Hulu, where is MASH?

I heard a few months ago that the complete series of MASH was gonna was gonna join the Hulu lineup.

Has it been cancelled?

Another thing annoying about
Hulu is not having complete series of classic TV shows, some are just a few seasons, and random episodes.
For a pay service, I want complete!

Also, last year they removed pretty much all of the classic British shows, Basil Fawlty left the building...

 

Sunday night marks the 45th anniversary of M*A*S*H's premiere on CBS (September 17, 1972). You'd think that would be the ideal date for Hulu to do something, but unless they have a surprise planned it would seem they're going to miss the chopper. Er, boat.

 

MASH, Bob Newhart, MTM were all supposed to be on in complete series but nothing yet. I am hoping they will appear in a few weeks with the "launch" of the fall season ...

 

Will anything special be done?

 

Maybe they decided people don't want to think about the Korean War right now.

 

Finally arrived on Hulu today!

FINALLY IN HD FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!!!!!

Now in widescreen...I checked several eps and there seems to be minimal cropping and repositioning....there must have been more room on the negs than we thought.

Also, while the episodes all seem to be complete, the hour long eps are now split into two parts, as they've been in syndication....hmmm.

And last but not least, the laugh tracks remain...despite my my hope they would be retired.

 

confirming my above post, the original hour eps are now in edited/shortened half-hour form..

 

The new HD widescreen transfers crop a bit of the top and bottom, but give us more of the sides....note the person now visible on the left. Also interesting how the clock for this ep ("Life Time") was repositioned.

 

Holy crap..."The Interview" episode is now in color! At first I though a mistake, but they've purposely redone the chyrons in yellow, so they knew what they were doing...

 

That seems wayyy too revisionist. The widescreen surprisingly looks fine, though.

 

I haven't investigated, but I will definitely do so in the very near future. I know this probably isn't possible, but it would be nice if you could watch without the laugh track like the DVD's. Makes the reviewing a whole different (and superior, IMO) experience.
Between this and ER, I think I have my summer's viewing mapped out.

 

Hey, they finally cleaned up the opening! @Vidiot

 

The "scratched" shot had always been clean in the pilot episode, and they finally figured they should source from that in the last years of the series, now it's been fixed throughout...

 

That’s just… why?

 

To be historically accurate visually, they should have mastered it from an old 16mm syndication print..

 

It appears as though season 10 is blissfully devoid of a laugh track.
The image quality of these new widescreen transfers is exceptional, but the lack of headroom is noticeable at first. After a while, you don't even notice it anymore. I haven't watched these unedited versions in a long time-they cut out whole scenes for syndication and it's fun when they pop up.

 

Watching the series unedited and without the laugh track is like seeing it for the first time all over again

 

Note that there's an excellent chance that Disney will own both the M*A*S*H TV series and the feature film after July 27th.

 

For some reason, something just seems so wrong about that...

Disney and M*A*S*H? Does not compute!

 

Nice to have this on Hulu, watched a few season one episodes last night, a couple of them had a much thinner Sorrell Booke as General Barker.
Wish they would have used him on more than just two episodes, maybe a recurring role like Sidney Freedman or Col. Flagg.
His great greatest fame would be later as JD (Boss) Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard.

 

I gotta say these look GREAT on Hulu.

The headroom seems adequate in most scenes - unlike the Seinfeld HD transfers where it seems very claustrophobic.

I don't mind the laugh track. And I think these presentations will allow the younger generations to watch the show without it feeling a million years old to them.

 

Our Finest Hour is still the edited, 2-part syndicated version, presented in 4x3 a/r standard def interlaced. I guess they'll never be able to re-construct that one.

 

While it technically "could" be reconstructed, it probably never will be. It's wouldn't be as simple as just gathering the individual clips and stringing them together. There was quite a bit of post-production that occurred on that hour special, things like seamlessly jumping from clip to clip maintaining audio balance in laugh tracks, keeping music cues in line, etc. Even if they could locate the master, it was still done in the video realm, so it could never be any better than SD, and always 4:3.

 

Take it from an editor, it really wouldn't be that much work (they could even just lay new video over the old audio track if mixing was going to be a hassle). Perhaps they don't have the original film of the interview segments, that would be the only thing holding them back.

 

Why...that almost looks not green...!