Did people really like M*A*S*H or did they watch it because nothing else was on?

Everyone liked MASH in the beginning but it went on too long and all the good characters were killed off or mutated to something completely different, got more boring and preachy. When Klinger quit wearing dresses and Hoolihan got married was when it got boring IMO.

Interesting and thanks for the perspective, R1. I've tried watching it a few times and just couldn't find its attempt at humour funny.

It was more intelligent than the other sitcoms of its time. But yeah, didn't age well.

I began to want to strangle Alan Alda.

My dad's show. Catered to men of a certain era.

[quote]Hoolihan got married was when it got boring IMO.

Which also caused the character of Major Frank Burns to gain some sympathy from the audience. I think Larry Linville was very underrated. People talk about how great Alda and most of the top tier cast was but with Linville, you were supposed to dislike Frank but nor outright hate him which Linville always did with his acting.

I think the theme song had the kind of cool title “Suicide is Painless”.

I hate it

Yes, R7. It even has actual lyrics.

Supposedly Altman asked his son to write a terrible pop song, which is where "Suicide is Painless" came from. That explains why Michael Altman's lyrics are kinda awful while Johnny Mandel's melody is quite good.

I was absolutely obsessed with "MASH" as a kid but really don't remember watching it weekly when it was new until about 1979 or 1980. There were reruns every day after school, though, and I always preferred the reruns from seasons 2 through 5.

The show became too serious and too disjointed, and it went on way too long, making it difficult to believe that Hawkeye was still enlisted and hadn't finished his two years or whatever it was. Harry Morgan was one of the few saving graces of the later seasons. At some point there was an episode where Radar, having gone home, sent a letter saying that the farm was technically failing but he was making more money NOT growing certain crops and getting money from the government, than he would if he grew actual crops, and it was so off-putting that I stopped liking it nearly as much as I had.

Also, Colonel Flagg was insane and hot as hell.

I liked the movie but couldn't ever get into the show, even though my parents adored it.

It was the best thing on tv back then and is still in my 20 favorite shows.

It fell apart when Loretta Swit switched to Charlie’s Angel hair and Mike Farrell grew that 70s mustache and longer hair. That’s when it started to scatter all over the place.

Hot Lips Houlihan was a fine piece of tail.

As a kid I wasn't interested in it because there weren't any attractive stars on the show.

Even having this book didn't help.

FRANK

BURNS

EATS

WORMS

I think you would have to see it in the context of the times. The film and the TV series used the war in Korea as a way to express anti Vietnam ideas. I agree with those who have said the show went on far too long but the earlier seasons were great groundbreaking television.

The movie was terrific, and the show was great the first three seasons. It definitely overstayed its welcome but there were still some stellar episodes in later years.

Agree with R6 that Larry Linville was totally underrated. It's a crime that he didn't win an Emmy; was he even nominated? I googled and found nothing.

Loved Klinger, nutty Colonel Flagg, and the ever-exasperated Lt. Col. Henry Blake. McLean was great, and it just wasn't the same without him.

Count me among the people who loved M*A*S*H and watched it every week. It was great, ground-breaking television. It won something like 14 Emmys and dozens of nominations over the years.

Funny anecdote: I was in high school when the final episode aired, and had coordinated a watch party with friends and family. Sitting in my AP English class the day of airing, the teacher handed out a homework assignment that would have taken several hours to complete and then announced that it was due the next day. There were blank stares around the room because everyone knew she was just being a bitch and trying to wreck what was going to be one of the biggest nights of television in history. Being the troublemaker in the room, I just stood up, said "fuck it" and walked out of the room. The entire class followed suit, and the teacher had a(nother) fit and tried to expel me from the class yet again. I had to laugh at the principal's reaction this time... he said he couldn't talk to bitch teacher because he had to get home to see the final episode of M*A*S*H. The episode was the most-watched non-Superbowl event in TV history, and I think it still ranks despite the country growing by a third since those days.

Weirdest toy marketing ever: M*A*S*H action figures, vehicles and playsets. What toy executive thought any kid would want to play with a Hawkeye Pierce or Major Charles Winchester toy? Or the choice of Klinger in or out of drag! The stupidest decision was launching the toyline in 1981, almost ten years into the show's run. I remember seeing these things in every toy clearance section as a kid. They're probably a rare collectible now but back then they couldn't give them away.

[quote]At some point there was an episode where Radar, having gone home, sent a letter saying that the farm was technically failing but he was making more money NOT growing certain crops and getting money from the government, than he would if he grew actual crops, and it was so off-putting that I stopped liking it nearly as much as I had.

