User Reviews

This episode begins when the manager of a plant, Hans Spear (played by the lovable Mayberry drunk Hal Smith) needs some extra security at his plant that has been rework to make cannons. And before the new guards arrive at the plant, Spear talks Klink into letting him have a few guards.

Of course Hogan gets wind of the plant and sends a message to England requesting a bombing run. But at this present time the Allies are unable to place the bombing of the schedule and asks Hogan to handle it himself.

Sure enough the gang finds a way into the plant and begins the task of sabotage. But a wrench is thrown into the plan when Newkirk's alias gets drafted into the German Army.

Another chance for us to leave the prison camp and enjoy the hijinks of the gang. And with Schultz being one of the security guards at the plant, it will not be long before we hear the words 'I see nothing'. Another nice watch.

Just as prisoner-of-war Corporal LeBeau's joke deliberately fizzles at the start of "The Swing Shift," but then fellow POW Corporal Newkirk's exit line produces a chuckle, so too does this sophomore outing by the writing team of Art Baer and Ben Joelson manage some hilarity even if the overall story is played as nothing more than deliberate farce. At least it's better than the duo's sophomoric freshman effort earlier in season two, "Klink's Rocket," which never rose above the level of sloppy fan fiction, although the pair are still obsessing over a factory.

That factory, belonging to Hans Spear (Hal Smith), has been converted from making economy cars (suggested as being the "people's car" later known as the Volkswagen Beetle) to making cannons, the classic guns-versus-butter economic tradeoff that, indeed, Nazi leaders including Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering famously touted even before World War Two began; moreover (as noted in the Trivia section), "Spear" is surely a pun on Albert Speer, the Nazi architect who became the Minister of Armaments and War Production for much of the war.

However, this Spear is at Stalag 13 with General Burkhalter to borrow the services of the guards serving under camp commandant Colonel Klink while he awaits the arrival of his permanent security detachment. Meanwhile, upon learning about the factory, the Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit led by Colonel Hogan operating covertly from Stalag 13, radio London for a bombing strike to take out the factory--only to be told it'll be a six-week wait. Unable to bear the manufacture of six weeks' worth of cannons, Hogan orders his team to sabotage the factory themselves right now.

How to do that? By getting jobs on "The Swing Shift," of course, particularly since Klink's reliable buffoon Sergeant Schultz will be working at the factory too; he can be easily neutralized since he'll be blamed for letting the Heroes out of Stalag 13 in the first place. Funny how conveniently that works out. Once there, they can sabotage the production process to yield defective weapons until they can figure out how to blow the place up.

But wait--it gets even better. Newkirk, masquerading as "Mueller," the shift foreman, is informed that he's been drafted into the army. Yes, the German army, where he'll definitely be marching to the beat of a different drummer unless the Heroes can figure out how to spring him from this martial (if not marital) bigamy.

As long as you don't even think about logic (or even common sense) and just accept the farce, "The Swing Shift" is enjoyable good fun with some laugh-out-loud moments such as the German army doctor's (Otto Waldis) combination hearing- and reflex test he pulls on Newkirk, a Borscht-Belt gag ironic because its humor is Jewish, as was Waldis, who had fled Austria not long after the Nazi-German Anschluss (annexation) in 1938.

Relying on the comical incompetence of Klink and Schultz to buoy their premise, Baer and Joelson manage to attain their own competence, and that's nothing to sneeze at.