - the ability to impress film with thoughts, stating that literature on thought photography dates back years. Scully says, "So that makes it legitimate?" He shrugs. The photos develop into shot after shot of Mary screaming, reaching out toward the camera. Scully thinks that the film was deliberately altered then planted. Mulder doesn't agree. He theorizes that the kidnapper stalked Mary and was "close enough to affect the film in that camera." He asks Scully, "What if... what if someone had this ability? An image like this would be a peek into that person's mind." Scully answers, "Into their darkest fantasies" and looks at the photos again.

Mary is found wandering in the road by police. The preliminary results of hospital testing show remnants of morphine and scopolamine in her blood - a mixture commonly known as twilight sleep that is used in dental offices and for women in labor. Scully asks that Mary be given a PET scan. While looking at the results of the scan, Scully winces and seems disturbed. She tells Mulder that Mary has been given a transorbital lobotomy, which is also known as an 'ice-pick' lobotomy because it's done with an instrument inserted through the eye sockets. She also says that whoever did the procedure did it wrong. While Mary is having the PET scan done, she says the word 'unruhe' over and over. Mulder and Scully find out there's been another abduction.

The male victim is dead from the same type of wound as the first. Alice Brandt is missing. Mulder tells Scully that he thinks 'unruhe' is significant, but that he can't find a connection. Scully tells him that it means 'unrest'. Mulder asks, "You took German in high school, Scully?" She answers, "College." Mulder is looking for a camera. Scull seems skeptical and frustrated with Mulder's loyalty to his psychic photography theory, and insists that working with the crime scene photos from the first abduction is a better way to proceed. Mulder dismisses this, stating that the crime scene photos are normal, so the killer wasn't nearby. He thinks the abductor probably doesn't know he has the ability to affect film. Scully notices a construction company sign through the window which also appears in the first crime scene photos. She wants to follow this lead - time is running out for Alice. Mulder agrees that she should, but that he's going to take the Polaroid of Mary to the F.B.I.'s special photographic unit and follow the only piece of hard evidence they have.

At the F.B.I.'s photographic unit, Mulder and a technician work on a computer image of the Polaroid. Skull-like images form surrounding Mary. They bring up a man's face in the background. Mulder also notices a long-legged shadow in the photo that he thinks is the kidnapper's, and that the kidnapper is looming over Mary, "like he means to pass judgment on her, like a god."

Meanwhile, Scully is following up her lead by gathering police to canvas job sites. She questions Gerry Schnauz, the foreman who worked the site where Alice disappeared. While she's asking him about day laborers, Mulder calls her and says he believes the killer either is very tall or wants to be; that his legs are out of proportion. Scully looks over her shoulder at Gerry, who is wearing short stilts, hangs up and says, "Unruhe." Gerry starts running. Scully gives chase, finally firing a shot over his shoulder to stop him. While frisking him, she pricks herself on a long awl in his pocket.

Scully and Mulder interrogate Gerry at the police station. He denies knowing anything about the crimes. Mulder and Scully outline his violent history: his sister killed herself, Gerry beat his father so severely that his father was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and Gerry was institutionalized for six years. Scully pushes on the subject of Alice, and Gerry tells her that she looks troubled. Mulder distracts Gerry from his staring contest with Scully by showing him a picture of the man from Mary's photo. He asks if the man is Gerry's father. Gerry wants to know where Mulder got the picture and Mulder says, "You left that for me. You left it like a fingerprint." Mulder then asks about the skull shapes surrounding Mary. Gerry calls them 'howlers'. Mulder continues to question Gerry about Alice in a quiet voice, almost whispering, and Gerry says she's all right, safe from howlers.

Alice is found dead in the woods. Scully looks upset and walks away. She is waiting in the Explorer impatiently when Mulder joins her. He says that maybe Gerry "thought he was curing them somehow. Saving them from damnation. From those things in the pictures, he called them the howlers." Scully says, "It's over, Mulder" and seems resigned. Mulder continues thinking aloud, "Then that photo wouldn't be his fantasy. It would be his nightmare." Scully answers, "What the hell does it matter?" Mulder looks at her, "Because I want to know." She says flatly, "I don't" and starts the Explorer.

While Gerry is being processed at the police station, the police officer is startled to see himself with a gunshot wound in the head instead of Gerry's face come up on the form for the mug shot. Gerry grabs the officer's gun and shoots him. Mulder looks at the photo and tells Scully that Gerry wasn't trying to save this man; he was shot in the throat, not the head. Scully informs Mulder that a robbery just occurred at the drugstore where Mary was abducted.

