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

It's unclear, but it seems to be an officer's mess where Frank's attack on Hawkeye occurs, and you are correct that the insults and the beatdowns of Frank do not occur in front of enlisted men, so the officers do seem to keep issues among themselves as you say. I tend to think the stories are fairly close to what really happened, since the book is not so much a novel (ie a complete story with a clear plot or character arcs) as it is a collection of anecdotes. A person might embellish anecdotes, but I doubt he would completely make them up out of whole cloth when he doesn't need to do so to further a plot or advance a story, since there isn't really one.

 

Early in the first season, "Chief Surgeon Who?"- great episode. In addition for seeing how Hawkeye was made chief surgeon (and it's probably worth mentioning that in the movie it was Trapper who was made chief surgeon, based on his expertise in thoracics) the "Chief Surgeon Who?" episode was also our introduction to Klinger, who was originally intended to be a one off character who grosses out the visiting General, but got such a positive response from the viewers that they decided to make him a regular character.

Which is why I consider the "Comrades In Arms" episode to be the show's "jump the shark" moment- okay, now for the most part Margaret and Hawkeye have made their peace; that antagonism that at least partly drove the first five and a half seasons is now gone...where do you go from here?

I am so glad that they decided not to go down that road and have Winchester and Hot Lips getting together. That would have seemed so contrived IMO. Based on those early season six episodes when Winchester came on board, you just know the writers were on the fence about "Should Charles and Margaret get together?", because yer right, it is hinted at in a few season six episodes before it seems like they just sort of abandoned the idea completely.

"Temporary Duty", near the end of season six. It's actually Charles and B.J. she gets coffee with, but I know what you mean. And now that I think about it, that episode is actually a good example of being the closest thing to a 'definitive' turning point for Margaret's character.

Indeed, cheers for that, Jason, that was a good analysis there. The dude's not wrong...I loved the title, too; "The Abduction Of Margaret Houlihan" is one of my favourite episodes.

"'The Wind'...just broke his leg!"

 

@czeskleba

Wow...I just read through all ten parts of that guy's M*A*S*H blog- did you read all those entries? My gawd, the guy says a lot of the same things about the show that we do! Great minds think alike...

 

Hawkeye was pretty egotistical though; regarding both his surgical prowess and how he thought he was god's gift to women.

 

I always thought the fact he was (or had the potential to be) a bit of a d*ck, one of the saving graces of his character.

 

No doubt. But I just wanted to point out that he wasn't always Mr. Nice Guy, especially when challenged on those two things. The "chips on his shoulder" manifested differently than others in his position.

 

Yes, that was a great link. Thanks for sharing it!

 

I've read through most of it. He does an incredibly thorough job of breaking down what made the series work, and then what made it decline. I particularly enjoyed his analysis of the awful "Fallen Idol" and of Alda's writing in general. The only thing I've found to disagree with on the entire blog is that he seems to dislike "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" which I've identified as my favorite episode.

 

Oh I dunno, compared to say, Winchester, Hawkeye actually seemed pretty modest about his surgical abilities- he knows he's a good surgeon but doesn't go round bragging about it. As for his being god's gift to women, that blog linked above goes into some pretty good detail about how Alda himself disliked the womanizing Hawkeye of the earlier seasons, and when he became a producer of the show is when you saw the females he pursued more often than not getting the better of him...two of my favourite "later" episodes -for that very reason- are the dreaded Alda-penned "Inga" from season 7 (where Hawkeye is bettered by a female Swedish doctor and then completely eviscerated by Hot Lips as a result of his sexism) and "Taking The Fifth" from season 9 (where he tries using a vintage bottle of Bordeaux as a seduction tool only for all the nurses to show up for a drink) I admit I'm probably one of the few who actually likes the "Hey Look Me Over" season 11 opener too, just to see Nurse Kellye put Pierce in his place.

Yes, when I read the blog entry about "Fallen Idol" I got a distinct sense of deja vu based on some yer comments about that episode And I didn't get his issues with "Out Of Sight Out Of Mind" either, even though for me the "B" story involving Frank and the baseball game makes the episode for me- first Ken Levine/David Issacs penned episode too.

 

I really disliked that change... not because I had any particular attachment to the notion of Hawkeye as a womanizer, but because it makes no sense that all the women would suddenly and dramatically change the way they react to him for no reason. For several seasons he's a highly successful womanizer, and then suddenly he's getting rejected all the time and his attempts at seduction are mocked by the women he approaches. As jarring as it is to see characters like Margaret experience wholesale personality changes, it's even more jarring to see everyone start treating a character differently for no reason.

She might as well get a chance, since by that point everyone else had done it (put Pierce in his place) dozens of times over. That's one of the more tiresome things about the final years, the amount of times Pierce gets yelled at. Again, it shows how "Fallen Idol" was the unfortunate template for many episodes in the later years.

I agree that the Frank portion of the story is what makes the episode. It's absolutely hilarious, and is perhaps the best plotline involving Frank ever. The "a-story" is good, but to me that episode really underscores what was lost in later seasons... the ability to integrate the two stories together, and the ability to write a "b-story" that's actually funny.