I think I've seen every episode multiple times over the years and I don't think this happened. There was an episode where Radar sent a letter from home pretending everything was going great for him and his family but somehow everyone found out from someone else that the farm was actually failing and Radar was having a rough time back home.

I loathed Alda from day one. BJ was the only sorta fuckable character on the entire show . Well, Flagg might have been ok for a hate fuck.

Is "fuckability" the only criteria you judge things on, R24?

As a child, when I heard the opening theme song coupled with the drab colors in a military setting, I felt depressed and angry.

Why yes R25,it is . Problem ?

David Ogden Stiers as Winchester was the best actor, and eventually the best character, on the show. (And Stiers was family, too.) His character was one of the rare cases where a replacement character improves on the character he's replacing (Frank Burns). Burns was a one-note character. Winchester had a full-fledged personality, with nuances, and his character had a believable evolution through the seasons. He was so much more interesting as a sympathetic antagonist than the cowardly, amoral Burns.

Obviously there was some demand for this during the Vietnam war and after.

It also was on constant reruns in the early 80's. Not kidding, I think it ran back to back for an hour (2 episodes) pre-prime time and then another episode after prime-time.

You couldn't fucking escape it.

I can’t watch it anymore…except for the early episodes with the original cast although I quickly grew tired of Alan Alda. Note that there was a black actor playing one of the doctors, a carry over from the movie but then they decided they had too many characters and not enough for him to do so he disappeared.

I think it was more about the fact that he was called "Spearchucker," r30.

It reminds me of being a depressed teenager.

Times have certainly changed. I spent an hour last night trying to decide what to watch. I doubt I'll ever get around to watching a single episode of MASH.

Loretta Swit was angry that the producers wouldn't release her from MASH to do the Cagney & Lacey series.

Anyone remember AfterMASH? There was so much hype surrounding its premiere, but it was unwatchable. I don't think it lasted a full two seasons.

That’s MAJOR Spearchucker, r31. Show some respect.

Margaret Cho said it was vital for her to watch it and aspire one day to be Nurse Kellye.

Was it popular because it was the first 'dramedy'? I'm trying to think of other shows that were half comedy/half drama before this - but I was a bit too young.

Some of the more dramatic moments were soooo melodramatic.

Ahead of its time in many ways.

I never watched it when it was originally on and I started watched from season 1 on MeTV. Love it. So funny and love me some hot Alan Alda.

How did they explain the fact that the show ran longer than the Korean Conflict?

People watched to see the opening sequence of the hot brunette nurse leading the others to help the wounded, then were too lazy to change the channel. For the pilot they shot that scene several times with all the other extras racing hard to get in front of the camera but the brunette won every time. Turns out in school she had been a track star.

She had no other shot on the series but was in as many episodes as Alda. And was SO less self-righteous and smirky.

I never realized that Johnny Galecki looks like Radar.

[quote]People watched to see the opening sequence of the hot brunette nurse leading the others to help the wounded...

I know exactly who you are talking about! I never really thought about it before but she really was hot. She always reminded me of a friend I had a crush on in high school.

What really bothered me about it was that it had a laugh track, even though it was obviously not taped before a studio audience.

[quote]That’s MAJOR Spearchucker

That was Captain Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones.

I hated Radar and his creepy precognitive abilities.

The movie was really popular and it provided momentum for the series, which in its earlier years was pretty good. After MacLean Stevenson left it lost a little oomph; it got kinda tired at the end but the finale was great. I didn't first understand the politics of the show, watching it in re-runs in the late 80s as a teen, but as I've gotten older I realize how good it was for its time, and still is.

Watching the opening credits again, I'm struck by how drab and dreary everything looked. Very bland and 70s looking. How depressing.

R49, you realize it was supposed to look that way on purpose, right?

The show ran way longer than the actual Korean War did.

OP, I loved it and still do. I find myself annoyed by the laugh track - completely forgot it existed! Beyond that, I loved the sharp wit - the writing was excellent, as was the acting. Yes, it became maudlin at the end but it really was a quality show.

[quote]Also, Colonel Flagg was insane and hot as hell.

Really? I can't see it but I did like the songs Frankenstein and Free Ride

The only laughs were on that terrible laugh track.

It was shit but as a young gayling I decided that all the male characters were secretly fucking each other and it was my job to figure out who was boning who.

People joked on a thread about old photos the other day that the air in the 1970s was brown like gravy, r49. "MASH" is probably the brownest show of the 1970s.