In the drugstore, Mulder is feeding money into a photo booth when Scully approaches with the information that Gerry took ingredients for twilight sleep. Mulder says he also took the passport camera and all the film. Scully thinks that Gerry may have been stalking his next victim at the job site she arrested him at. Mulder asks her to get the car; he wants to wait for the photo to develop. While unlocking the Explorer's door, Scully is stabbed in the foot with a hypodermic. She manages to get her gun out before falling to the ground. Gerry comes out from under the Explorer and puts her into the truck. Meanwhile, Mulder gets the photo from the booth - it's of Scully, screaming, reaching out toward the camera. He runs outside and looks around frantically for the Explorer. It's gone. Mulder sees it pull out on the street and he chases after it, falling further and further behind, calling Scully's name.

At the police station, Mulder stares intently at the photo of Scully, counting out what seem to be six fingers surrounding her face. He finds Gerry's father's obituary in Gerry's wallet. It shows a picture of a five headstones. Mulder and the police go to the senior Schnauz's dental office, which is dusty and abandoned and discover the dentist's chair is missing.

Scully is in the chair, unconscious. Her wrists and feet are bound to the chair with duct tape. The lighting is dim, the walls surrounding her are padded and the awl is visible on a tray. She awakens and sees Gerry in the corner and tells him to let her go. He approaches her, speaking softly in German and rips off a piece of duct tape to cover her mouth. She stops him by speaking in German, telling him that she has no unruhe, that she doesn't need to be saved. He switches to English, saying that she does. Scully confronts him about his sister and his father, asking if she killed herself because of what his father did to her. Gerry gets upset and says it was howlers. Scully tries to convince him that there are no howlers, that they're all in his mind. He insists that they're real, that he saw them in the pictures Mulder showed him and that pictures don't lie. He gets the camera and starts to take a photo of Scully, but turns the camera toward himself instead.

Mulder is frustrated, pacing and talking to himself in the dentist's office. Snatching Gerry's file from Officer Corning he compares Scully's photo to the obituary photo, counting five gravestones and six fingers. He makes the connection - "And the father makes six." He and the police go to the cemetery and fan out, searching.

Gerry holds the photos up for Scully to see and asks her what they mean. She says they mean he needs help. He disagrees, saying that he thinks it means he's out of time. He duct tapes her mouth and grabs the awl. There is a noise, causing Gerry to leave Scully and peek out a small hole, seeing Mulder. Outside, Mulder steps away from an RV, then goes to look into the front. He sees a tooth keychain and shouts Scully's name. Scully rips one of her arms free and tears the tape off her mouth, crying out for help, "Mulder! I'm here!" Gerry comes back to her with the awl. Mulder smashes the window with his elbow, but is unable to get through the plywood also covering the opening. He grabs a long pipe from a pile on the ground and slams it against the plywood, still calling Scully's name. The plywood collapses and Mulder bursts into the room and shoots Gerry, who falls to the floor in a scatter of photos. Mulder asks Scully if she's hurt. She shakes her head, staring at Gerry. She accepts Mulder's hand up, but doesn't look at him, instead walking to the door. She looks back at Gerry once more, then, hand in front of her face, squinting at the light, she walks out. Mulder, who has been watching her closely the whole time, looks down at Gerry, then picks up one of the photos. It shows Gerry sprawled on the floor among photos. Mulder looks at the door again, but Scully's gone.

Scully, hair mussed, wearing her glasses, types an addendum to the case report on her laptop in her apartment. She looks tired and sad. She notes that a diary was found in Gerry's belongings, and that her name was listed among those he wanted to save. She adds that she has no explanation for the photos. "My captivity forced me to understand and even empathize with Gerry Schnauz. My survival depended on it. I see now the value of such insight, for truly to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We must venture into their minds. Only in doing so, do we risk letting them venture into our own?" She stares at the photo of herself screaming, a tear clinging to her lashes.

End

Quick Miscellaneous Info and Trivia about Unruhe:

Takes place in and around Traverse City, Michigan.

The shifty-eyed killer is Gerald T. Schnauz, Jr.

The first kidnap victim's name is Mary LeFante. Mary's boyfriend is only identified as "Billy".

The second kidnap victim's name is Alice Brandt.

The police officer killed by Gerry is Officer Trott. The police officer who helps Mulder find Scully is Officer Corning.

The postal inspector is Inspector Pruett.

The construction company is Iskendarian.

Mulder and Scully are driving a green Ford Explorer.

Scully carries her cell-phone in her hand through most of the episode.

The test Scully asks be given to Mary is a PET scan.