Excuse the snide pun, but when it came to carving out a "Hogan's Heroes" episode, Phil Sharp was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. His mediocre script for "Colonel Klink's Secret Weapon" is a one-joke premise whose joke is a tired trope that cannot sustain interest for more than five minutes, but it must be belabored ad nauseam so advertisers can hawk their wares between the lameness bracketed by the opening and closing credits. Those commercials are probably more entertaining than this defective product.
Here's the setup: Having received a substandard efficiency rating, Stalag 13 commandant Colonel Klink is determined to remedy that by poaching uber-martinet Sergeant Reinhold Franks (Milton Selzer) from another German prisoner-of-war camp to whip his camp and its occupants, guards and prisoners alike, into shape. Literally, as Franks is fond of leading both on long runs that leave the POWs too tired to dig out a collapsed tunnel that, unbeknownst to them, has trapped American Lieutenant Bigelow (Stewart Moss), whom Hogan's Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit operating covertly from Stalag 13, have helped to escape while tasking him with taking along information on a panzer division passing by whose rumblings caused the tunnel collapse in the first place. (Couldn't Sergeant Kinchloe have radioed that information in?)
Meanwhile, Franks's mania for adhering zealously to regulations ensnares even Klink, burying him in paperwork. In desperation, Klink turns to Colonel Hogan, leader of the Heroes, to help him get rid of the hoary "The Ransom of Red Chief" just-deserts trope of being careful about what you wish for because you just might get it. Let's just say that the solution doesn't quite have it all sewn up and leave it at that.
Not helping Sharp's cause is the casting of Seltzer as Franks. A wonderful character actor ubiquitous on television at the time, Selzer, not exactly a spring chicken, played sad-sack types (think: hapless scientist Parker on "Get Smart") who were hardly an exemplar of the Aryan Superman trumpeting Deutschland uber Alles. Maybe that's the real joke, but Sharp's zero-dimensional characterization of Franks gives him no motivation except a blackmail threat courtesy of a cousin who works in Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering's office and, mentioned all-too-briefly in passing, a desire to get ahead in the military, so this would be uncharacteristically sharp subtlety from a dull, blunt knife. Hardly likely. This secret weapon comes apart at the seams.
More entertaining is reading the Goofs page for this episode. Some real eagle eyes, guys--and you know these just had to have been submitted by guys--with incisive observations regarding the metric system, the physical properties of invisible ink, and the order of battle for a panzer division. Too bad this is for a wackiness-ensues situation comedy whose uber-goof is that everyone speaks English, even the Germans when they're speaking only among themselves. So, great job of missing the farcical forest for the fallible trees. But be careful--Sergeant Franks might jump on your case about that. Achtung!
Here's the setup: Having received a substandard efficiency rating, Stalag 13 commandant Colonel Klink is determined to remedy that by poaching uber-martinet Sergeant Reinhold Franks (Milton Selzer) from another German prisoner-of-war camp to whip his camp and its occupants, guards and prisoners alike, into shape. Literally, as Franks is fond of leading both on long runs that leave the POWs too tired to dig out a collapsed tunnel that, unbeknownst to them, has trapped American Lieutenant Bigelow (Stewart Moss), whom Hogan's Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit operating covertly from Stalag 13, have helped to escape while tasking him with taking along information on a panzer division passing by whose rumblings caused the tunnel collapse in the first place. (Couldn't Sergeant Kinchloe have radioed that information in?)
Meanwhile, Franks's mania for adhering zealously to regulations ensnares even Klink, burying him in paperwork. In desperation, Klink turns to Colonel Hogan, leader of the Heroes, to help him get rid of the hoary "The Ransom of Red Chief" just-deserts trope of being careful about what you wish for because you just might get it. Let's just say that the solution doesn't quite have it all sewn up and leave it at that.
Not helping Sharp's cause is the casting of Seltzer as Franks. A wonderful character actor ubiquitous on television at the time, Selzer, not exactly a spring chicken, played sad-sack types (think: hapless scientist Parker on "Get Smart") who were hardly an exemplar of the Aryan Superman trumpeting Deutschland uber Alles. Maybe that's the real joke, but Sharp's zero-dimensional characterization of Franks gives him no motivation except a blackmail threat courtesy of a cousin who works in Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering's office and, mentioned all-too-briefly in passing, a desire to get ahead in the military, so this would be uncharacteristically sharp subtlety from a dull, blunt knife. Hardly likely. This secret weapon comes apart at the seams.
More entertaining is reading the Goofs page for this episode. Some real eagle eyes, guys--and you know these just had to have been submitted by guys--with incisive observations regarding the metric system, the physical properties of invisible ink, and the order of battle for a panzer division. Too bad this is for a wackiness-ensues situation comedy whose uber-goof is that everyone speaks English, even the Germans when they're speaking only among themselves. So, great job of missing the farcical forest for the fallible trees. But be careful--Sergeant Franks might jump on your case about that. Achtung!