 

It sorta makes you wonder if, had Wayne Rogers stuck around, if Alda would have made Trapper go through the same changes towards women- after all, Trapper, a married man with kids, no less, was as much of a womanizer as Hawkeye was. I mean, could you ever imagine Trapper having a guilt attack over an infidelity the way B.J. did in the "Hanky Panky" episode? I actually just had to check to see if "Hanky Panky" (not one of my favourites) was an Alda-written episode; I thought it was, but nope, written by Gene Reynolds (in his last season as Producer)

It's not just the amount of times Hawkeye gets yelled at, just the amount of yelling in general. I'd swear there's one or two episodes in the later seasons where it seems like especially Potter and/or Margaret yell their every line of dialogue! Somebody should have pointed out to these guys that the louder you speak yer lines will not necessarily increase the dramatic effect...

The Simpsons have the same problem- successfully integrating the "A" and "B" stories with the same panache they did in the old days.

 

Maybe word finally got around camp (and the other MASH units) that Hawkeye was a womanizer and the nurses started advising each other to watch out for the guy when he started putting the moves on?

 

I never got the impression that the women fooling around with Hawkeye in the early seasons were expecting him to marry and settle down with a white picket fence after the war. They knew they were having casual wartime flings, so I don't see how word getting around about him would be a deterrent. And even if they were marriage minded, there's always women who think they are going to be the ones to reform and change the guy who's afraid of commitment, so a reputation as a philanderer would not necessarily be a bad thing for him. It really is a dramatic change... in the first few seasons, Hawkeye is shown on dates almost every episode. In the later years, he's rejected pretty much every single time he tries anything. There really isn't a plausible in-story explanation for that.

 

Easy explanation, different nurses. I think it's less plausible that every nurse there would be loose enough to take turns with him. It's more realistic that he would get turned down at some point.

 

I think every TV series in the 60s and 70s had an episode where one of the characters loses his/her sight.

I remember reading in Mad magazine (or maybe it was Crazy magazine) where they wrote how "Mash was a lot funnier before Alan Alda became a comedy genius."

 

"And you wouldn't believe what—how funny it is to hear somebody slip and fall in the mud. I bet—it had to be Burns."

 

Have you ever seen the movie "White Mile"? Alan Alda plays a real scumbag in that one. He is a great actor.

 

Certainly it's realistic that he would get rejected sometimes. It's not realistic that he would start getting rejected all the time, which is basically what happens. And of course the reason for the change was not realism, but Alda's dislike of Hawkeye's womanizing and desire to repudiate it.

 

Or if you flip the idea on it's head (sort of): I always got a boot out of the "Ceasefire" episode where, thinking the war is ending, Hawk has to go round the camp and break off his engagement to two or three different nurses

Along the same lines, if memory serves didn't the only script CBS rejected (season 1 or 2, I think) revolve around Hawkeye actually going one step further and getting one of the nurses pregnant?

I actually remember my wife observing Pierce and McIntyre's sexual exploits on the show and remarking, "How the hell did Hawkeye and Trapper avoid knocking anybody up?" (She has pondered the same thing regarding James Bond as well)

 

Who's to say they did?

My understanding is that the rejected script involved Hawkeye "dating" two nurses simultaneously. When they find out, they each pretend to have gotten pregnant to get revenge on him. The suggestion of non-marital sex was too obvious in that instance for the network to let slide.

 

Ho ho...imagine that scenario: Nurse Cutler or some other nurse that we know the docs were shtupping shows up on, say, Trapper's doorstep a year or two after the war: "Hello, Trapper- I'd like you to meet our son." Wonder how Mrs McIntyre would react to that, eh?

Yeah, it was something like that. M*A*S*H got away with a helluva lot for its day, but multiple nurses and pregnancy was obviously a bit too much for Standards And Practices back in 1973...probably be perfectly acceptable now, though...

 

Actually, Trapper and his significant other develop into an interesting couple in the second MASH book (recommended, but it isn't as good as #1.......some really funny stuff, and one very heartbreaking chapter).

 

I almost think that was the plot line for an episode of Trapper John MD, though it's been some 35 years since I've watched an episode of that show.

 

I don't remember that show at all- I vaguely remember my parents watching it, but...same goes for "House Calls", actually (Wayne Rogers' post-M*A*S*H medical series)

 

I watched it regularly back then, despite the fact that it really wasn't very good, and it had nothing to do with MASH, and the character played by Pernell Roberts was nothing like the Trapper John of the original series. I also watched House Calls, which I remember as being fairly amusing (probably funnier than MASH had become by that point). It's interesting that the two shows debuted at pretty much the same time (September and December 1979 respectively). I wonder if they'd tried to get Rogers to do the former show and he said "no." I wonder if it caused confusion among viewers, having a new actor play Trapper John while the actor best-known for the character was playing a different doctor character on another series on the same network. I always kind of considered House Calls to be the "real" Trapper John MD.