30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 5

[belphegor1982]

It’s a good thing I wrote these entries in advance - otherwise I’d never have time to elaborate :o)

Day 5 - Favourite villain/antagonist?

When it comes to killer one-liners and characters snarking at each other, Hogan’s Heroes always delivers; since Hogan and the boys are usually ahead of Schultz and Klink in term of banter and/or awareness of

Comments

[ivybramble]

Good on them for actually including an antagonist with the potential to deliberately cause real trouble in a comedy series. It's gets boring watching the good guys constantly outwit villains who haven't got two wits to rub together.

[belphegor1982]

Oh, there were plenty of antagonists (besides Klink, the bumbling Kommandant, and Schultz doesn't count, he's practically part of the good guys' team); Burkhalter is one of the two recurring villains of the show. The other character who has this dubious honour is Major Hochstetter, a Gestapo man who knows that Hogan and his guys are up to something (in fact in a few episodes he comes dangerously close to blowing the entire operation), but can never prove it. Hochstetter is like one of those small dogs who bark furiously and will keep biting at your ankles; the danger with him comes from the fact that he works within the Gestapo, not his inner character - he's so focused on getting Hogan (I think he'd genuinely be ecstatic to see the good guys hang or in front of a firing squad) that his obsession almost acts as blinders.

Burkhalter, on the other hand, gives the impression that he's brilliant, but lazy, and should he choose to really look into the workings of Stalag 13, things would get awfully hot awfully fast :-/