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

RIP David Ogden Stiers
'M*A*S*H' Star David Ogden Stiers Dead at 75

 

Oh no. RIP.

 

A little teary eyed on this news, Charles was a terrific character and the perfect foil to BJ and Hawkeye.

A favorite quote from his first episodes September 1977:

Charles: Yes, sir, I am... vamoosing. But know this. You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can incarcerate me with two moronic cellmates. You can torture me with your thrice daily swill, but you cannot break the spirit of a Winchester. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness and I shall be delivered from this fetid and festering sewer!

Col. Potter: I think he's starting to get the hang of this place.

The smirk as he finishes just classic

 

I've heard he was not at all supportive of Lynn Redgrave's desire to breast feed her infant during down time in shooting (the issue that caused her to leave the show) and felt he should be perceived as the show's only star. If he'd stepped up to support her she likely would have been able to stay, and of course her departure wound up killing the show.

 

I don't think it would have been much of a problem to fold Frank's departure into the Margaret gets married episode, particularly since the former was caused by the latter. As noted, it likely would have involved simply showing on camera the stuff described off-camera in the first episode of season seven. If necessary, they could have bumped it up to a two-parter and saved one of the other scripts for the following year.

 

Very sad news about Ogden Stiers. I was wondering why he did not participate in that MASH oral history article in The Hollywood Reporter. In retrospect it seems likely his health issues prevented it.

 

Did you see that Ken Levine answered your question about why there were no flashback episodes?

 

Winchester and Stiers' development of him was the last best thing the show did. I say this as someone who thinks Frank Burns' and Linville's portrayal of him were one of the greatest characters of all time. The show wrote Frank into a corner, and Linville was not happy with it. Reportedly he stopped going to the dailies in Season 5 because he wasn't comfortable with where Frank was as a character. So he made the right decision in leaving.

But again, Winchester was a very good choice in developing an antagonist that was completely different from Frank.

I also credit Stiers for taking a lot of effort to avoid being typecast, and taking a lot of different parts in his post-M*A*S*H career. RIP.

 

You can say that again:

 

I remember my younger sister used to get those two mixed up a lot (she was pretty young though).

 

Damn, I just found about David Ogden Stiers now...RIP. Winchester was awesome, as I mentioned earlier he had so many great lines.

I read the oral history blog @czeskleba posted earlier; drawn out to book length it would be a great read indeed. Fine as it is, though. Cheers for that, Jason.

 

Did some terrific work with Woody Allen, even though one of those appearances was far from Allen's best film.

RIP, Charles. I've been watching later episodes quite a bit since you started this thread and I'm typing this with a tear in my eye. Damn.

 

To me, Frank was like Trapper. We did get a "Trapper leaves" episode, though he didn't actually leave in that particular episode. We did get a "Frank goes nuts because of losing Hotlips" in Margaret's Engagement. I can't imagine doing that sort of material again would have been much different.

I liked the fact that Frank was allowed to be dignified in the actual wedding episode. That was one of the problems, that after losing Hotlips he'd become too pathetic to be an effective antagonist, and had to be used in other ways.

 

Serious question...is it possible the could have done something to soothe Linville without losing the essence of the character? If so, what?

 

Opening to M*A*S*H on the CBS Late Movie:

 

That would have been another angle... to have him depart with dignity. The "Frank goes crazy and gets shipped out" plot was basically taken from the film, but they maybe they would have gone in a different direction if they'd had him there on set. My point is just that I would have liked to have seen some sort of on-camera depiction of his departure, and I think they most certainly would have done it if they'd had the chance.

We touched on this earlier, in the context of discussing how to make Frank fit with the more realistic and serious tone of the later years. As far as making him more realistic, the best I could come up with is making him smarter and meaner... capable of actually doing things that hurt Hawkeye in some way. I don't know that there was any way to make him more sympathetic without losing the essence of the character and changing him into something else entirely (as was done with Margaret).

 

@alanalda:

"David Ogden Stiers. I remember how you skateboarded to work every day down busy LA streets. How, once you glided into Stage 9, you were Winchester to your core. How gentle you were, how kind, except when devising the most vicious practical jokes. We love you, David. Goodbye."

 

I think it would have been tough. They could have taken Frank off in a Howard Hunter from Hill Street Blues direction. But really the context of the show had changed too much by that time to allow for that sort of character on M*A*S*H.