Never liked it, not a fan of dramedy, but wasn’t Trapper John a cute guy? And that Honeycutt guy?

Wasn’t the laugh track only used in some seasons? I remember when the show was current my family discussing how out of place it was. But I thought Alda said they fought the network on it and eventually were allowed to go with no laugh track.

They did fight the network and the creator was absolutely adamant that there would be no laugh track on any scenes set in the OR.

That was their initial compromise.

I remember an episode where a bus load of MASH personnel and some Koreans were under attack. They had to be super quiet and a baby kept crying, so the mother ended up suffocating the baby to death. Such great comedy!

That was the finale, and it wasn't presented as comedy. Idiot.

This article says the DVDs feature a "No laugh track" option...

Normally, I feel the average DL poster is a cut above the average person in intellect, then I read posts like the one at r60…

There's some good early episodes. Very hit or miss though. I also enjoyed it more with age -- not being able to stand it on in my teens/ 20s, to giving it a fair shot in my 30s.

The whole hippy anti war thing didn't go over well for people of a certain age.

I think MASH sort of brought home that message in a more appealing package. The enemy became real people. The horrors and pointlessness of war put on display without disparaging the soldier.

I always thought of Archie Bunker in the same light. A familiar setting to take on bigatry.

The dry chaparral of Malibu Creek made for a most excellent doppelgänger of South Korea.

I’m 34, I grew up with Nick at Nite and the show used to either come on then or it would come on another station and whenever it came on, I’d turn it.

I’ve never seen an episode but I don’t understand it either. Some of the clips look like comedy but I’ve heard it described as a drama.

It always looked like Gilligan’s Island to me but in the military. Is that what it was like? Or was it a drama?

I swear to God, I was a teenager in the 70s and I have never watched one episode all the way through. Not even halfway through. It just looked awful to me with its dumb laugh track. I hated the theme song too.

[quote]I’ve never seen an episode but I don’t understand it either.

I wonder if those two things could possibly be related!

The Real-Life Hawkeye Pierce Hated ‘M*A*S*H’

In 1951, Dr. Richard Hornberger was drafted out of his surgical internship, inducted into the U.S. Army, and assigned to the 8055th MASH, which traveled along the 38th parallel.

Hornberger, who created Hawkeye to represent his own audacious surgical exploits, pioneered the use of arterial repairs on the front lines of war. This was still a relatively new procedure, time-consuming, and then forbidden by the U.S. Army. The surgeons at the 8055th flouted such rules because they felt that to not repair such injuries, and prevent needless amputations of countless limbs, would be to disobey their Hippocratic Oath.

In the doctor’s obituary for The New York Times, his son William Hornberger said:

“He liked the movie because he thought it followed his original intent very closely, 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. 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.”

R38 OK so it was a dramedy? Interesting. I feel like the flips I saw seemed slapstick but I’ve seen the opening sequence and it seems so morbid as if it was a drama.

R69 Haha yeah but there’s plenty of shows I’ve never seen but I understand the tone. Like I’ve never watched Lost or The Sopranos but I know they’re dramas. I never got what MASH was.

I was there at the time and could never stand it. SO smug and pleased with itself, and Alan Alda was completely insufferable. And when, who was it?--the adorable old captain or whoever he was, would start saying things like, "Well, son...." No. No way. Not even then.

The show became a victim of the same thing that so many shows back then did, anachronism. The Korean War started in 1950 and Houlihan's hair would never be seen on a nurse back then, even in the field. Remember Joannie's poodle perm on Happy Days? That stuff really bugs me.

The movie, at least, had her in a period appropriate coif at the beginning.

The theme song is the /worst/ thing about the show.

It was quite the shock to learn that the guy who played Father Mulcahy was married in real life.

[quote]just couldn't find its attempt at humour funny.

If you tried to get into it that suggests you were watching the early seasons, usually highly regarded, and didn’t like them.

Based on the way you spell humour, it might just be that you don’t find American comedy that funny.

What actual Korean War US Army nurses looked like.

Yeahhhhhh Alan Alda was annoying. Maybe that’s why I didn’t watch the show.

And I completely agree with the poster upthread, the hairdos were all wrong. That always bothers me too. But it’s very common. Almost every movie or show set in the 30s, 40s or 50s settles for women wearing a few limp curls. Whereas they actually permed and set and teased and sprayed the shit out of those styles.

The 70’s had ONE decent show that still holds up fairly well, you all know what it is….it aint this over rated crap! It was a decade of crap television.

I liked it better in the middle, after Potter came on.

