M*A*S*H- a season by season discussion!

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by ohnothimagen, Dec 1, 2017.

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  1. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    If I'm not mistaken, Wayne Rogers decided to leave the show after the third season had completed its filming.
     
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  2. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    He left in a huff in the dead of night after his pony never arrived.
     
  3. Anthology123

    Anthology123 Senior Member

    Adam's ribs is my favorite from Season 3.

    Hawkeye snapping and starting a food fight, calling himself Cranston Lamont when talking
    to a person in Chicago, the Sargent asking "what's in the package?" after their back and forth, and Hawkeye finally being denied
    his ribs at the end.
     
  4. davmar77

    davmar77 I'd rather be drummin'...

    Location:
    clifton park,ny
    does anyone know how loudon wainwright got hooked up with the show? his sense of humor fits in but I was curious about the connection.
     
  5. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    I have a mental image of a photo of Stevenson as Blake in People magazine and a caption underneath revealing the ending.
     
  6. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    As I recall, Rainbow Bridge has both Houlihan saying to Burns, "Can I be frank, Frank?" and Pierce saying to McIntyre "It might be a trap, Trap". Also: "This R-E-D speaks English better than Y-O-U do"

    Iron Guts Kelly:

    Margaret: This has never happened to me before

    Hawkeye: It bet it's a first for him too

    Charles Lamb: the "spam lamb"

    Big Mac:

    The classic ending with Klinger as Statue of Liberty

    The finale:

    one person says to Henry wearing a suit something like "It's really you" and another quips, "If you're Adolphe Menjou"
     
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  7. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Yep. Syndicated columnist Marilyn Beck broke the story on November 13, 1974, just days after the episode was shot (and a full four months before it was broadcast):
    “MASH” celebrated the completion of this season’s shooting with a cast party at 20th Century-Fox late last week. All the cast and crew were on hand — except for McLean Stevenson, who celebrated his permanent departure from the company by not attending. He left the soundstage as soon as the final camera “cut” was called.
    Stevenson is moving on to a new contract with NBC, which he is convinced will bring him greater stardom than he has enjoyed as Lt. Col. Blake on “MASH”. As for how CBS will handle his absence from the series, they’re “killing” him off. One of the last things shot before the “MASH” company disbanded for hiatus was a sequence in which Blake finally gets his discharge — only to be killed in the crash of a plane bound for home.

    My guess is that the myth that his death was a surprise to original viewers arose out of the fact that his death actually was kept secret from all the non-Alda cast until the moment they shot the final scene... and over the years people have heard that story and gotten things conflated in their minds. It is funny how the entertainment world has changed in the past 40 years. These days audiences are so fixated on avoiding spoilers and producers are obsessive about keeping plot twists a secret. I don't recall people making such a big deal about it back then. I remember reading the first three issues of the Star Wars comic book (which summarized the first half of the film) before the movie had even opened. Nowadays, they'd never let something like that happen. Obviously they didn't make a big effort to conceal Henry's death from viewers. It's not what happens but how it happens that makes a story interesting anyway.
     
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  8. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Ir was done for The Fugitive in 1967. The day of the finale's airing, talk show host Joey Bishop pumped guest David Janssen to reveal the ending, and Janssen replied: "I killed her Joey. She talked too much".

    The first one I remember is "Who shot JR"? in 1980. Dallas producers actually shot at least three different endings for the reveal episode in order to keep the cast and crew in the dark.
     
  9. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Somewhere online there is an article about McLean Stevenson giving his side for leaving the show (among other things he claimed he was not given a promised raise), but I cannot find it
     
  10. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Yeah, "Who Shot JR" was the beginning of that sort of thing gradually becoming more commonplace. Although I'm pretty sure I recall the National Enquirer breaking the story of who the shooter was before the episode was broadcast. The Enquirer most definitely did "spoil" the final episode of MASH with a full plot summary they printed a month before the episode was shown. I remember reading it before I saw the episode.
    Maybe you mean this article from Mark Evanier's blog? As he notes, at the time there was a reasonably high chance Johnny Carson would walk away from the Tonight Show, and Stevenson was one of the top contenders for replacement. That makes his quitting MASH seem a little less foolish.
     