In the earlier years, maybe. Frank was always set up as an antagonist on M*A*S*H. But in the early years, the show really developed Frank and Hotlips well to be interesting people in their own right. Also, the camp itself was a lot more chaotic and morally neutral in the early years. The second season premiere where the consultant calls ALL of the characters childish.

There's other stuff, like the episode Henry In Love. I know it's a war zone, there had been a lot of fooling around already, a raunchy show at the time, but to let Henry go that far was kind of a ballsy move. Given that Henry died and never saw his family again, who cares about his crush, which is kind of the point. It's a war, it's the Army, everyone's nuts and trying to do the best they can. That situation was resolved without any moral commentary directed towards Henry at all.

That's part of what made Frank and Hotlips work so well. Yes, Frank wasn't as good a doctor, and yes, he was a hypocrite, but the others were all screwing around too and sometimes going too far against Frank.

Then they brought in Potter and Hunnicutt. Now workplace dynamics can change anytime someone leaves, and if the leader leaves, yeah, it's realistic that people might start acting differently. I have no real problem with that. But Potter and Hunnicutt were more clearly "serious good guys" (I would not use the word "realistic", they are thought of that way, but I don't think it's true.) I really think it limited the show's scope. I much preferred the "crazies here, there, and everywhere" approach early on. There was plenty of opportunity for heroics. But by Season 5 it was the clear ambition of the show to be more serious.

Another barrier to Frank staying on is the end of Frank and Hotlips as a couple. I think that would have been difficult to negotiate on any show. Or in real life for that matter. A couple who are seriously involved break up, one of them usually takes off.

Given how Frank and Hotlips were defined, they really made sense as a temporary couple. They both needed things from each other. Even though she would deny it later, Frank would likely be the most serious relationship of Hotlips' life. I'm glad the Penobscot thing failed, it made no sense for that to work. But it couldn't last, and the way it ended on the show was likely better than one of them just ending their tour or the war ending.

 

It's worth mentioning that when watching "Margaret's Marriage" in syndication they cut out the tag, where Frank, Hawkeye and BJ are in the Swamp and Hawkeye and BJ are asking if Frank is okay. Frank says something like "I need a cold shower" and walks out of the Swamp. You could interpret that as when the cheese really starts to slide off of Frank's cracker, but who knows? In syndication, the episode ends simply with Frank looking at Margaret's departing helicopter and saying, "Goodbye, Margaret". Seems a bit anticlimactic IMO.

 

I don't remember which episode it's in, or even the context in which it's said, but I remember someone (maybe Hotlips herself) saying "Frank Burns is no Donald Penobscot", to which Hotlips says "In some ways, Donald is no Frank Burns".

 

Heh heh...in tribute to David Ogden Stiers I watched the "Fade In/Fade Out" episode this morning. Context: While Hawkeye and BJ are packing Frank's things in the Swamp, Margaret is whinging at them about her bad her honeymoon was. The subject of Frank comes up. Hawk says sarcastically "Well, he was no Donald Penobscot!", which is when Margaret replies "In some ways Donald is no Frank Burns." Hawkeye and BJ then press her for clarification on that remark but Margaret doesn't take the bait. She does go on to say that in spite of everything that happened, she'll always have fond memories of Frank...until she finds her alarm clock in with Frank's things and freaks out

 

Well, that clears it up for me

I'm planning on watching "Fade Out, Fade In" later on today, but last night, upon hearing of David's death, in tribute I watched "The Winchester Tapes" and "Change Day"...

 

Since we watch M*A*S*H so regularly, I decided on a different route for a David Ogden Stiers tribute and dug out the STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION episode from Season 4 called "Half A Life". It's one of the few Lwaxana Troi episodes that I can stand - she's actually quite good in this one - but the special guest star is David Ogden Stiers as a scientist who's being forced to go home to die because he's reached the ripe old age of 60. Stiers was rather restrained and dignified in this episode.

 

Actually, they all went and took cold showers... so no Crazy Frank there!

Maybe Frank/Linville left because they didn't want to be part of the "zinger" endings with the freeze frame and credits. Can't blame him there!

 

Only really good thing about the freeze frame endings most of the time is that they weren't cut out in syndication, so you actually get the "true" ending of the episode!