The first few years were very broad comedy, which I liked OK, but I appreciated the middle years, where the stories got somewhat more serious but still funny.

It last about two years or so too long, though, and while I liked it well enough even then, I can see why it exhausted some people and it certainly overexposed Alan Alda.

What hair styles are you guys talking about?

Thinking about BJ Hunnicutt's bushy mustache and his deep voice gave me a wet dream so intense I got chills and woke up. He was part of my, uh, "awakening," along with Andy Travis, Gonzo Gates and Kelly Nelson in his Speedo.

[quote] The surgeons at the 8055th flouted such rules because they felt that to not repair such injuries, and prevent needless amputations of countless limbs, would be to disobey their Hippocratic Oath.

I, too, swore an oath. A nurse's oath!

People asking whether it was a drama. The early seasons it was more of a straight out comedy with some dark moments. Some of the plots involved misunderstandings that would have been home in Three's Company (although better written). The shift to more of a drama or dramedy was gradual, although might have gotten a bigger shift with the departure of Frank, Henry, and Frank with Charles, Potter, and BJ. While Larry L was good, his character was more one note and the Winchester replacement was a good one and he was more of an equal foil for Hawkeye. Potter was also a good replacement for Henry, they went a different route and did not just try to get Henry II. BJ was probably the weakest of the new cast, but in a way it made sense due to Hawkeye's role growing at the expense of Trapper's during the first three years. By the time Trapper left, the role went from being more of an equal to being second banana to Hawkeye, which might have been why Wayne Rodgers left. The finale itself was completely drama. I think the only thing they played for laughs was Hawkeye and Margaret's good bye kiss.

r81, this was Margaret Houlihan's hairstyle at the end of M*A*S*H*. It was not very period accurate.

I couldn't stand Colonel Potter: His regular exclamation "Horse hockey!" was thought by the writers to be a big laugh getter, but I just thought it was stupid.

Some of the more dramatic episodes were really well done. The one about all the doctors' and Margaret's dreams was excellent. I also was genuinely moved by the episode when Charles kept writing nasty letters to his sister Honoria in Boston because she had married outside their class, and then at the end of the episode, when he discovered she had been jilted, he wrote her a letter having to eat humble pie and beg forgiveness because he realized how devastated she must be.

[quote]this was Margaret Houlihan's hairstyle at the end of M*A*S*H*. It was not very period accurate.

See, also, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Waltons, Baa Baa Black Sheep etc. They were all just as bad, although Happy Days, Laverne a& Shirley and the Waltons were a bit more period accurate at the beginning of their runs.

[quote]I couldn't stand Colonel Potter: His regular exclamation "Horse hockey!" was thought by the writers to be a big laugh getter, but I just thought it was stupid.

I admit that I still use that term.

The show was like nothing before it---there had been military comedies like "Bilko" and "McHale's Navy" as well as WWII dramas like "Combat", but no show in a war zone that mixed comedy and drama. There had been the peacetime military show "Hennessy" with Jackie Cooper that was mostly comedy, but some drama, but it was not a big hit. Medical shows otherwise skewed toward heartthrobs like "Dr Kildare" or attempts at greater realism like "Ben Casey" or "Medic". M*A*S*H was more irreverent than most sitcoms, as well as being serious. Dramedies weren't new but they usually were heartwarming domestic sitcoms that became a bit starchy when they got serious (like "Father Knows Best, "The Donna Reed Show"). There was nothing starchy here. It became a habit for people and remained popular even as characters left and the dynamics became too earnest.

In real life, people have to get along to make something work---on television, you're sunk if you lose the tension and conflict between characters, which is what happened here with M*A*S*H. Irritating Frank Burns was replaced by pompous but competent Winchester; goofy McIntire was replaced by laidback and preachy Hunnicutt, Hotlips developed an Oedipal relationship with Col. Potter, Klinger quit wearing dresses. The show had become annoying by the end. The one character who didn't change much was Fr. Mulcahy who could be funny or serious as the situation demanded and rarely had an episode based on him. Alda began to dominate the show from very early on--Jackie Cooper stopped directing episodes after awhile because of it. Alda is great when he plays a villian or a true cad--he's wonderful in "And the Band Played On" and in Woody Allen films--he's unwatchable in the final episode and for most of the last few seasons.

In reruns, the first 4 seasons are worth watching. After that, forget it. I recall it gradually becoming miss-able tv in its original run. The mix of comedy and drama was novel and that kept some people interested even after the writing became tired and self-satisfied.

