# The bullying of Frank Burns in M\*A\*S\*H
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** tv-shows-scripted
**Created:** [October 6, 2020, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329 "2020-10-06T10:53:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/81 "2020-10-07T15:05:26Z")
> [@](#):
>
> …He’s a tattle tale…
Tittle tattle spoils the battle.
mmm
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/82 "2020-10-07T15:23:50Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#):
>
> > [@Schnitte](#):
> >
> > But as I said, I’ve only seen season 1 so far; maybe the issue of Burns’ incompetence is clearer and less ambiguous in later episodes.
>
> I seem to remember an episode where, through gross incompetence, he left a sponge inside a patient, which led to sepsis.
Maybe the episode when he’s thinking he’s about to be promoted, and is acting even worse than usual (he replies to the report from Margaret about a death he’s responsible for with “Well, that’s one on me”). No wait - that was when he cut a corner by skipping a procedure that was standard (“exteriorizing”).
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### Author:  [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/83 "2020-10-07T15:38:23Z")
Just to be scrupulously fair, I believe that the patient in question did survive, but required emergency surgery in Tokyo and “nearly died.” In regard to the discussion above, it’s notable that it’s Margaret who’s reporting this. Whatever fondness she may have for him, she doesn’t let him off the hook or try to hide his mistake from the rest of the staff.
I also recall an episode where he checked the pulse of a patient with hypothermia at the wrist, declared him dead, and started to move on. Trapper found a pulse by checking the carotid artery (in the neck), and told Frank that’s exactly why you always check the carotid, especially in cases of hypothermia.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/84 "2020-10-07T15:44:20Z")
I always imagined it like this:
Blake- probably a civilian doctor who was drafted during WWII, probably spent a lot or all of the war stateside, or doing stuff far behind the lines. Got out in 1945, got dragged back to Korea unwillingly, with a nice pair of silver oak leaves on his shoulders. Maybe he had stayed in the reserves or something. So a Lieutenant Colonel, but not one who was a lifer, and not one who really wanted to be in the military.
Burns and Houlihan were almost certainly WWII vets, except that they probably liked the military and stayed in after the war. That’s why they were both Majors, so spit and polish, and looked down on Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ, etc… and all the enlisted people. They represented the toxic aspects of the military.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye, Trapper and BJ were civilian doctors who’d been drafted into service for Korea. Maybe they were a few years younger than Burns and Houlihan; that might explain it- they were still in med school at the end of WWII. Anyway, they were NOT career military people, and didn’t really want to be there, and the military nonsense that Burns and Houlihan represented was odious and worthy of mockery in their minds.
Meanwhile, Burns and Houlihan saw them as horribly undisiciplined and unmilitary, and were pretty vocal about it. It didn’t help that Burns latched on to all the negative aspects of military life to champion- uniform regulations, etc…
Winchester was the real interesting one; very much in the same vein as Hawkeye and BJ, but at first, was portrayed as similar to Burns. But it came out that he could learn, wasn’t hung up on military stuff, and was more similar than not to the others.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/85 "2020-10-07T15:47:11Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> Burns and Houlihan were almost certainly WWII vets, except that they probably liked the military and stayed in after the war. That’s why they were both Majors, so spit and polish, and looked down on Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ, etc… and all the enlisted people. They represented the toxic aspects of the military.
Certainly the case for Houlihan, since it was often made clear that she was career military. For Burns, I’d never gotten the sense that he was a long-term military doctor; he may have volunteered to serve in Korea, but I always thought that he, like Hawkeye and Trapper, was a civilian surgeon before Korea.
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### Author:  [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/86 "2020-10-07T15:49:50Z")
It was pretty explicit that Burns was in private practice before Korea. There’s a reference to his bookkeeping at one point, I remember.
But yeah, Houlihan is the daughter of a career military man who became career military herself, and is only a nurse because that’s one of the few ways a woman could make a career in the military in her time.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/87 "2020-10-07T15:50:04Z")
I found a very interesting post elsewhere that hits it from several angles.
> **[On MASH, why was Hawkeye a Captain and Frank a Major if they were both...](https://www.quora.com/On-MASH-why-was-Hawkeye-a-Captain-and-Frank-a-Major-if-they-were-both-drafted-If-they-were-in-the-military-the-same-time-why-would-they-be-different-ranks)**
>
> Answer (1 of 16): In 1968, I had a fellow graduate student who just got his PhD to go with his MD degree. And he got his letter from Selective Service. However, his draft was declined. For doctors, the rank at commissioning is based on experience,...
tl;dr is that stuff tended to not survive the transition from book to movie to television show.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/88 "2020-10-07T15:53:10Z")
He’d have had to have been career; in general doctors (and lawyers) are commissioned Captains when they come into the military. Nurses come in as Lieutenants.
