You decide. Was Laurence Marks the wet blanket primly reminding everyone that World War Two was serious business? Or was he the voice of reason among the jokesters who thought it was a gas (pun darkly intended) to ridicule the so-called "Master Race" who brought us the Holocaust?
Virtually alone among sitcoms, whether in the 1960s or later, "Hogan's Heroes" was both deliberately set in wartime and with its combatants thrown together to fashion the dramatic situations from which the comedic obstacles and resolutions arose. Also set during World War Two, the 1980s British sitcom "'Allo 'Allo!" came the closest to this as even "M*A*S*H," set near the front lines of the Korean War (and for which Marks later wrote), directly engaged the "enemy" only occasionally.
This made any "Hogan's Heroes" episode fascinating to watch simply to see if and how humor--and not simply black or gallows humor but broad slapstick and ridicule--could be mined directly from the most monumental war in human history, one that had inflicted untold tragedy upon so many. Even the irreverent satirists at "Mad" magazine bristled with moral disapproval, ultimately playing the Holocaust card, in their lampoon of the series.
And as "Hogan's Heroes" approached the end of its second season, it had become clear that, alone among its pool of writers, Laurence Marks not only strived to keep his story lines realistic and meaningful while injecting them with barbed humor, he was--hands down--the best writer in terms of plotting and dialog. "Everyone Has a Brother-in-Law" exemplifies this in spades.
When General Burkhalter assigns Captain Kurtz (Cliff Norton), his brother-in-law, to be Colonel Klink's adjutant at Stalag 13, the Russian Front veteran quickly proves to be a martinet who, just as quickly, engages Colonel Hogan, the leader of the intelligence and sabotage unit operating from the prisoner-of-war camp, in a battle of wills that escalates to the breaking point.
For the Heroes, they must complete their attempted sabotage of a munitions train, whose journey had been postponed at the last minute, or risk having their operation exposed, and with the Gestapo cracking down on their allies in the underground, the Heroes can't simply pass the buck to them. However, Kurtz has increased security at camp, further suppressing their operations while antagonizing Hogan further as well. But when Kurtz confides to Hogan that his strict security measures have been a smokescreen for his intended defection to the Allies, can Hogan trust him?
Norton's performance is the linchpin, and he delivers a Marks specialty, a German character who embodies the arrogance and ruthlessness of an actual German soldier, with enough conviction to spur Bob Crane, affable but otherwise unremarkable as an actor, to match him. Amidst this charged atmosphere, the humor is sardonic, hardly the broad farce of the two episodes that preceded this one, further drawing the line between the two writing camps on "Hogan's Heroes."
Viewers seldom, if ever, care about who writes an episode, but someone has to craft the blueprint upon which the episode is built. On "Hogan's Heroes," Laurence Marks was the premier architect of episodes that remain intact today.