A t-shirt of Colonel Potter saying "Horse hockey"!

Alan Alda and Jamie Farr had longish 70s haircuts.

When it was ending, there was a funny parody piece in "The New Republic" about what would happen to the stars of the show in the future, juxtaposing the unstoppable rise of Alan Alda (then probably the most beloved entertainment figure in America) to the White House (where he would appoint Carol Burnett as the Secretary of Caring, a new cabinet position) with all kinds of stupid spin-offs from the show (since "AfterM*A*S*H*" had been announced and was predicted to be a big hit), such as "Margaret" (a detective series featuring Hot Lips as a crime-solving single mother), "Those M*A*S*H* Tomatoes" (about the sexy nurses), and "I Dream of Klinger."

Girls, couldn't you invite me in for a lousy cup of coffee?

Or eat my snatch every once in a while?

I'm watching an episode now. I've always liked M*A*S*H. Funny scenes and sad scenes.

[quote] I hated Radar and his creepy precognitive abilities.

You sound like a very unpleasant person. Radar was really the heart of the show. Of all the characters he wasn't appealing. He had the kindest heart, and his kindness wasn't the smug, self-righteous type displayed by Hawkeye and Trapper and B. J. Radar was just GOOD. And after he left the show really went downhill.

The two most likeable characters on the show sweet Henry Blake and lovable Radar. Too bad they were played by such troublesome actors, MacLean Stevenson and Gary Burghoff. Stevenson wanted out of his contract so he could be the star of his own tv series; that certainly didn't turn out well. Burghoff was a pill to work with; he finally left the show before its end. Maybe it was because they were so annoying that the writers devised such bad endings for their characters. Henry Blake was killed off. A two part farewell show about Radar's departure was also truly depressing. After a miserable R&R he meets a girl and falls in love but is only about the spend about an hour with before he has to get back to camp. When he gets back he's set upon to immediately get a generator, which he fails to do. Brooding about this, he's informed his uncle had died. At first he decided to stay in Korea, but after Klinger gets one he agrees to go back to Iowa. Meantime, he's undergone a complete personality change; the sweet, naive Radar is gone; he's bitter, sarcastic, sardonic, humorless. The camp is going to give him a big farewell party, but wounded arrive and Radar gets a few quick goodbyes instead of a proper farewell. He goes off alone, his face blank, devoid of any happiness or anticipation. Later Hawkeye finds Radar's teddy bear, left behind on Hawkeye's bed. One of the saddest endings in sitcom history.

Although Gary Burghoff left the show supposedly because he didn't want to do a series anymore he returned as Radar, now called "Walter" in a truly dreadful pilot called W*A*L*T*E"R. In that pilot Radar is now back to his old naive innocent self; and his life is a wreck. His bride left him for another man (on their honeymoon!), he's lost the family farm, has shipped his mother off to live with an aunt and is suicidal! He becomes a cop like his cousin; I guess it was thought that the idea of little Walter as a cop would be very funny. It wasn't. The pilot wasn't picked up. I felt bad about what happened to the character of Radar O'Reilly. Radar deserved so much better. I would have loved to have seen go home with the rest of the gang in the last episode of MASH.

Burghoff was one of those actors who should have counted his blessings and saved every cent he ever made, and should have stayed on the train until it didn't go no mo.

But like others before him, he either believed he should have been a star or THE star, or someone convinced him of that, and off he went.

Actually, Burghoff was burned out on MASH.

BJ’s mustache always bugged me. And I like mustaches, but not like that on a soldier allegedly in the 1950s

[quote] You sound like a very unpleasant person.

And you sound like a piece of shit, to make summary judgments like that based on how someone reacts to a character in a sitcom.

It was only a matter of time before basic bitches ruined this thread.

They weren't really soldiers, R99.

[quote]Also, Colonel Flagg was insane and hot as hell.

Don't forget racist too. There was an episode - I thought it was hilarious but it's probably one of the "bad" ones" - where Flagg came in injured and was treated by a black doctor. He was so afraid something bad would happen that, while in recovery, they painted his skin black. I think it was probably Edward Winter's last appearance on the show but I have to agree, he was hot.

[quote} And you sound like a piece of shit, to make summary judgments like that based on how someone reacts to a character in a sitcom.

You sound like a REALLY unpleasant person. No wonder nobody likes you.

[quote] There was an episode - I thought it was hilarious but it's probably one of the "bad" ones" - where Flagg came in injured and was treated by a black doctor. He was so afraid something bad would happen that, while in recovery, they painted his skin black.

