Nice to meet you @russ1 .
Welcome to the Dope.
I can’t agree the show spiraled toward the end.
It was highly rated after the first seasons slow start.
The finalé may be the highest rated finalé ever. Or was, for a long time.
I like Sidney Freedman. As some of you have said above, he may have been the biggest hero of all…helping people handle the horror and absurdity they had to deal with on a daily basis.
One episode had him treating a Chinese-American sergeant named Michael Yee. (He was played by prolific Asian character actor Clyde Kusatsu. Among many other roles, he was the first Wong onscreen, in that 1978 Dr. Strange TV-movie.) Michael had served with honor on the European front in WWII, and had distinguished himself in Korea by volunteering for any number of dangerous missions. But when the doctors told him he was going to be discharged, he didn’t seem very happy about it, insisting he had to get back to his unit. They told him he was going home and that seemed to settle it…until he tried to kill himself. Sidney was called in and, as always, got to the heart of the problem. Michael was facing an Asian enemy for the first time…shooting Chinese soldiers. As Sidney put it, to be a good American he had to kill Chinese…and to be a good Chinese, he had to kill himself. Hawkeye asked Sidney if he thought Michael would attempt suicide a second time. Sidney replied that this wasn’t his first…why else would Michael have volunteered for all those dangerous missions?
Hawkeye had a great line, as Michael was released into Sidney’s care for treatment in preparation for discharge. “Maybe your job is harder than ours after all, Sidney…at least we can see when people are bleeding.”
Such a great casting with Alan Arbus.
“Don’t forget folks. Sometimes you just need to pull down your pants and slide on the ice!”
Every time you saw Sidney you knew it would be a good episode. He worked steady over the years but I always thought he should have done more.
Ladies and gentlemen take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
The MASH wiki says that after Radar left, they offered to make Sidney a regular, but Arbus didn’t want to commit to anything beyond a supporting role.
As much as I liked Sidney, I felt like the show’s approach to mental illness was too pat and cookie cutter. It used the “phobia of the day” meme that was popular in the 70’s and had the crazy people acting out full-fledged hallucinations with the flip of a switch. All we needed was the Yakkety Sax soundtrack and the white uniforms with butterfly nets to complete the schtick.
There was the one episode where the camp was forced to relocate to caves to avoid the shelling, and Hawkeye was revealed to be claustrophobic. That was never an issue before and wasn’t after. It didn’t make sense that somebody who braved the hazards of war to perform surgery numerous times all the sudden folds inside a cave. Furthermore, Margaret told him she had a fear of loud noises, while explosions were erupting in the background, and she didn’t bat an eyelash.
I see where you’re coming from. But Society Marches On, and all that. They were probably going on an understanding of mental illness/trauma that seems outdated by today’s standards, which had to be simplified even further to fit into a half-hour television format. To the show’s credit, they at least seemed to acknowledge at the end of stories like these that the patient was only at the beginning of their healing, and that it would take more work. In the example I mentioned, Sidney explains that Sgt. Yee is going to need more treatment until he’s well enough to resume his life stateside.
I have known people who are claustrophobic and it really doesn’t manifest in any other circumstances but directly and specifically in caves.
Claustrophobia does different things to different individuals.
I’m slightly claustrophobic in small areas with many people. Although I don’t mind being alone in my closet. Don’t ask how I know this.
I get some weird fear and anxiety in large open spaces. I’m kinda ok if there is sky and not some high industrial looking ceiling(Walmart, HomeDepot, can’t look up. 
).
Yep. Phobias are personal.
I think that even acknowledging the existence of mental illness put the show ahead of its time, even if they got a lot of the details wrong.
It was a 24 minute show each with an A and B plot and time for jokes. It’s not like they could do a deep dive into the subject.
And it was a comedy. Deep subjects were just beginning to come into sitcoms at that time.
Maybe there never was a place in a comedy TV show for serious life subjects.
I think it’s done a bunch nowadays.
I don’t really know any of the modern sitcoms.
Well, Scrubs was similar…but is no longer considered modern. I mean, it debuted 24-25 years ago.
With MASH, I just really love the “this is all a bunch of bullshit, absolute hell on earth, none of us want to be here, trauama is coming in daily, and we all have to just…BAND TOGETHER AND DEAL WITH IT.”
It’s a great theme. Awfulness, the worst of humanity, and dealing with it with people who were strangers before you were thrown together.
Douglas McArthur, remember, did say that of all the war he saw, Korea was the most destruction. Leveled both north and south. Misery to an already poor people.
Mine are called Gertrude.
The theme song is haunting enough just as an instrumental, but it’s even more so with the lyrics as we hear in the original movie. And the vocals are gorgeous.
But it rattles me a little that these lyrics “Suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/And I can take or leave it if I please…” were written by a fifteen-year-old kid. The composer tried to write lyrics that referenced suicide (since it was to refer to a character’s attempted suicide and be sung during his “wake”), and wanted to make them sound a little ridiculous, as would befit an intentionally-melodramatic scene. But he couldn’t make it sound ridiculous enough, and so director Robert Altman passed the duty to his fifteen-year-old son Michael. I can’t help but wonder if Robert felt rattled on reading them…I know I would have been if I’d had a young son who wrote lyrics like those.
But, apparently, Michael turned out just fine. More than fine…he made far more from song royalties than his father did for directing MASH, since he got royalties for the TV show’s use of the song even if the lyrics were never heard! (That was why Gene Roddenberry, in a rather devious move, wrote lyrics to the Star Trek theme song, so he’d get a cut of the royalties even if the lyrics were never used onscreen.)
(bolding mine)
“Painless” was also the nickname of the character who was the “suicide”.
“I just want you to know…you’re wasting your entire education.”
Roddenberry wasn’t the first to do that. Johnny Carson is listed as co-writer on the theme song when he hosted the Tonight Show. And the most blatant example of all is Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown blatantly ripping off Cole Porter’s “Be a Clown” and titling it “Make 'Em Laugh” for Singin’ in the Rain without even giving Porter a credit.
Did he write lyrics or something?
Very bizarre since the song pre-existed Johnny taking over the show and Johnny is nowhere credited.
He is credited as co-writer with Paul Anka, but, as you said, the song already existed. I can’t find any reference to it having lyrics. Maybe Carson added the drum riff opening.