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  11. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Yeah, that's it

    Every MASH fan should read it
     
  12. smilin ed

    smilin ed Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham
    I could never see Henry being more than a supporting character - albeit one of the more important ones that the others would move - satellite-like - around. I think he's far more important and better developed in the TV version than he is in the movie and I think there's real chemistry between him, Alda and Rogers, regardless of scenes that may or may not have been cut. Bearing in mind Gelbart's role in the show, it seems a little cold-blooded that he confirms what Stevenson says and talks about cutting his scenes.
     
  13. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Ineffectual, passive characters don't make good series leads.

    That looks like one of the problems for the previously posted Catch-22 pilot. The Yossarian of the book has things happen to him from all the crazies, until the very end. The pilot made him pushy from the beginning, a violation of the original character.

    Henry is one of my all time favorite supporting characters. But I realize he could never be a lead.
    If you want to see what Roger Bowen would have been like in a Henry-ish regular role, check out the obscure sitcom Arnie (1971), where he plays a very similar, ineffectual authority figure
     
  14. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Before we did adieu to Trapper I just want to suggest he may have his own unique place in TV history:

    Was Trapper the first married series regular to be shown philandering?

    Presumably Hawkeye's personal status (married in the novel and film script, though I don't recall any references to his wife in the film's final cut) was altered for TV to make his fooling around less blatantly illicit. But Trapper is clearly married and goes after nurses just as enthusiastically. Actually the very-married Henry does too, though it isn't shown as much.

    Understand I'm talking about sympathetic characters. I'm sure there were cheating regulars on shows like Peyton Place. And of course the Frank-Hot Lips relationship, but that wasn't meant to be sympathetic
     
  15. smilin ed

    smilin ed Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham
    Henry seemed to have an almost monogamous extra-marital relationship with a nurse named Lesley.
     
  16. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    I did read the link. Doesn't change my opinion much. I'm sure McLean had his good qualities, but he made terrible decisions.

    I seem to recall that when Carson actually started the Tonight Show, there was a gap of some months between Paar quitting and Carson starting, because Carson had a contract with CBS. Guest hosts were used in the interim. IF Carson quit, and IF McLean was the one they wanted, I'm sure arrangements could have been made to buy McLean's contract out, IF all of this came to be. Quitting on a hypothetical was, yes, foolish. David Letterman was under contract to NBC like that for a while too, but at that point Letterman was pretty well committed to being a talk show host. McLean wasn't.

    He also could have picked better projects. Wayne Rogers left M*A*S*H with less prep time and scored a better series (City Of Angels) and followed with House Calls a few years later. If you look at McLean's resume, it's all the failed shows and nothing but the failed shows except maybe a Battle Of The Network Stars. Couldn't he have rebuilt his resume a bit after a couple of the stinkers? Or was he above doing supporting parts by that time?

    Monty Hall, who produced McLean's first self-titled flop, also said he was hard to work with. So I'm not sure everyone else had the same negative reaction to the M*A*S*H set as he did. Maybe it was just him.

    McLean remains the author of the worst decision to leave a show in TV history. Ahead of Jean Hagen, Pernell Roberts, Shelley Long, David Caruso, anyone. There have been a million boss characters, McLean found a diamond. Yes he had something to do with it, but a more perfect fit of actor to role and setting I have rarely seen. And he threw it all away.
     
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  17. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    While I understand Wayne Rogers' frustration with what was (not) written for Trapper's character, one element that he brought to the show is that he was a far warmer performer than Alan Alda. They didn't bother to write things for Trapper to do, but the contrast in temperaments was a lot better. Whereas with Mike Farrell, there was a conscious effort to map out a different character. But Farrell in temperament echoed a lot of what Alda did. So the show was more shrill and less warm, and the complaints about preachiness started.
     
  18. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!" Thread Starter

    Location:
    Canada
    Technically "Welcome To Korea" is Trapper's send off episode. Wayne Rogers decided to pack it in in between production of seasons 3 and 4, so there was no time for a proper "Goodbye Trapper" episode. Trap's departure on the show seems as sudden as Rogers' departure from the show was! And, not unlike with some of the early season 6 episodes clearly re-written on the fly for Winchester instead of Frank Burns, I'd bet there was some last minute rewrites on some of the season 4 scripts changing out Trapper for BJ.
    I always figured the ribs would still be waiting for them when they got out of O.R. . Or maybe not...:laugh:
    I must admit even the whole "We didn't tell anybody about the final scene except for Alan Alda" a bit too good to be true. Great story, sure, but it seems like a pretty crappy thing for them to do. That aspect of the whole thing strikes me having a bit of "F--k you, McLean!" attached to it. No wonder he didn't even attend his own farewell party (or so the story goes).