You're mixed up. The episode featured a soldier (played by Mills Watson) who before being operated on requests "blood of the right color", not that "darkie stuff." Hawkeye and Trapper play a prank on him by painting him a dark color, making him think he got the wrong blood. Later, he seems to have gained some insight and salutes an African American lieutenant before going back to his outfit.

Flagg was a funny character until they made him as stupid and buffoonish as Frank Burns.

Ok, boys, stop arguing, it's only MASH. Btw, really enjoying this thread--good gossip and stuff I never knew. The show is iconic for many, so thanks for the great info!

MASH had some of the most amazing, inventive, and rapid-fire wordplay since His Girl Friday. For years it was very funny and had a lot of humanity. The later years were different in spirit but it could still be interesting.

Rogers and Farrell had very well-defined bulges in some shots.

[QUOTE] "MASH" is probably the brownest show of the 1970s.

I call bullshit!

Liked it the first couple of years. Then found it boring. I don't think I even watched the last episode. If I did I don't remember it.

[quote] What actual Korean War US Army nurses looked like.

They all look like Mercedes McCambridge, so... lesbian?

[quote] I couldn't stand Colonel Potter: His regular exclamation "Horse hockey!" was thought by the writers to be a big laugh getter, but I just thought it was stupid.

Well, I guess "horse hockey" does funnier than just saying "polo!"

[quote] "I Dream of Klinger."

LOL

My family love this show. My brother was so excited as an adult when he got to visit the actual place in Korea where the show took place. I watched it a lot growing up and always found it horribly depressing.

Not a fan. M*A*S*H was like a licorice jelly bean mixed in with all the good flavors then on CBS: All in the Family, Maude, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, The Jeffersons, Square Pegs, etc.

[quote] No wonder nobody likes you.

It's hard to be much impressed by the kinds of insults that girls in the fourth grade use against one another.

Futurama does MASH

As an adult MASH makes me no longer want to be alive.

It was just very drab, R50. Horrible colours everywhere.

There's an instrumental version of the MASH song I like (no singing), but I don't think it's related to the show or movie.

It premiered right around the time America was trying to work out its Vietnam guilt.

That is what made it so resonant with the American public. There were all these serious films like "Coming Home" and then there was the comedy "Mash."

It had a post-60s weariness to it, and it fit the spirit of the times.

This is kind of interesting.

I read some of the book the film MASH and later the tv series was based on. It was crummy. The doctors acted like juvenile assholes and pulled cruel, despicable pranks, like lashing a guy to a wooden cross and making him believe they were going to burn him to death. And I guess, by today's standards they were racist. Father Mulcahy is called "Dago Red." A black doctor who threw a javelin in college was called "Spearchucker Jones." A Polish dentist is called "The Painless Pole." It was not a good book but must have appealed to a certain audience, because there were a bunch of sequels to it: "MASH Goes To New Orleans", "MASH Goes To Paris", "MASH Goes to London", "MASH Goes To Las Vegas", and on and on and on.

Do people like the movie? I think it's sort of inconsistent.

Hot Lips is such an odd character. It's like two different women. It first she's this repressed up tight woman in the first half and then a silly girly cheerleader in the second.

Boring as fuck.

Burghoff is actually kind of handsome @ R46 & R62 .

I've seen the clip where Radar comes in and announces McLean Stevenson has been killed. They just keep operating in silence while Radar's voice shakes. It's pretty powerful.

(and wow was Stevenson dumb to leave a hit show at its peak. Despite being offered a spinoff in the first season Valerie Harper stayed four years on MTM since she knew it was a good thing. She only left when Mary convinced her to give a spinoff a try and if it flopped told her they'd let her back on to MTM)

I remember how shocking that was to watch back then as a kid. R128. I believe Blake’s death was kept a secret from the cast and the script had a different, happy ending. Burghoff was give that line on set right before the take so all the reactions of shock would be genuine.

The movie was "Animal House Goes to War." The series took that premise but made Alda and Farrell into sensitive, liberal males. I'm embarrassed I watched this shit.

Did they ever tell the cast? Wouldn't they have to? It seems like if hearing Burghoff say it was the first time people heard it they'd could have had bad wrong reactions like confusion or something. Maybe they told him Radar will now say something sad. Remain quiet and keep working. Nobody gasps or anything like might have happened in real life.

[quote] Burghoff is actually kind of handsome @ [R46] & [R62] .

...for someone 5'6" with a deformed hand.

