Fawlty Towers/The Germans

The Germans
Season 1, Episode 6
Airdate	October 24, 1975
Production Number	—
Written by	John Cleese & Connie Booth
Directed by	John Howard Davies
← 1x05 Gourmet Night	2x01 → Communication Problems
Fawlty Towers — Season One

The Germans is the sixth and final episode of the first season of Fawlty Towers, and the sixth episode overall. In fan polls, it is most frequently cited—often by a wide margin—as the favorite of the series.

Guest Stars: Ballard Berkeley (Major Gowen), Claire Davenport (Mrs Wilson), Gilly Flower (Miss Tibbs), Renee Roberts (Miss Gatsby), Brenda Cowling (Sister), Louis Mahoney (Doctor), John Lawrence (Mr Sharp), Iris Fry (Mrs Sharp), Willy Bowman (German Guest), Nick Kane (German Guest), Lisa Bergmayr (German Guest), Dan Gillan (German Guest)

Plot Overview

Sybil is in the hospital for three days for minor surgery to remove an ingrown toenail. When Basil visits her, she reminds him of all his tasks over the next few days: Running a fire drill, hanging a moose head, etc. Basil fights with the Sister caring for Sybil. When the Doctor tells him Sybil will be in a lot of pain after the operation, Basil is thrilled.

Back at Fawlty Towers, Basil has a confusing conversation with Major Gowen about women, a cricket game and the proper racial slurs for Indians. When the Major learns a group of German guests are coming to the hotel, he launces into an angry tirade against Germans. After the Major wanders off, Basil tries to hang the moose head, but he is interrupted by a phone call from Sybil reminding him to hang the moose head. Basil tries to ask Manuel for a hammer, but he gives up and leaves to get it himself. While he is gone, Manuel steps behind the front desk to tidy up and practice his English. The Major returns to hear a voice coming from behind the counter and thinks it is coming from the moose head. Basil returns and hangs the moose head, but it immediately falls on his head, and he trips over Manuel trying to get to the phone to talk to Sybil again.

The next morning, Basil hangs the moose head again, but one of the antlers keeps drooping. There are just a few minutes remaining until the fire drill, and Sybil calls to remind Basil of the drill and say the key for the fire alarm is in the safe. Basil retrieves the key, but he trips the burglar alarm, which the guests mistake for the fire alarm. As Basil tries to explain, the guests ask to hear both bells so they can tell the difference. Hearing the fire bell from the demonstration, Manuel and Polly think the fire bell means the drill has started, so Basil has to explain the situation to them, too. After the demonstration, Basil says the real drill will start in 30 seconds, so the guests stand about in the lobby, to Basil's annoyance.

In the kitchen, moments before the drill is to start, Manuel starts a real fire. This trips the alarm, but Basil thinks it is an accident and uses it as an excuse to have the drill. The panicked Manuel tries to explain the situation to Basil, but he does not understand and locks the poor waiter in the burning kitchen. Basil lets the guests back in, but Manuel's frantic banging makes him open the kitchen door. Basil sees the fire and tells the guests to leave again. He tries to start the alarm again, but he cannot find the key. He hurts his hand trying to smash the glass, so he uses the phone, instead. He tries to use the fire extinguisher, but he blasts himself in the face, which blinds him. Trying to help, Manuel accidentally smacks Basil in the head with a frying pan he had been using to try to smother the flames and knocks Basil out.

Basil comes to in the hospital, where he is being treated for a concussion. The confused, disoriented Basil insults the Sister and insists on going home. The Doctor puts him to bed, but after he is gone, Basil sneaks out.

Back at Fawlty Towers, the German guests have arrived. Basil tries to speak German, but he does not understand it. Polly encourages him to lie down, but Basil insists on trying to serve lunch to the Germans. He makes multiple references to World War II—accidentally at first, but becoming worse as he goes on. When his references drive one German guest to tears, Basil tries to cheer her up with a joke about a bomber over Berlin. When that fails, he tries an impression... of Adolf Hitler, which involves goosestepping around the lobby. The Doctor arrives to take Basil back to the hospital. Basil makes a run for it, but the moose head falls on him and knocks him out again.

