Judy has become obsessed with Hogan's Heroes. She now claims it is the best sitcom ever made. That's seems a tad excessive to me. Once she discovered it was on TVLand's channel every day, she began "taping" it. Then she discovered it was on some HD channel (I can't remember which one) and she began "taping" that one too. ('Taping' is in quotes because we use the dvr which doesn't actually tape.) Anyway--we were up to saving six HHs a day for a while. Since to keep the dvr relatively empty is an obsession of Judy's that meant Judy felt compelled to watch ALL the episodes daily so she could delete them. That's when I got the idea of seeing if the show was available on dvd. It is and thanks to Amazon we are now the owners of all six seasons with 168 episodes. (No finale though. The heroes don't get a homecoming episode with ticker tape parade.) We've watched all of Season 1 and part of Season 2. Judy insists all watching ALL the episodes even the ones we've already seen, btw.My question is--how many episodes of Hogan's Heroes can you watch in a weekend before you start talking like Shultz. Whatever it is--we've passed it because my internal monologue now regularly includes Shultz' intonation and phrasing. "I know NOthing! NOthing!"
How many episodes can you watch before you start thinking about writing a scholarly article about the stock characters which appear in the show. One could actually watch each episode with an eye toward analyzing how Shultz puts self before state when he refuses to turn in the heroes when he sees them doing something wrong because it is too much trouble. Or his constant references to how people should all be nice to one another. His anthem cry, "I know nothing" is the apathy of people who see evil and do nothing because they prefer to pretend it does not exist and don't want to be shaken from their comfortable view of the world. Shultz is a lovable character, and yet when you think deeper, he isn't a man of character. He's lazy, weak, greedy, and disloyal.
Robert Clary, who played Louis LeBeau, narrated one episode and had some interesting stories to tell about the series. He narrated one episode entitled "Art for Hogan's Sake" touched on the wholesale theft of the art and treasures of France by the Nazis. Clary actually spent three years in a concentration camp during the War. He felt very strongly that critics of the series who felt it trivialized the Holocaust needed to understand that the series was NOT about the Holocaust and concentration camps, but rather about a POW camp, something completely different. FYI.
See what I mean? Watch enough and you either make meaning or go crazy.