Potter didn't say "horse hockey," he said "horsepucky," which was a variant of "bullpucky" which I once heard was censored from a "Mork & Mindy" episode. I can't find the interview anymore (mainly because I can't remember what interview it was) but whoever was talking about it said they'd heard "pucky" used in place of "shit" from a Borscht Belt comedian decades earlier and thought it would be fine for Mork's character to say, but Standards & Practices wouldn't let them say ANY kind of "pucky."

If they did hear "bullpucky" decades earlier then Potter's "horsepucky" might actually be historically correct.

[quote]And when, who was it?--the adorable old captain or whoever he was, would start saying things like, "Well, son...." No. No way. Not even then.

I'm not understanding why Colonel Potter, written as a no-nonsense officer who really should be in retirement but still cared enough to lead troops in a complicated unofficial war, wouldn't refer to some of his soldiers as "son."

R103, that wasn't Flagg's character, that was a character named Sgt. Condon.

Flagg may have been racist in the show, that wouldn't surprise me, but the episode you're describing doesn't have Flagg getting painted black, it's Condon.

I watched it from time to time because there was nothing else on.

Alan Alda was so smug in it and I loathed him in it but I did like the rest of the cast.

The Robert Altman film is far superior.

R11 "At some point there was an episode where Radar, having gone home, sent a letter saying that the farm was technically failing but he was making more money NOT growing certain crops and getting money from the government, than he would if he grew actual crops, and it was so off-putting that I stopped liking it nearly as much as I had."

Why the FUCK would that bother you this much? I don't get it.

The episodes with Sidney were usually the best, and the CIA guy too. R120 is right.

Who knew M*A*S*H was so popular here?

R135, it was part of what I described as a whole in r11, which you edited out for some reason. It was the final straw, which I think I made clear in my post. It was also one part of the whole situation R96 went into in detail.

I'm not really getting why you would isolate one thing I said in a longer post and freak out about it.

R138 Even as awhile argument, it still makes zero sense

I grew up in the 90s watching it every evening. Great show.

As a young gayling I found Keene Curtis' Colonel Wortman hot

[quote] He was part of my, uh, "awakening," along with Andy Travis, Gonzo Gates

The muppet?!

[quote] By the time Trapper left, the role went from being more of an equal to being second banana to Hawkeye, which might have been why Wayne Rodgers left.

That’s exactly why he left.

It was obvious that that in the later years of MASH Loretta Swit exclusively wore wigs. Her hair was thinning right from the first year of the show and I guess got progressively worse, which is why she wore wigs. But they looked awful, so fake. And one of them made her look like Harpo Marx.

About Loretta Swit....her only marriage was to a pretty faced actor (he was a lot prettier than her) named Dennis Holahan, who was in the MASH episode awkwardly titled "The U.N., the NIght and the Music." That was one MASH episode that I loathed; I disliked the whole episode, but it was particularly excruciating to watch Margaret Houlihan flinging herself (she's practically drooling over him) at Holahan's character in hopes of having sex with him. But the poor man has been rendered impotent by a war injury, so her advances are cringeworthy. Swit and Holahan eventually divorced. He's now an entertainment lawyer. I always got the feeling he was gay. In a lot of pictures I've seen of him he appears to be pinging to high heaven.

Show started in 1972, the year I got a driver's license. I was far too busy at the age of 16 to be bothered with that shit, or to even notice it, and I never watched a SINGLE episode of it during its 10-11 year run. Dreary, is how I would characterize the moments of it I did see on others' televisions, here and there over the years. I couldn't believe the crap people wasted their lives staring at, at night after dark.

[quote] I couldn't believe the crap people wasted their lives staring at, at night after dark.

Says the man on Datalounge.

Ann Miller delivers a great "What you're telling me is a load of horse pucky" as Coco in "Mullholland Dr.".

MASH as interpreted under internet rule 34.

PG version of the 1982 trailer

I met Loretta Swit once, not a nice person.

R149 - Was it because you asked her if she was Diane Ladd?

Was it because you asked her if she resented Sharon Gless?

Actually, I think hot lips wasn't unattractive. She wasn't what I think of as hot, but she wasn't ugly.

I admit it. I didn’t bother to read the whole thread because it was unbearable. Did anybody mention Spearshucker Jones? The lone black guy.

They never show the final episode in syndication runs. Me TV ran it once as a special event. And from the little I saw it was underwhelming and very Alda centric.

I think the finale was the most watched show in US TV history for a number of years.

I may have watched two or three episodes, one of them being the finale. I detest Alan Alda.

They liked it. People still watch it on streaming.