Maybe they commission more experienced doctors as Majors, but I never got that impression from the show; I always read it that Burns and Houlihan were career military, and that his Major rank was an indication of his lifer status versus the regular draftee Captains. Houlihan’s Major rank more so, in that it indicated two, or maybe three promotions.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/89 "2020-10-07T15:58:39Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> He’d have had to have been career; in general doctors (and lawyers) are commissioned Captains when they come into the military. Nurses come in as Lieutenants.
[The entry for Burns on the MASH Wiki](https://mash.fandom.com/wiki/Major_Frank_Burns) points out several things which indicate that he was in private practice (at least the TV version of the character):
> [@](#):
>
> Frank claims he was in practice for 12 years and that the local funeral director sent him thank-you cards every Christmas.
> [@](#):
>
> Even with his many surgical shortcomings, Frank still exalted himself over the others, largely because of his own thriving practice back home while the other surgeons were making paltry incomes as they were sharpening their own procedural skills.
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### Author:  [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/90 "2020-10-07T16:16:12Z")
_Caveat: I’ve probably seen most of the episodes of MASH, but I’m not a particularly big fan of the show._
In real life, in the contemporary U.S. military (I don’t know about draftees in the Korean War era), people who receive Direct Commissions can come in at higher rank, depending on skills and experience. Captain is the _minimum_ rank for an M.D. I remember one story in _Stars & Stripes_ from 2005ish about a doctor who was a department head at a major hospital who received a Direct Commission as a Colonel.
My impression from the show was:
Margaret was career military, and had worked her way up from Lieutenant to Major. Burns was a volunteer, so was treated a bit better by the military hierarchy than the draftees, and, as mentioned upthread, almost certainly actively sought out promotion. Hawkeye, Trapper, and BJ were draftees who didn’t care at all about their military careers, and they not only didn’t seek promotions, they actively avoided them (for example the episode mentioned upthread where Hawkeye has to command the unit for a day and absolutely hates it). Also as mentioned upthread, Blake was prior service and probably a Reservist called into Active Duty. Potter was career military.
Winchester may have been Prior Service (his character seems old enough he might have served in WWII) and thus had more time in service and in grade. He didn’t seem to particularly care about his military career, but he probably would have sought promotion, just for the status. As I noted above, doctors can also receive a Direct Commission to a rank higher than Captain. I can imagine his wealthy and politically connected family pulling strings to arrange that (“The promotion to Chief of Thoracic Surgery is just a formality interrupted by the draft. He effectively already is a department head at a major hospital and supervises other surgeons; his Army rank should reflect that.”).
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### Author:  [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/91 "2020-10-07T17:02:03Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#):
>
> Being meatball surgery, they’re supposed to be cutting corners but sometimes Frank cuts one too many.
And when Charles arrived they criticized him for _not_ cutting corners.
I think there was no question that Winchester was an excellent surgeon, but they made the point that the type of surgery required at a MASH still came with a steep learning curve, and he grudgingly realized he had something to learn from Hawkeye and BJ.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/92 "2020-10-07T17:07:45Z")
> [@Wheelz](#):
>
> And when Charles arrived they criticized him for _not_ cutting corners.
When these were fresh new episodes, I remember kind of chafing at that sort of “manufactured conflict”, Hawkeye effectivly criticized Winchester for being too good a surgeon. (I know it’s more complicated, but that’s what it boils down to.)
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/93 "2020-10-07T17:51:36Z")
IIRC it was more that Winchester was being something of an artist and diva with his surgery, and he needed to just sew them up and move to the next soldier.
In essence, the perfect was the enemy of the good in that case; good enough surgery allowed for more patients to be worked on and more lives to be saved, while perfect surgery wasn’t as conducive to that.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/94 "2020-10-07T18:21:17Z")
“I do one thing, I do it well, and then I move on.”
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/95 "2020-10-07T18:25:40Z")
> [@silenus](#):
>
> I do one thing, I do it well, and then I move on.
“I do it _very_ well”
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/96 "2020-10-07T18:25:57Z")
No, there were several Lieutenants. But most of them female.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/97 "2020-10-07T18:31:31Z")
I think the Winchester character was designed to be redeemed. They couldn’t do that with Frank, he was clearly a congenital asshole.
This thread reminds of something from so long ago. Someone at work told me to be sure to watch the next episode of MASH. He wouldn’t say why but said I wouldn’t want to miss it. That was the episode where Henry Blake goes home, but never makes it. Turns out someone in my co-worker’s family knew Alan Alda and had been tipped off. That was around 45 years ago.
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### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/98 "2020-10-07T18:43:22Z")
My theory is that Winchester received his oak leaves through family influence.
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/99 "2020-10-07T18:45:25Z")
Remember, Winchester originally had a cushy job - stationed in Tokyo. It wasn’t until he offended a superior that he got sent to MASH
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2020, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bullying-of-frank-burns-in-m-a-s-h/922329/100 "2020-10-07T18:50:54Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> > [@silenus](#):
> >
> > I do one thing, I do it well, and then I move on.
>
> “I do it _very_ well”
“It’s not that we’re any better than you. It’s just that, through sheer repetition, we’ve gotten fast.”
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