Hogan’s Heroes – The Complete Second Season

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: B-     Episodes: B-

 

 

Hogan’s Heroes was such a pleasant surprise in its Complete First Season release that we were interested to see if Paramount could keep up the high quality.  Not only do they do that for The Complete Second Season, but they have added some great extras that will make this set as collectible as just about any TV on DVD Paramount has issued to date.

 

After arguing why the show was not absolutely insensitive or pro-Nazi in the last review, as well as the misguided revisionist thinking on the show the unreality of Political Correctness has given the show.  Again, this is a comedy, and I would argue one that was never derogatory of any of the characters, though The Nazis were buffoons.  The sitcom trappings made Klink and Schultz too likable, but that is the convention and only because they are patsies can Hogan and company fool them.  This is a dark premise and the intelligence of the teleplays actually are smart enough to play on this without denying the darkness of the situation, as much as a sitcom launched in 1965 would let them do it.  This is quite a tightrope to walk, but remarkably, it works for what it is.  The half-hour slotted episodes for the 1966 – 1967 season are:

 

1)     Hogan Gives A Birthday Party

2)     The Schultz Brigade

3)     Diamonds In The Rough

4)     Operation Briefcase

5)     The Battle Of Stalag 13

6)     The Rise & Fall Of Sergeant Schultz

7)     Hogan Springs

8)     A Klink, A Bomb & A Short Fuse

9)     Tanks For The Memories

10)  A Tiger Hunt In Paris (two-parts)

11)  Will The Real Adolf Please Stand Up?

12)  Don’t Forget To Write

13)  Klink’s Rocket

14)  Information Please

15)  Art For Hogan’s Sake

16)  The General Swap

17)  The Great Brinksmeyer Robbery

18)  Praise The Fuhrer & Pass the Ammunition

19)  Hogan & The Lady Doctor

20)  The Swing Shift

21)  Heil Klink

22)  Everyone Has A Brother-In-Law

23)  Killer Klink

24)  Reverend Kommandant Klink

25)  The Most Escape-Proof Camp I’ve Ever Escaped From

26)  The Tower

27)  Colonel Klink’s Secret Weapon

28)  The Top Secret Top Coat

29)  The Reluctant Target

 

 

The problem with the show becoming formulaic starts to catch up with it slightly, but there is still that deep, unspoken satisfaction watching the show that The Nazis were idiots and deserve to be thoroughly humiliated on this level, and that is something the big audiences had to be cheering for as they watched. 

 

The 1.33 X 1 full frame image was shot on film and holds up very well for its age.  The first episode is shot in black and white, but the rest of the series is in color, and this color looks really good.  The series continued to be shot by  cinematographer Gordon Avil, A.S.C., who had to come up with an approach that would make the show look distinct for the new color televisions that had just arrived to the market.  With rich reds, blues and browns in particular, he and the art directors succeeded.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sounds good for its age.  The laugh tracks show their age, recycled from radio of the 1930s and 1940s, while the new music and dialogue fare better, even in this mix.  The great Jerry Fielding did the famous theme song, while Fred Steiner did music for the later shows.  This is cleaned up nicely and will make fans happy.

 

This time, we get some extras, including Crane’s 8mmm films of the set of the show, Crane’s blooper/gag reel, Patrice Crane narrating wedding footage of her marriage to Bob, a brief clip from Crane on The Lucy show that is sadly not the whole episode (though it is the best looking footage we have seen on DVD of the show to date), the cast from a videotaped clip from The Leslie Uggams Show, audio of the 1967 Armed Forces radio broadcasts, recruiting shorts for the U.S. Air Force, stills gallery, two promos to promote the show and an amusing and nearly bizarre commercial with Carol Channing showing up as herself to help the prisoners eat Jell-O gelatin and Dream Whip!  Like the third season Andy Griffith Show set, reviewed elsewhere on this site, Paramount has again done the right thing to dig into their archives and given us some great “value-added” materials that make a high-quality TV episodes set like this that much more worth the money.  Hogan’s Heroes - The Complete Second Season may even appeal to collectors beyond the show.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo