After M*A*S*H

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by AKA, Feb 18, 2007.

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  1. Spaghettiows

    Spaghettiows Forum Resident

    Location:
    Silver Creek, NY
    The original M*A*S*H* started becoming insufferable after Frank Burns was no longer a character on the show. But it was still a good show, just too preachy.

    I watched some episodes recently and now I find BJ Hunnicutt to be quite an annoying character at times.

    Like others here, AfterM*A*S*H* barely registers in my memory banks, though I am sure I watched it.
     
  2. ssmith3046

    ssmith3046 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arizona desert
    Yes but the topic here is, "Visual Arts".
     
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  3. dirwuf

    dirwuf Misplaced Chicagoan

    Location:
    Fairfield, CT
    I love seasons 1-6...season 7 has some fine eps but the seeds of decline are obvious. Seasons 8-11 combined have about one year's worth of good episodes...
     
  4. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    Agree. At first his lines seemed like they were written for Trapper (fair enough, it happens with replacement characters), but later his lines seemed to be largely interchangeable with Hawkeye's. Other than Hunnicutt being married and faithful, there's not much difference between their characters.

    Regarding AfterMASH, it wasn't particular good, but I think its reputation as the worst tv show (or spinoff) ever comes from its recognizability making it an easy target. If you said Fish or Enos were the worst tv show ever, most people would have no idea what you were talking about. With AfterMASH, even if they've never heard of it, the title gives it away. It failed, so it must be bad. I suspect most people who cite it as an example haven't seen it or don't remember what they saw.

    That's as far as I'll go in defending this series.
     
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  5. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Season 5 is the cutoff point for greatness as far as I'm concerned. Season 6 has some good episodes, but it also had the awful "Fallen Idol," an Alda-scripted piece of melodrama that provided the template for the worst qualities of the later seasons. All too often in the later seasons, they created "drama" by having one character yell at or lecture another, and that started here. The departure of Gene Reynolds at the end of season five hit the show hard. Probably also no coincidence that the number of Alda-scripted episodes increased notably in season six. They also forgot how to be funny... some of the attempts at humor in the later episodes are painfully corny.
     
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  6. dirwuf

    dirwuf Misplaced Chicagoan

    Location:
    Fairfield, CT

    I've always thought "Falllen Idol" was a great episode, dramatic without the preachiness of the later years...IMO
     
  7. BeatlesObsessive

    BeatlesObsessive The Earl of Sandwich Ness

    How great would it have been if TV were like today with Robert Altman delivering a dozen or so episodes of MASH each season .... Robert Duvall and Sally Kellerman doing Hot Lips and Frank shtick every week interspersed with long meaningful silences and Duvall's "I love the smell of napalm in the morning..." delivery on some occasions.
     
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  8. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    As I said, the thing I really disliked was the device of scenes in which characters yell at each other. That was a device that was overdone on 70s comedy-dramas (it seems like it happened multiple times every episode of One Day at a Time for example). Hawkeye yells at Radar, and then Colonel Potter, Hot Lips, and Radar all go in succession and yell at Hawkeye. Too melodramatic for me. M*A*S*H was at its best when the serious storylines had some degree of subtlety and were leavened by humor, like "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" (my all-time favorite episode).
     
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  9. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    I also liked 'Fallen Idol' but not so much the trend it established and which the show then rolled with. If it had been the only episode like that that they did, it would be better.
     
  10. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    I agree with Jason -as I have in other M*A*S*H discussions here- that "Fallen Idol" is sort of the dividing line for the series...and the "Comrades In Arms" two parter a few episodes later in season 6 is the show's "jump the shark" moment IMO.

    As for AfterM*A*S*H, I really don't remember much about it- I know my parents watched it. I've always been sort of tempted to try and track down an episode or two on YouTube or something just to see if it was really as bad as it's supposed to be. I mean, as a M*A*S*H fan I can even find merit in some of the later seasons, so I'm not as fussy as some people.

    I may not remember AfterM*A*S*H, but I do remember the IBM adverts most of the cast did around the same time period...talk about gimmicky advertising:laugh:
     
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  11. smilin ed

    smilin ed Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham
    I didn't mind Fallen Idol at all; by far the worst MASH episodes were written by David Pollock and Elias Davis or Thad Munford and Dan Wilcox. For me, it dropped off at the end of series three, but was pretty decent until the end of series eight. After that, everyone puns, everyone shouts, there are too many cute Korean kids, the anti-war humour is blunted and it becomes bland. Not in every episode, but in many. The last season is almost unwatchable - and I say this as great fan who never used to miss an episode.
     
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  12. dirwuf

    dirwuf Misplaced Chicagoan

    Location:
    Fairfield, CT
    To me the Jump The Shark episode is "Peace On Us"...whose premise reads like it should be an alltime classic (Hawkeye invades the peace talks!), but which turns out to lack bite and originality, and is drowned in preachiness.
     
