M*A*S*H: I Think The Show Got Better As It Went On.

I'm surprised by the former criticism... I would think the opposite would be true. Were there actually enlisted men in their 30s and 40s during the Korean War? Klinger in particular seemed really unrealistically old for the position he was in, by the end of the series.

 

Sorta like how A & E actually used to be the Arts And Entertainment network, instead of Reality Show Central?

There's a fair bit of animosity/rivalry at times between Hawkeye and B.J. as well as being the best of friends -especially in the later seasons. Again, not belabour my House comparisons, they're sort of like House and Wilson in that regard- friends, but they challenge one another at times as well.

Well that explains those completely implausible changes in Hot Lips' character then Didn't Loretta Swit know that the character would eventually come across as being completely unrealistic? Mind ya, maybe she didn't care- IIRC Swit wanted to jump ship after Season 8 or so.

My paternal grandfather served in Big Two (tank gunner) but he never talked about the war, couldn't watch anything related to war, WWII or otherwise...and that included M*A*S*H. Talk or thoughts about the war gave him nightmares, right to the end.

I've never been able to pinpoint the episode but the writers got even with the cast's constant nitpicking one time by deliberating changing an episode so that it took place in winter: the cast ended up having to wear heavy parkas, etc during a California summer. No more nitpicking after that

 

Maybe I didn't phrase that properly: he was saying the actors were too old. Dad was 23 or so at the time, and I got the impression that most of his colleagues were about the same age.

 

I was a 42 year old sergeant in Iraq in 2005 and there were a few older than me in my company. But your point is a good one, particularly if Hawkeye was "drafted" as they claimed in the movie.

 

And it had episodes where it was extrememly hot/humid, so it showed that too...

 

They did have several episodes that focused on the cold. And several more that focused on the heat. And I have been told the show absolutely nailed the operating room environment.

I have no doubt someone could be radically changed by a war in a short amount of time. Especially, from pro-war to anti-war as Margaret did. But I also agree that they should have done it with an actual episode arc to make her turn (kind of like in professional wrestling).

I also think Hawkeye going gray is not a problem. Our Presidents tend to go gray very fast under that pressure. Imagine operating in a war zone for 3 years.

 

It is one of the rare cases in which something lives up to the hype. That last episode/movie is the greatest bit of fiction ever put on television. Do not delay in seeing it if you like the show.

Of course, not seeing it gives you a cool bit of trivia. I know an elderly man that has never been in a Walmart. He does not boycott Walmart or anything, but he has never stepped foot in one.

 

That is fair enough since we are talking about a fictional character. I am probably projecting my military experience (not that I saw terrible action like Korea) onto the characters. Once you join the military it is never possible to watch MASH in the same way when you were a civilian. Forgive me for getting so serious. To be honest I never thought any of the characters with exception of Burns or Flagg as sort of do or die hard core blood and guts types, and Burns was portrayed as a wanna-be anyway.

The main weakness of the series is the concept of grafting post-60s liberalism onto a 1950s war. It worked though because of the writing and acting plus the fact that in 1972 the Vietnam War was still in progress so the impact of MASH was pretty great. In the 1950s I would imagine most of the soldiers would have been much more like Burns and Houlihan in world outlook...following orders and doing their duty and just hoping to get home. In the original novel the surgeons like Hawkeye are portrayed much more like martini sipping playboys rather than anti-war liberals. Hooker did not like the Alda portrayal of Hawkeye from what I have heard.

The other now almost impossible scenario is Hawk and Trapper/BJ constantly dogging and insulting a fellow surgeon and officer. In reality if Burns had been a bit less of a surgeon in some areas as Hawk and Trapper those two would have taken him under their wing and tried to better his skills so that the whole surgical team would improve. Plus if for some almost impossible instance of an incompetent surgeon being sent to Korea (think about it for a second...there are really no practicing incompetent surgeons they would not survive residency) Blake or Potter would have made Pierce the head of the Operating Room even though Burns outranked him. Situational command.

 

I think that did happen. I don't remember which episode, but Hawkeye is named Chief Surgeon, much to Frank's chagrin.

 

From my perspective, the Margaret/Hot Lips character DID evolve over time. It happened in chunks. First she got engaged to Penobscot and effectively dumped Frank Burns, which was good for a number of fine episodes. Then she married Penobscot which sent Frank over the edge. When Penobscot turned out to be a cheat, which occurred in the episodes where she and Hawkeye are stuck in that hut behind enemy lines, she became closer to Hawkeye.

At that point she also developed an on-again off-again friendship with Charles that was kind of confusing. In one episode he's reading the steamy novel to her, or sharing a canned meal from home, and in the next she's on his case about touching his nose. So if there's any relationship that's confusing it's that one. I believe she always sort-of like BJ, except when he was involved in Hawkeye's shenanigans.