Notes

The Sign

This is the only episode which does not open with a shot of the hotel and the sign in front. The opening shot is of the hospital where Sybil is staying.

Timeline

• When Major Gowen hears Basil is running Fawlty Towers without Sybil, he says, "You've always got Elsie to help you." Basil reminds him Elsie "left a couple of years ago" and is Canada. Although it is never explicit, this seems to indicate Elsie was Polly's immediate predecessor as Basil's Girl Friday.

Complex Plot

Due to the limited number of characters and sets, most episodes of Fawlty Towers Season One deal with only one main plot thread per episode. In other words, there is no A plot, B plot and C plot. The Germans is unusual in that it has several distinct arcs, yet they remain more or less separate, such that The Germans almost becomes like a play with three clearly defined acts: Act I: The Moose Head. Act II: The Fire Drill. Act III: The Germans. (See also: 1x03 - The Wedding Party.) For Season Two, it would become common for each episode to have two parallel plots which met at the end.

Translation

In the first scene with one of the Germans, the German guest has this exchange with Polly, which is not translated:

German guest: Gnädiges Fräulein, können Sie mir sagen, wann das Mittagessen serviert wird, bitte?

Polly: Um ein Uhr. Fünf Minuten.

German guest: Vielen Dank.

Polly: Bitte schön.

The exchange translates as:

German guest: Kind young lady, can you please tell me when lunch will be served?

Polly: At one o'clock. Five minutes.

German guest: Many thanks.

Polly: You're quite welcome.

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Basil: Basil jumps when he first sees the Doctor, who is Black. However, for the rest of the episode, even when disoriented, Basil seems to have no other reaction to the Doctor's race, so his startled reaction was probably not racially motivated. Later, Major Gowen uses the racial slurs "niggers" and "Wogs" in front of Basil, and while Basil does not react negatively to the Major's use of the terms, he does not acknowledge or reinforce it, either, and instead switches to a misogynistic take on the conversation. At no other point in the series does Basil deal with race, so we have little evidence with which to piece together his attitudes towards non-Caucasians. However, from what little we do see in this episode, it is most likely Basil, while xenophobic, nationalistic and classist, is not "racist" as Americans define the term.

• Polly: Basil tells Major Gowen Polly has had "three years of college."

Referbacks

• 1x01 - A Touch of Class: Basil spends much of the first act being nagged by Sybil to hang a moose head. In that episode, Sybil nagged Basil to hang a picture, which he never got around to doing.

• 1x02 - The Builders: When he is standing behind the front desk, Manuel practices speaking with an English accent. In the only other time in the series Manuel stood there, he also tried to speak with an English accent. That episode also marked the first time Basil used his leg as an excuse. In this episode, when Basil first talks with the group of four main German guests, he repeatedly mentions the war. After the third time, he grabs his leg and yells, "Sorry! Trouble with the old leg. Got a... got a touch of shrapnel in the war. Korean! Korean War!"

• 1x03 - The Wedding Party: In that episode, Basil first claimed to have been injured by shrapnel in the Korean War.

Trivia

The Show

• Manuel's Hamster: Basil asks Manuel for a hammer, and Manuel, in confusion, replies, "My hamster?" This is the first reference to Manuel's hamster. He does, in fact, have one (or so he thinks), and the story behind that is the basis of the plot to 2x06 - Basil the Rat.

Behind the Scenes

• Real Injury: The BBC was forced to pay Andrew Sachs £700 in damages when the acid-treated jacket he wore to make his clothes smoke burned through and caused severe first-degree burns on his shoulders. He still bears the scars. Coincidentally, the other injury Sachs received in the course of this series was in 1x03 - The Wedding Party, when John Cleese accidentally hit him with a saucepan. In this episode, it is Manuel's turn to hit Basil with a saucepan, but in real life, Cleese was not injured performing this stunt.

