Harry Morgan did wonderful as a serious yet funny Potter.
When the show included the full cast it had funny moments. the Hawkeye show sucked.
I like the middle years of MASH. Starting with the episode when Col Potter is introduced. Radar is company clerk. I think Trapper John was still there too? I like BJ Hunnicutt too after he joined the show.
I always had a problem with Col Blake being so incompetent. That was pushing credibility too far. Incompetent medical care isn’t funny. Col Potter ran the unit professionally and still allowed the doctors freedom to goof off and act like civilians.
I always prefered Harry Morgan as General Steele, rather than Col. Potter.
Potter increased the show’s quality tremendously. I think just about everyone wished they had a boss like him.
Nope. Trapper left the show at the same time as Henry. McLean Stevenson got an offer to have his own comedy show, and decided to leave MASH to become a big comedy star. Possibly the worst mistake in TV history. The show he left MASH for was “Hello Larry.” And if you don’t remember it… point’s made.
Anyway, during the off-season that year Wayne Rogers decided to give up on acting completely and also quit the show. You can’t argue with that choice, because he said he was uncomfortable in front of the camera and didn’t like doing it, and he went on to make mega-millions as an investment guru to the stars.
So the first episode of the next season is the one where Hawkeye tries to catch up with Trapper after hearing he was catching a plane home. He misses him, but while he’s at the airbase he picks up BJ Hunnicutt. That two-part episode had my favorite Hunnicutt moment at the very end, where the ‘dashing young doctor’ that Frank and Margaret are going to groom in their image shows up drunk and says, “How ya doing, ferret-face?”
He wasn’t an incompetent doctor, and he wasn’t incompetent where it mattered (running the hospital itself and the surgical suite). He just wasn’t regular army, so he had no time for all the ‘sign in triplicate’ forms for everything and the rest of the bureaucratic nonsense that middle-ranked non-combatant officers had to deal with. That’s what got him into trouble with the brass, and what allowed Radar to actually run the unit.
Nitpick: Wayne Rogers quit because he saw his role on the show getting smaller compared to Alda. After MAS*H he did a short-lived detective show, City of Angels, then starred for three years on the sitcom House Calls. The conversion to investment guru was gradual.
Yeppers. The perfect cast. Sherman put up with just so much of the Swamp’s nonsense. He knew they were great surgeons and allowed a lot- but put his foot down when he had too.
Winchester actually sometimes won against the dynamic duo. Burns always lost. No fun there.
Burns got really annoying near the end of his run. The character was just drifting aimlessly without the Frank/Margaret team. But Winchester really pepped things up.
I can’t pin it to a specific episode, but Hawkeye’s sanctimonious preaching caused it to jump the shark somewhere along the line. I’ve been watching the series in order recently. I’m just up to the episode where Radar gets a Hardship Discharge.
The show lasted 11 seasons. The Korean War only lasted 3 years. That strikes me as unbalanced.
I voted for the first choice and didn’t even bother to read the other choices.
I quite like all of it. It’s a shame the continuity is so screwed up, because it’s quite rewatchable.
I never found Margaret Houlihan all that attractive when I was watching it originally (I was too young, and she always looked older, which she was - late 30s), but rewatching the show a year ago I could see, especially in the early episodes, the bombshell she was originally supposed to be.
It’s been running on MeTV for a while and I found it to have dated badly, especially the later episodes which are either maudlin or preachy. The black comedy of the first few years holds up better.
I liked the Winchester/Radar overlap years the best. But I think the show was very good to great for most of its run.
The show was more mature with the cast change-over. Burn’s humor had run its course long before he left. So I probably have a negative opinion of his contribution to the show based on the later years. I guess I liked the dramedy years better than the early comedy years.
This surprises me, she still does not seem that attractive to me, especially compared to many of the other nurses on the show. When I was first watching the show she was far too old for me (like you) but even now in my mid-40s she still holds only mild appeal to me.
- All of the seasons were great no matter who was on the show.
-This is the only syndicated TV show I can watch consistently. No matter how many times I’ve seen an episode, I can still enjoy it.
- As for Hot Lips, I think the idea was that these were men who were thousands of miles from home, lonely, and surrounded by other men for the most part. She didn’t have to be the “hottest chick ever” to be strongly desired by all the men in camp.
The problem there is that pretty much every other nurse on the show was hotter than Hot-Lips.
Ranger Jeff:
The 11 seasons that the show lasted were (at most) 24 half-hours each. The 3 years that the war lasted were 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (and 366 in 1952).
There are 12 seasons in 3 years. Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn x 3 
There were 255 episode and the finale. We had about 100 hours of the show in all. Most shows took place over only 1-3 days. So the days shown were probably under 3 years with room to spare. The aging of the characters from season 1 to season 11 was extreme but the time span really is not.
I put down the first three seasons. They were the funniest and most enjoyable. But I never disliked the show and there were great performances and episodes throughout the run.
When I think about it most closely I’m a bit all over the place with my thoughts on the show.
I like Blake over Potter but not by much. Potter had some great moments.
I like Winchester over Burns. The fact that Burns didn’t evolve while the show changed around him really stuck out. But he was the catalyst for some very funny moments although I never laughed at him. Winchester was played by a much better actor and was just written better.
Trapper over BJ. Just not a fan of the character or the mustache. Enough about Peg and Mill Valley.
Early Hawkeye over later Hawkeye. I’m a big fan of funny in comedy.
Besides the early episodes had Loudon Wainwright III and Spearchucker Jones. Can’t beat that.
Loved any episodes with COL Flagg or Sydney.
And of course Captain Tuttle. We can all be comforted by the thought that he’s not really gone, there’s a little Tuttle left in all of us, in fact you might say that all of us together made up Tuttle.
…but know this. You can cut me off from the civlised 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. – Charles
:discoveres teapot contains not tea but rubber chicken:
Get me the hell OUT OF HERE!