There was also a later episode, I forget which, but it ended with Hawkeye and BJ headed for the mess tent. She'd just been through something and they offered to buy her a cup of coffee and be friends. I found it gradually evolutionary and not a sharp change from one episode or season to the next.

 

I always thought one interesting part of the movie was that Hawkeye and Trapper hardly ever smiled. All those wild stunts they pulled and jokes they cracked, not a lot of laughter. Which to me made sense if they were always burned out form overwork on so many maimed bodies. The book Hawkeye would never think about a Groucho imitation.

 

Episode 735 - Alan Alda »

Alan Alda and Marc Maron talked about this last week in an episode of WTF with Marc Maron:

MARON: I know that some people have said that when you had more writing power in M*A*S*H, that it was able to get a little deeper.

ALDA: I don't know; some people don't... there's like a myth on the internet that I made it more political and I made it serious — more serious. Larry [Gelbart] was the first one to write a show in which a guy died on the operating table. He went for serious, too. In fact, the guy who ran the network, when he saw the show with the guy dying on the operating table, said "What is this? A situation tragedy?"

So they already didn't like some of the seriousness, because we realized we were doing... if we didn't show the bad effects of the war and just did a standard service comedy, we were, in a way, denying the real experience of the people who had lived through that time.

MARON: Trivializing it.

ALDA: Trivializing it, yeah. And there was more... more of interest if you took it more seriously, so we had silly, stupid, farcical boofo stuff that we did, but it always had — or we tried to find an underpinning of — the hard stuff. But actually, I don't like to write political messages, and I don't like plays that have political messages, so I don't think I'm responsible for that; I think it's what people assume, because at the time I was trying to help get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. So everybody assumed that I put that stuff in my writing.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. I presume you were a volunteer at that point, whereas Klinger most definitely was not. If wikipedia is correct, the draft age during the Korean War was 18.5-29, so I guess Klinger would have to be in his late 20s at the oldest. So Jamie Farr was ten years too old for the role when the series debuted, and aged further and further out of plausibility as the series progressed.

 

My recollection is that Hot Lips was quite gung-ho about the glory of war in the early years, though it was often in the context of idolizing visiting generals and putting them on a pedestal.

Knocking around the internet just now, I came upon a blog that analyzes the writing on the series in great depth. I just read his discussion of the evolution of "Hot Lips" into "Margaret" and found it to be an astute and thorough analysis of the implausibilities of the change. I agree with his premise that she truly becomes a completely different character by the end of the series. Here's how he sums it up:
"Hot Lips Houlihan began as a cartoon figures, but she was at least a consistent cartoon: a comic-opera martinet tangled up in an adulterous love-affair with the equally cartoonish Frank Burns. She ended, not as a rounded character, but as two separate cartoon figures, the stock Women’s Libber perpetually warring with the stock Damsel in Distress."

His analysis can be found here: part one and part two.

 

A few of us here would disagree with that. But I do think it was a very effective summation of everything that was good and bad about the series in its later years, and I can't imagine that any fan of the series would not want to see it.

 

You can't imagine that fellow officers would try to dig into Frank Burn's somewhat elitist or uptight personality? It would be much more likely that enlisted men would dog a fellow soldier with that personality, but it isn't outside the realm of believability that officers who didn't volunteer for service would have that kind of reaction to Frank Burns.

 

The thing is Burns isn't a very realistic character. He's an incompetent bafoon of a surgeon in a arm of the military that doesn't suffer fools lightly. Henry Blake probably wouldn't last very long either due to his ineptitude.

 

Thanks for linking that blog Jason, very interesting reading.

 

One thing that's interesting to ponder is what would they have done with Frank's character if Larry Linville had not elected to leave the series. Frank was obviously conceived as a satirical cartoon figure, and it's quite difficult to imagine him working within the heavily melodramatic context of the series' later years. Presumably they would have had to substantially alter his character as they did with Margaret, but what direction would that have taken?

 

A very good question.

I'm not sure he would have fit into the second part of the series at all. If nothing else, he'd become more of a background character and, perhaps, be the counter to the anti-war sentiment but with more logic and credence behind his opinions. But, yeah, I can't see his character working in the 2nd half of the series.

 

They would have had to find some way to make his character a more effective adversary for Hawkeye... perhaps making him smarter, or making him meaner or more effectively devious somehow, so that he could genuinely hurt or frustrate Hawkeye. As noted in that blog I linked, Frank's character was seriously undercut by the arrival of Potter. Prior to that, he was the voice of Army authority in a sea of anarchy. The insertion of a character who represented Army discipline but was also intelligent and reasonable took away a lot of Frank's power.

