I Still Can't Stop Watching M*A*S*H - Part One

If I'm watching TV and M*A*S*H is on (and the likelihood is very good that it's on somewhere), I still feel compelled to watch it.  

M*A*S*H continues to hold my attention after all these years for its remarkable ability to reinvent itself over the course of its 11 year run. 

 

On this date in 1972, the first episode of M*A*S*H aired on CBS on September 17, 1972. To commemorate this occasion, I'm going to pontificate on some of my favorite episodes.  

 

Except I can’t just distill this down to one post. Today’s post will look at the first 3 seasons. Subsequent posts will address other eras of M*A*S*H. 

 

The first season leaned heavily on broad farcical humor; while many M*A*S*H fans look back on the early days of the show with fondness, I find some of the humor a bit awkward. 

 

Still I regard "Tuttle" as a favorite even as the premise spins out to further and further extremes. Hawkeye and Trapper John arrange to create an imaginary surgeon named Tuttle to join the 4077.  It is an absurd concept as Maj. Burns and Col. Blake jockey for position as Tuttle's best friend. When Hawkeye arranges for Tuttle to jump out of helicopter on a heroic rescue mission sans parachute, Blake mournfully eulogizes Tuttle as the best surgeon the 4077 ever had.  

 

"The Army-Navy Game" finds the 4077 being shelled which leaves an unexploded bomb in the compound. The tension of this predicament plays out with the annual Army-Navy game in the background.  This episode was written by McLean Stevenson and features several wonderful comedic moments with a shellshocked Blake thinking he's on the phone with his wife in Indiana and later with Blake reading off bomb defusing instructions to Hawkeye and Trapper but in not quite the right order.

 

My absolute favorite funniest episode of the first 3 seasons of M*A*S*H is "5 O'Clock Charlie”.  An ammo dump has been place near the camp with the idea that the enemy won’t touch it being so closed to a hospital. It was an idea the Army got from the Germans in WWII so the Army is resorting to ideas from the losing side of WWII. And the ammo dump has drawn the attention of the North Koreans in the form of a punctual but inept North Korean bomber pilot. Every day at 5:00 in the afternoon, 5 O'Clock Charlie with his sputtering bi-plane and his astigmatism hurls a single hand thrown bomb towards the general direction of the ammo dump. Meanwhile in the 4077^th, there is a daily betting pool on how far from the target will Charlie’s bomb actually land.  Frank Burns is in a tizzy that nobody is treating these attacks by the enemy seriously and angles to get an anti-aircraft gun installed at the 4077^th. Meanwhile, Hawkeye and Trapper have the idea that if the dump is gone, the threat is gone. They actually arrange for bright red arrows pointing at a red target over the dump to help Charlie but even with that help, Charlie still can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Maybe Frank’s new anti-aircraft gun will help?

 

Another funny classic from this era of  M*A*S*H and one of my personal favorite episodes is “Big Mac”.  The 4077^th has such a great record of saving lives that Gen. Douglas MacArthur is coming to pay a visit. 99% of the episode focuses on the efforts of the camp to get ready for MacArthur’s visit. The staff meeting with MacArthur’s aide who reviews each minute of the general’s meticulously planed visit is a stand out sequence. Even now, if anybody around me says “time for lunch”, my mind adds the line “and the eating thereof”. For all the efforts to get the camp ready for the visit (including making sure Klinger stays out of sight), MacArthur shows up early, his jeep quickly circling the camp while the general never looks up. Except once, to see Klinger standing by the camp’s exit, dressed as the Statue of Liberty with a giant sparkler for a torch.  Gen. Douglas MacArthur gives Klinger a salute and he’s off on his way. 

 

No look back at the first three seasons of M*A*S*H would be complete with looking at the end of season 3 and the episode titled "Abyssinia, Henry". McLean Stevenson had decided to leave M*A*S*H so Lt. Colonel Henry Blake gets his orders to go home. Most of the episode is a funny send off for Blake. There is a bittersweet bit before the very end with Radar, trying really hard to hold it together as Blake’s helicopter is about to take off.  As moving as this scene between Radar and Blake is, it’s nothing compared to the gut punch that we get in the episodes final moments. Radar enters the OR during surgery to inform the staff that the plane Henry Blake was on was shot down over the Sea of Japan. There were no survivors. 

 

With that M*A*S*H entered into a new uncharted phase which I will write up about here in a follow up post next Tuesday.