• Donald Sinclair: When Basil first speaks with a German guest, the German asks to hire a cab, but Basil, who does not speak German, translates this request as, "You're volunteering to go out to get some meat." In one of Cleese's run-ins with Donald Sinclair, the real-life inspiration for Basil Fawlty, Cleese asked to order a cab, but Sinclair dragged his heels and argued. (See also: At a Glance.)

• Cleese's German: Basil Fawlty speaks almost no German. Cleese, however, does, and quite well. When he was in Germany with the rest of the Pythons for the German television special Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus, for which the rest of the Pythons learned their lines phonetically, Cleese's German was so good he was asked what part of Germany he was from.

• Colditz: When Basil repeats the Germans' order, a "cold meat salad" becomes a "Colditz salad." One of the actors playing the German guests, Willy Bowman, also played a German sergeant in the British series Colditz, based on the internment camp.

• Cleese as Hitler: Basil Fawlty does a horrible impression of Adolf Hitler. John Cleese, on the other hand, does an almost frighteningly dead-on Hitler impression, complete with mannerisms and psychotic stare. His skill at this was demonstrated in Monty Python's Flying Circus, most notably in the "Mr. Hilter" sketch from 1x12 - The Naked Ant.

• The Funny Walk: When Basil starts his Hitler impression, the Germans protest, so he says, "I'll do the funny walk," and begins goosestepping about. When he does, the studio audience can cheers loudly. This is due to the similarity of Basil's goose step to another funny walk—or, rather, a silly walk. In one of the most all-time popular sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus, in the episode 2x01 - Face the Press, John Cleese played a government worker in the "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch. Although it would grow more and more elaborate over the sketch, Cleese's silly walk in the start of that sketch involved a sort of double-skip followed by a straight-legged high kick similar to a goose-step.

Allusions and References

• The Oval: A cricket ground in London, home to the Surrey County Cricket Club.

Major Gowen: I... I... I must have been keen on her because, ah, because I took her to see, ah, India! ... At the Oval! A fine match, a marvelous finish! Now, Surrey had to get 33 in about a half an hour, and she went off to, ah, powder, ah... powder her hands or something.

• Oscar Wilde: A 19th century Irish playwright, poet and author known for his clever barbs, although he never made the comment Basil attributes to him.

Basil: Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said they [women] have minds like Swiss cheese?

• The Admirable Crichton: The hero of the 1902 play of the same name by J. M. Barrie and a 1957 film adaptation. In the play, Crichton is a butler who finds himself stranded on an island with his master and his family. Due to Crichton's skill and cleverness, he becomes the leader of the island, and his master the servant.

Basil: Oh, it's the Admirable Crichton. Well?

• Harold Wilson: The Right Honourable James Harold Wilson was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 16, 1964 to June 19, 1970 and again from March 4, 1974 to April 5, 1976, the latter of which includes the period when the first season of Fawlty Towers aired. Basil's rage towards Wilson, head of the liberal Labour Party, underscores his conservative leanings. (For more on Basil's political beliefs, see History.)

Basil: I mean, what is happening to this country? It's bloody Wilson!

• European Economic Community: On January 1, 1973, the United Kingdom joined with the European Economic Community, a very open trade alliance formed in 1958. In the early days of the EEC, West Germany was one of the most powerful members due to its economic prosperity, and Germany continues to be so to this day. Since 1973, the EEC has continued to strengthen, to the point that now many of its members (including Germany) use a shared currency, the euro. (The UK is one of the few EEC countries which has opted out of using the euro as its currency, retaining instead the British pound sterling.) Britain's joining the EEC was a controversial decision in the 1970s, and the fact Basil opposed it is further proof of his political conservativism. (See also: History.)

Basil: May I say how pleased we are to have some Europeans here now that we are on the continent? ... I didn't vote for it myself, quite honestly, but now that we're in, I'm determined to make it work, so I'd like to welcome you all to Britain.