    I always liked how Radar makes the announcement and Hawkeye and Trapper just glance up at one another from working on their patient as if to say, "Well, what can you do? That's life..."
    Indeed, Blake never seemed as central to the series as they would eventually make Potter. Though Blake was more involved in the TV show than he was in the movie, that I do remember from the film version.
    Yes, and then freaked out when "sweeeeet Loooooraine" back home admitted to an infidelity in the "Life With Father" episode. Just a bit hypocritical on Henry's part IMO.
    In the later seasons I think BJ was set to antagonize Hawkeye more than anything (as previously mentioned, this starts becoming evident in season 7). I couldn't see the writers, had Wayne Rogers stuck around, doing the same thing with the Trapper character. I couldn't imagine Trapper confronting Hawkeye the way BJ did in "Preventative Medicine", for example.
     
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  19. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    You're not saying you don't believe it though, are you? Enough people have told the story that there seems little doubt it is true. It does seem a crappy thing to do. Wayne Rogers said he felt insulted by it, since it implied that they we're not capable as actors of portraying shock and surprise without being manipulated into actually being shocked. And of course if the intent was to enhance their performances via this stunt, then there was no reason to conceal it from Stevenson, who did not appear in the scene. It really does seem like it was more a f@ck you to Stevenson than anything else.
     
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  20. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!" Thread Starter

    Location:
    Canada
    Oh no, I believe it, I believe it all too well, that's the thing. And over the years the story has sorta obtained a bit of 'mythical' type status in the M*A*S*H lore, hasn't it? And, yeah, it's totally a f--k you to McLean Stevenson, I've always interpreted it that way. Obviously, we can't blame Alda for that, or Gelbart, or even Fritzell and Greenbaum (the writers of the episode). I get the impression it was a Fox or CBS thing. I don't find myself returning to the "Abyssinia Henry" episode very often not based on the ending but because of all the behind the scenes stuff that went on. Best to stay ignorant in some cases...
     
  21. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    I'll probably have left the thread by then, so I'll just say here that the one where Winchester exchanges scrip seems clearly to have been written for Frank
    I'm thinking of one in particular, but we'll get to it soon enough
     
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  22. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Re Blake's death: There are several versions of the story floating around. In addition to the one where the cast were not told until actual shooting, another one has it they learned that the character would be killed off at a table reading. Most reacted with surprise and even some slight confusion. However Larry Linville supposedly smiled and said, "That's f***ing great!".

    I once saw a clip from an interview w/Stevenson where he said about the same thing: people were surprised to learn of it, they shot the scene, and "instead of everybody going to my farewell party, they sat around in their dressing rooms for a few minutes, then got in their cars and went home" [near verbatim quote]
     
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  23. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    This is a very perceptive analysis,
     
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  24. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    Larry Gelbart has said that killing off Henry Blake was his and Gene Reynolds' idea. They asked Fritzell and Greenbaum to write the script, keep the script relatively free of conflict with the death at the end. Then Gelbart removed the last page so the cast wouldn't have their performances affected. I don't think the higher-ups were in the picture other than settling Stevenson's contract. I should add that they could have played hardball with Stevenson, he was under contract, but they were relatively nice about it. I do believe that they would have been less nice with Rogers... had Rogers actually had a contract.

    Looking at a map, you have to wonder what Henry Blake's plane was doing over the Sea of Japan. Presumably he was still on the way from Seoul to Tokyo. You CAN go over the Sea of Japan from Seoul to Tokyo, but seemingly the sensible route at the time would be to go southeast from Seoul and cross the Korean Strait, then swing east to Tokyo.

    The current airline route does arc north a bit to account for curvature of the earth, and does go over the Sea Of Japan. But by the time the shoreline is reached, the flight path is already 50 miles from the North Korean border.

    North Korea had the weaker of the two air forces in the war. Having any plane make a 50 mile sortie looking for transports to shoot down would have been a major coup. It also seems highly unlikely. What seems more likely is major incompetence on the part of the navigator of Henry Blake's transport. Perhaps one of Frank's relatives had that job!
     
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  25. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI

    I forget which reunion show was on, but there was one with Wayne where he said something like "If I had known the show was going to go on as long at did, I probably would have stuck around for awhile longer" or words to that effect...
     
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