Or they could have gone the other direction and made him more likable, as they did with Margaret. There are hints of that in his final episodes, where he has a few moments of actually bonding with the guys against Margaret.

 

This is why I feel Charles was perfectly cast. Frank's incompetency was becoming a big credibility issue and it would have gotten to the point where even if his character changed like Godshifter said, he'd still have that hanging over him. Margaret didn't have anything like that hanging over her.

 

Never out in the open in front of enlisted personnel. They would have kept it in private and perhaps only criticized each other in a private meeting with the CO. The whole Officer concept is sort of based on elitism.
When you salute an officer one is actually saluting the rank that officer holds rather than the actual person wearing the collar device. A surgeon is also another profession that sees itself as sort of elite. I like Hawkeye the character but somebody that good at surgery would probably have had few a chips on his shoulder also. You have to remember the concept of good order and discipline is the core of the military.

I was enlisted but you may have a point about draftees. I never served with draftees. However in my 20 years of experience with Officers in general they will not criticize another officer unless you are in a private conversation (which is sort of rare actually enlisted and officer talking privately) or they have transferred to another unit and know that what they say about another officer can't hurt them. I have never heard anything like what they would say about Frank when they are in the chow hall in MASH. Officers are supposed to be above that sort of thing and left that behind at Annapolis or West Point.

Yes enlisted people will dog each other. But when that happens in the military the officers are rarely around to hear it. Or they may be physically nearby but they act like they don't notice it. Both communities are segregated in that sense. A private Frank Burns would be dogged from here to Sunday. Unless it was racial discrimination, sexual misconduct (assault or harassment), or severe hazing that threatens unit cohesion,
the officers would not get involved. Now that last sentence probably would pertain more to 2016 rather than 1950.

I am not saying Officers are bad but just what the reality is. The relationship between Blake and Radar is probable (the sort of father son relationship) but letting Hawkeye show up for muster in a robe and cowboy hat would never happen twice and letting Klinger walk around in women's clothing in 1950 would probably have landed him in the brig or with him being persecuted for the perception of being gay. And no CO is going to let BJ walk around with that big bushy mustache and long hair.

 

FWIW, this is roughly how it is portrayed in the original book, which is of course based on Richard "Hooker" Hornberger's own experiences. The Frank Burns character is described as a surgeon of limited ability who makes errors and on one occasion blames the death of a patient on an enlisted man. Hawkeye mocks him and insults him (his actions are described as "interceding on behalf of the enlisted men," since Burns is constantly riding them and putting them on report). And on separate occasions both Trapper John and Duke Forrest beat up Burns (Trapper does so because of a surgical error Burns made, Forrest because of the incident where he blames the enlisted man for a patient dying). The situation culminates in an incident in the mess tent in which Hawkeye goads Burns until he throws a coffee pot at Hawkeye and then attacks him, resulting in him being transferred out. I don't know that the book is 100% factual, but there must be some element of truth to the relationships and incidents described. You are correct that they generally do not mock Frank in front of the enlisted men. Perhaps the general difference between your experiences and Hornberger's is down to the fact that they were draftees and there were not any more draftees at the time you served.

 

I read the book about 30 years ago so do not remember it all that well and maybe the events described did happen. It is possible that are certain Henry Fonda Mr. Roberts moments in every conflict. The novel Hawkeye may have interceded for the men,
and Burns may have gotten beat up...but did they do it in front of the enlisted men? Was that an officer's mess? I am sure it is possible that if in real life if a surgeon was a jerk enough to blame an enlisted person wrongly for a death an honorable doctor might intercede on the enlisted persons behalf. But I think today such a circumstance would be handled more professionally than a fist fight. I am sort of dubious though since it is a novel. But it could have happened I guess.

In Mr. Roberts Fonda made a deal with James Cagney that he would stop being a trouble maker if Cagney (the CO) gave the men liberty in a South Sea port. Fonda never told the men he made the deal,
and they unfairly resented Fonda's new strictness toward them. Fonda hated Cagney but decided to put the crew's interest first and at the same time was not embarrassing Cagney by revealing the deal to the crew. It was only when the open mike revealed it to the men that they realized Fonda had stood up for them. That is sort of how it really works: Fonda was doing a solid for the crew but was at the same time protecting the chain of command by not publicly bragging about or putting down Cagney. That is kind of the way it is supposed to work. Yeah they all hated Cagney lol.

But there is sort of medical truism in the military that pertains to the operation room when things get tense. Generally what goes on in the OR stays in the OR. Sometimes nurses, doctors and techs get into heated discussions when a procedure is going bad. But in general if everyone acts competently it is all forgotten about by the next case.

These are just my impressions about military medicine in general and MASH. I was never in Korea in a MASH unit. I am sure like WWII vets many have passed on sadly.