• Adolf Hitler: The leader of the Nazi Party which came to power in Germany during the 1930s and Chancellor of Germany throughout World War II.

Basil: Oh! Oh, the war! Oh, yes! Completely slipped my mind. Yes, I'd forgotten all about it. Hitler, ...

• Heinrich Himmler: One of the most important leaders of the Nazi Party in World War II. As head of both the SS and the Gestapo, Himmler was the mastermind behind both the Holocaust (the organized slaughter of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals and other groups considered undesirable by the Nazis) and the German secret police who enforced the repressive laws of the Third Reich through the use of torture and terror.

Basil: ... Himmler and all that lot.

• Eva Braun: Hitler's mistress, whom he married hours before the two of them committed suicide in his bunker as the Allied Powers—the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France and their allies—closed in on Germany in the end of April 1945.

Basil: Oh, yes, Eva Prawn, yes,...

• Joseph Goebbels: Hitler's Propaganda Minister. After Hitler's suicide, Goebbels assumed the title of Chancellor for one day before murdering his six children and committing suicide with his wife.

Basil: ... Yes, and Goebbels, too, he's another one I can hardly remember.

• Herman Goering: The founder of the Gestapo. After the war, he was tried by the Allies for war crimes and sentenced to death, but he escaped his execution by committing suicide.

Basil: Herman Goering, yes, yes....

• Joachim Von Ribbentrop: Joachim von Ribbentrop was the Foreign Minister of Germany during World War II who had initially pushed Germany to go to war with Britain, France and Russia. He was hanged for war crimes following his trial by the Allies.

Basil: ... And, ah, Von Ribbentrop, that was another one.

• Colditz: Colditz Castle near Leipzig became one of the most infamous internment camps in Germany during World War II.

Basil: So that's two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Herman Goering and four Colditz salads.

• The Invasion of Poland: World War II is considered to have begun in Europe on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France, which had a defensive alliance with Poland, responded by declaring war on Germany.

Basil: Yes, you did. You invaded Poland.

• James Cagney: A Hollywood film star most popular in the 1930s. He was noted both for his dancing in musicals and for playing gangster characters. "You dirty rat" is a common element of Cagney impressions, although it is a misquoting of a line of his from the 1932 film Taxi! The original line is:

Matt Nolan (Cagney): Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!

Polly: Do Jimmy Cagney instead. ... You know: "You dirty rat." ... Oh, please try. "I'm gonna get you."

Memorable Moments

• Major Gowen hears Manuel's voice but does not see Manuel, so he assumes the voice is coming from the moose head sitting on the desk.

• When the guests and Polly wait around in the lobby for the fire drill, Basil tells them to return to what they were doing, but they reply that they won't bother dispersing, since there's "only a few seconds" to the drill. Absolutely livid, Basil replies, "Right! Right! Well, stay where you are, because obviously, if there was a fire, you'd all be standing down here like this in the lobby, wouldn't you? I don't know why we bother! We should let you all burn!"

• When there is a fire, Basil again tries to find the key to turn on the fire alarm, but he has misplaced it. In the course of the series, we have already seen Basil rage at humans of every variety and even inanimate objects, such as his car (1x05 - Gourmet Night), but here, he goes right to the top, waving his fist at Heaven and shouting, "Thank you, God! Thank you so bloody much!"

• Basil puts his finger under his nose in imitation of Hitler's moustache, barks in a loud voice and begins goosestepping about the dining room and lobby of the hotel.

Quotes

• Basil: Polly cannot cope!
  Sybil: Well, she can't fall over waiters, or get herself jammed under desks, or start burglar alarms, or lock people in burning rooms, or fire fire extinguishers straight in her own face, but I should think the hotel can do without that sort of coping for a couple of days. What do you think, Basil, hmm?

• Basil: They're Germans. Don't mention the war.

• German Guest: Will you stop talking about the war?
  Basil: Me? You started it!
  German Guest: We did not start it.
  Basil: Yes, you did, you invaded Poland.