Of course it does. The man is the killer of funny.
The steer toward drama certainly does. The show was 90% comedic early on. We had occasional dramatic moments, like Sometimes You Hear the Bullet or that episode where Trapper nearly adopts the orphan child, but it was totally a funny show.
By the 7th season, I’d say the ratio was more 70% funny and 30% serious.
I actually prefer the later seasons, though. I’d say the prime was seasons 6-8.
Never noticed it before, but now that I think about it, it seems that it did get louder in later years. Maybe it was a response to the popularity of Norman Lear’s sitcoms in the seventies. All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Sanford and Son were often little more than characters yelling at one another.
I agree. Groucho was pretty funny in his time, but Alan Alda’s Groucho fixation always interfered with my enjoyment of the show. I have never found Alan Alda funny.
Alan Alda should stick to playing arrogant, sanctimonious assholes. He is so well suited for those roles
Besides becoming loud and melodramatic, the show was horrible in its last years. Frank replaced by a boring snob, Hotlips becomes “Margaret” with a 80s shag cut, Klinger wears mens clothes, Trapper John replaced by a guy with a 70s porn 'stache, Hawkeye is a women’s-libber and is best friends with Margaret, Father Mulcahy is a featured regular, and Colonel Potter was funnier as Joe Fridays partner on Dragnet
This may just have been a coincidence, but for me the real turning point was when Radar left. I’ll watch any episode before that; anything after he left, I pretty much avoid.
The real problem of the final seasons was that the actors’ personalities began overpowering the characters’, until nothing remained. This was most evident with Alda’s Hawkeye, particularly in that ghastly final episode. The entire point of the character, from book to movie to early episodes of the TV show was that he would remain determinedly insane in a positive way as the only defense against the negative insanity of war. Letting war get the better of Hawkeye that way undermined everything the show was supposed to be about. I continue to regard that last episode as a fanfic pastiche written by an ignorant and disturbed devotee.
I think that in the later episodes, just about everyone involved in the show forgot that the book and movie and first shows were about commentary on the Viet Nam war, war in general, and the military. The characters also changed too much over the course of the show. Yeah, some growth is good. But as someone said, Radar actually REGRESSED over the course of the show, getting more naive and childlike instead of getting wiser, or at least more cynical.
Also, the damn show was over exposed, WAY over exposed. Back before cable, my husband was able to watch it at least three times a day on weekdays.
I asked a question a long time ago out here about Radar (I think it was titled “What happened to Radar O’Riley?”) and the one answer I remembered was that Gary Burgoff wanted to change Radar’s personality, and make him into HIS vision of Radar. Whoever let him do that should have been fired.
Based on this memory, I wonder if each actor was given the same option… turn your character into what you think he/she should be. That would explain the wholesale changes in the show’s approach to each episode.
Radar went from the wise all-knowing company clerk in the movie and in the first two seasons to some immature, virginal, grape nehi-drinking, teddy bear hugging twerp at the end. It was bizarre. One of the local stations on my cable system runs MAS*H, and they recently ran the first season. Radar drank martinis and whiskey with Hawkeye, Trapper and Henry. He got laid. He mailed home a jeep in boxes. I don’t remember the teddy bear at all. He was able to get around red tape and he had no problem lying to get what he needed. He was very true to the character in the movie.
By the end of his run, all of his original character traits were gone. He didn’t drink. He was a virgin. He was incredibly immature and naive. He had a holier-than-thou personality that was nurtured by Burgoff.
I wonder if, when Alda gained creative control, if he didn’t permit ALL long-term characters to change if they wanted. The only character that stayed the same throughout his run was Frank Burns (Larry Linville). Other than that, they all changed… Klinger, Radar, Hawkeye, Potter, Margaret, Mulkahey…
I never thought about this until now, but perhaps this also played a role in the changing volume and delivery of the character’s lines.
Well Larry Linville left because his character wasn’t growing the way the other characters were. I’ve never been all that bothered by the show’s movement towards drama. If I want to laugh for half an hour, I put in one of the older episodes. If I want something a little less goofy, I put in a newer one. I rather imagine if it had stayed farcical throughout all the seasons people would be complaining at how one-note all the characters were.
As for the OP, I don’t remember noticing an appreciable increase in volume but that certainly doesn’t mean there wasn’t.
Or at least slaked.
Well, there you go. Shows you how much I know. Although I was spot on about Linville’s character not changing! 
The move toward dramatic plots didn’t bother me. The acting and “shouting” did.
I don’t know if anyone mentioned this, but if I had to describe it, it was like they were stage acting, and were forced to project their voice to the back row. I just watched one this evening (newer, Potter episode) and it suffered from exactly what I’m referring to. Anyone that has these on dvd or tape can check it out.
It was the one where Potter misses some metal in a patient and Hawkeye had to go get it. Potter flips and calls Dr. Sydney Freedman, the psychiatrist. It’s a show where Potter laments about how there are continually new developments in how to kill, but why can’t they “figure out how to end this stupid war.”