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  13. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    Season 8 is particularly bad for this ("Old Soldiers" and "Yessir, That's Our Baby" immediately come to mind...:hurl:)
    IMO Season 11 has a couple of decent episodes- I get the impression that, knowing it was the final season, the writers put a bit more effort into it than they did in, say, seasons 9 or 10. Granted, some of the S11 eps are pretty dreadful, though ("Foreign Affairs", "Strange Bedfellows"...)
    "Peace On Us" is pretty bad, loaded with lots of over the top melodramaticism (and preachiness). Also -and this was a problem for a few of the season 7 episodes- yes, we get it, Hunnicutt has a moustache now. No need to beat the viewer's head over the head with that little factoid every episode...

    Hmm...seems to me this thread has drifted a bit...or maybe it's just more interesting talking about the original series than the spinoff...
     
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  14. inperson

    inperson Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    Seasons 1 and 2 are the best. Col. Blake has some of the funniest lines in the history of the show. McLean Stevenson had a very good nervous acting style.
     
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  15. smilin ed

    smilin ed Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham
    Interesting that Hornberger hated the anti-war liberal sentiment of the TV series but liked the movie; whereas Altman thought the TV series was right wing...
     
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  16. albert_m

    albert_m Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atl., Ga, USA
    I prefer to the later seasons as I prefer the mix of serious in the show along with the humor and Frank annoyed me. I preferred Charles and Potter.
     
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  17. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Both Hawkeye and Margaret are transformed into completely different characters by the end of the series (neither is an improvement IMO), and the above-mentioned episodes are the points at which the respective changes began.

    My pick for worst-ever episode is season 10's "That Darn Kid" (Hawkeye is in charge of the payroll, and it gets eaten by a goat). It was really sad to see the show sink to that level of corny, goofball, Gomer-Pyle-esque humor.
     
  18. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I didn't start watching the show until around season 8, so I am most familiar with the Charles/Potter years. The local station did broadcast an hour block or reruns every night so I did catch up on the older stuff a bit, but I'm not sure if I saw everything. The later shows don't bother me as much as some because that was what I saw first, but I can see how those that were with the show from the start would find them cloying.
     
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  19. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    Say what?! What the hell was Robert Altman smoking?!:laugh:
    Margaret especially...and the changes simply aren't plausible, especially given the time period when the show is supposed to take place.
    "That Darn Kid" is pretty bad...I reckon the episode before it -"Picture This"- is even worse, and a good example of the writers returning to the well for story ideas (Hawkeye getting cheesed off and moving out of the Swamp) which had already been used much more effectively in earlier episodes (Hawkeye moved out of the Swamp in season 1's "Sticky Wicket"- one of my favourite episodes:righton:)
     
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  20. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    Say what?! What the hell was Robert Altman smoking?!:laugh:
    Margaret especially...and the changes simply aren't plausible, especially given the time period when the show is supposed to take place.
    "That Darn Kid" is pretty bad...I reckon the episode before it -"Picture This"- is even worse, and a good example of the writers returning to the well for story ideas (Hawkeye getting cheesed off and moving out of the Swamp) which had already been used much more effectively in earlier episodes (Hawkeye moved out of the Swamp in season 1's "Sticky Wicket"- one of my favourite episodes:righton:)
     
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  21. inperson

    inperson Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio


    ''He liked the movie because he thought it followed his original intent very closely,'' William Hornberger said. ''But my father was a political conservative, and he did not like the liberal tendencies that Alan Alda portrayed Hawkeye Pierce as having."

    ''My father didn't write an anti-war book,'' he added. ''It was a humorous account of his work, with serious parts thrown in about the awful kind of work it was, and how difficult and challenging it was.''

    Hornberger described himself as "a conservative Republican," adding, "I don't hold with this anti-war nonsense." He took particular exception to Alan Alda's work on the series.
     
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  22. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I read several of the books many years ago. They're certainly not "war" books other than the first one. They're pretty similar to After MASH, following the adventures of a bunch of army surgeons after the war.
     
  23. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    [
    One interesting hypothetical to ponder is what they would have done with Larry Linville if he hadn't left the show. It's hard to imagine his character during the melodramatic later years. I think they would have had to completely alter his character, just as they did with Margaret. But it's hard to imagine how they could have done that.

    Yep, "Picture This" exemplifies the constant bickering and yelling between the characters that they used in later years to gin up drama and make it more "realistic."
     
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  24. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Boy, that thing underscores why Burghoff left M*A*S*H originally. Having a guy in his 40s trying to play an innocent, naive kid is just embarrassing. Given his age and behavior, Radar comes off like someone with a developmental disability. They let Alda and Swit have their characters changed, but not Burghoff. I can see why he got tired of the role.

    It's also clear that a big problem with After-M*A*S*H was largely that the three principals (Potter, Klinger, and Mulcahy) were not strong enough or interesting enough characters to build a series around. They were created as supporting characters, and they didn't have potential beyond that.
     
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  25. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    Until he fell off the fidelity wagon... He wasn't 100% faithful to Peg...
     
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