Heil Honey, I'm Home!

Imagine yourself in another time and place: England in 1990. On September 30th of that year the worst sitcom of all time was released upon an unsuspecting public.

"Heil Honey, I'm Home!" is a show about the domestic squabbles of Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun. From the opening credits and theme song alone one can immediately tell that it is an attempted send-up of classic 1950s TV comedies.

And Heil Honey, I'm Home! is just like a 1950s sitcom, except it is not at all funny. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is even worse than such contemporary TV shitcakes as FOX's The War at Home.

All throughout I got the impression that the writers found the concept itself so overwhelmingly hilarious that it overshadowed the writing of actual jokes. I watched this abortion from beginning to end and, much like the real historical atrocities of the Third Reich, I had a hard time coming to grips with it.

The only plausible explanation I can think of is that whoever did this must've been constantly amused by things like "This man is in trouble for being late for dinner...AND HE'S HITLER!" or "This woman is stressed out from all the housework...AND SHE LIVES WITH HITLER!" Oh, and did I mention that everyone on this show has a fake New York accent?

And you know the writers thought they were being oh so clever and awesome when they made the next door neighbors playing the Fred and Ethyl type roles as a Jewish couple. I'm not kidding. That's exactly what they did. Edgy to the max, dude.

Mel Brook's movie The Producers and Serge Gainsbourg's album Rock Around the Bunker proved to us that this material can be used to create great comedy. The film Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS showed us that Nazi Germany can be simultaneously sexy and horrifying. While Heil Honey, I'm Home! goes in another direction and presents us with a Third Reich that kills us by boredom rather than with machine guns and poison gas. With all the bad non-jokes mixed in with canned laughter and predictable scenarios and dialogue, I wished the Luftwaffe would drop a bomb on me because that would be far more pleasurable that watching another episode of Heil Honey, I'm Home.

This is honestly the only instance I've seen where the evocation of Nazi Germany in popular culture can be soundly condemned not for being either insensitive or offensive, but for being tedious. If the real Hitler had been as irritating as the one depicted here, the Weimar judiciary never would've given him an early release from prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch. He would've served his full sentence, and "Mein Kampf" would've never cracked the best seller list.

I don't endorse watching this show. It's bad enough that I did it. You should save yourself the brain damage and click the "back" button on your browser right now. But in case you're feeling a mixture of curiosity and masochism or if your life is in shambles and you want something appropriate to play on your computer to help you not back out of committing suicide, then by all means, take a gander at Heil Honey, I'm Home!

Episode One Part I:


Episode One Part II:


If you liked all that then you should be sterilized. This is one point on which the real Hitler and I would be in complete agreement.

To see an example of the right way to utilize Hitler for entertainment purposes, check out this clip from the 1970s Japanese children's show J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai in which we are given an Asian Hitler with a David Bowie mullet, a female storm trooper, and footage of a crucifixion.

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