I hated Alan Alda who was so smug and pleased with himself in the show. He gave the impression he's exactly like that as a person.

Alda fancied himself at the forefront of women’s rights. In retrospect some of his later episodes were more demeaning than the earlier ones.

The finale was the worst. A showcase for Alda to be sanctimonious and hammy.

David Ogden Stiers blew the rest of that cast away.

The storyline featuring Charles and the Korean musicians was better than any of the rest of it, including Hawkeye's latest (he had several) mental breakdown. The rest of it was just meh. I thought the best part of the finale was near the end, when one by one the cast leaves the 4077 for the last time. That was very affecting.

I see baby tastes on DL are not limited to food

[quote] They never show the final episode in syndication runs

It was 2.5 hours - I imagine it would be a mess to try to scoop into 30 min episodes.

And yes, as much as I liked MASH the finale was a mess, at least the beginning of it was. It was about an hour too long.

This show had THE WORST laugh track ever! So fake and annoying.

I HATED THIS SHOW.

It’s actually the second most popular show on the oldies channel Me-TV behind only The Andy Griffith Show.

Does anyone else suspect that R100 is Loretta Swit?

Mike Farrell was hot, although not so with a 70s mustache.

I once had a dream about a muscled up Colonel Potter throwing a hot fuck into me.

I distinctly remember feeling an immediate buzzkill whenever this would come on at 10:30pm on the weekdays, right after The Simpsons.

r100, Sounds like that could be a line lifted from a MASH episode.

I remember reading in PEOPLE that Farrell was very gay friendly and was pretty outspoken about rights for lesbians and gay men. He was married to his first wife then and she said people would even come up to her and ask her if Mike was gay. He wasn’t, but folks were so stupid back then. He had some salty things to say about homophobes too. Wish that I could find the article.

I always found the TV series M*A*S*H to be a big fucking snooze.

I loved the bromance between Hawkeye and BJ. That hug between them on the series finale was the very definition of catharsis. And then when Hawkeye was in the helicopter taking off and saw that BJ had spelled out “Goodbye” on the ground…that gets me every time.

[quote] although not so with a 70s mustache.

You’re so wrong about that. I’ve noticed the ‘70s mustache is showing up now and again on Gen Z and younger Millennials. It might be on the verge of a comeback and I’m here for it.

I grew up watching MASH, and at the time it was one of the better shows on the air. I was in college by the time the finale aired -- we had a viewing party in the main lounge of my dorm-- there were more than 100 kids there.

R172, true, it’s coming back. It’s a hit or miss depending on the guy.

I remember my shock at seeing Alan Alda in The Mephisto Waltz after only seeing him in MASH.

Speaking of which, why were there so many movies in that era with plots involving witches, satanic cults and the occult?

For the same reason the prior decade was all about zombies, and the one before that was about vampires? These things are cyclical.

One of the best shows ever.

I ask this same question about Sex and The City all the time.

Although some people disliked it (it think it got on a MASH "worst episodes" list) I always liked the episode " a", the one about the klutzy nurse played to perfection by Arlene Golonka. I liked it because it was fun to see Hawkeye get the short end of the stick for a change. Usually it was Frank Burns who was the one getting tormented.

Just saw one the other day R172 ! The guy was sporting a Fu Manchu and he was hot !

Loretta Swit’s cameltoe has entered the chat.

Loretta bore a resemblance to Miss Piggy.

I was young, like 10 when it was on, my parents loved. To me it was an anti-war drama with some comedy and sitcom character development. There was an episode where Hawkeye tries to save a Vietcong soldier who was suffocating from blood using a pen for tracheotomy. I will never forget that scene, made me very anti-war (along with the Mel Gibson movie Gallipoli).

The moonshine still in Hawkeyes tent, I thought that was cool too, because I come from a family or Irish drinkers. It was in reruns and I watched a lot of them, and consider it quality television, but not something I would watch today.

It was pretty dire back then, there were great shows, but three mostly banal network channels, and even cable was like 20 channels. HBO sucked, just played "The Beastmaster" 4 times a day.. Today tons of programming, easier to find something you really like.

Great show. Better earlier than later, like Frasier, but still very good in its later seasons (again, like Frasier).

It was of its time, and watching reruns is comforting, like visiting old friends. It’s always been chic to dump on things that are both good and popular. Oh well.

R182 Miss Piggy is hot.

[quote] Miss Piggy is hot.

Hotter than Loretta Swit!

[quote] Miss Piggy is hot.

She sizzles like bacon!

I found the version of the theme song I liked.