I guess I should start by saying that I do like, and still watch, the show. But that does not revoke my license to complain.
And this thread is not about the oft-cited MASH complaints that have been beaten to death here and elsewhere – When it became the Alan Alda schmaltzfest, the fact that the series lasted longer than the actual war, the revelation that it is not about Korea but Vietnam.
Here are the less weighty aspects of MASH that scale my gills:
The haircuts. Hawkeye mostly, but plenty of minor, background soldiers sport hair that was in fashion during my high school days of the 1970s. This series took place before the Beatles, fer chrissakes!
In an army hospital, where there are only four surgeons, and incoming wounded could arrive at any moment, would we expect that these surgeons regularly get themselves absolutely shitfaced?
The fact that The Swamp has no walls other than a see-through screen. Where do these guys go to change their undies?
It is supposed to be a mobile hospital, but check out the facilities. There are actual buildings. With floors. And walls. How they gonna manage those components in a bug-out?
Speaking of bugging out – is it a big deal or not? It’s only happened twice in the series to my recollection: in the two-part “Bug Out” episodes, and when BJ wanted to organize a “reunion” of family members back home. During the former, folks were flipping their wigs at the thought of a bug out, as if it were the greatest of inconveniences (and it was portrayed as such). And then, in the reunion episode, they bugged out as casually as if they were running to 7-11 for a Slurpee. Then, they turned around later that day and de-bugged back to whence they came. Nobody fussed, nobody got their thongs in a twist.
Finally, the latter years suffered from dialogue that sounded way too written. Seriously, the bulk of many episodes were nothing but exchanges of one-liners and puns, not conversation. I can picture the writers typing with the right hand while thumbing through a thesaurus with the left.
Example:
Potter: Now just hang on to your homburg Winchester. You come barrelling into your CO’s bunkhouse, bellow at him like a berserk buffalo aggravating his anger and his hangover all because you want to bug out. How would you like to spend the rest of the war with a bull’s-eye on your dome?
Don’t worry about the appalling lack of enough surgeons for more than one shift, because they don’t have a single anesthesiologist. Well they used to, but he vaporized. I guess they just cut them open without. It’s OK, they’re mercifully passed out already. I mean, the patients.
I’m going off very old memory here but I recall there being an episode where surgeons were complaining about the dirt floor in the operating room, and managed to scrounge together enough concrete to lay their own concrete floor. One of the reasons they have such difficulties getting the concrete is because they aren’t supposed to have it, because they are a MASH unit.
So it is an issue that is given a figleaf of an explanation in the series.
For what it’s worth, Richard Hornberger, the real life surgeon that Hawkeye was based on, also had a lot of issues with the show, especially the anti-war tone of the show.
I suggest reading his later books (not the spinoff ones from the show). The characters go to Maine, where “Democrat” is used as a curse. Two are Mash Goes to Maine and Mash Mania.
Sometime during the early years of the show, I read that this was deliberate: the producers wanted to make the series as much about the war in Vietnam as about the Korean War. Others here probably know more about this than I do.
Some of these things were covered in a recent thread. More of a minor hijack to a recent thread.
The bug out thing is an issue. It’s mostly because they did not care much about continuity or historical accuracy.
If the 11 years of the show covered most of the three years of the war they ò guy would be moving constantly. The retreat to Pusan, Inchon, pushing all the way up to the Yalu, the retreat back to the 38th parallel… that’s a lot of bugging out.
But you say “Maybe the 11 seasons was crammed into the later part of the war when the front was stagnant.” You would have a point. Except the second to the last episode of season 4 is all about the Chinese entering the war. That means the entirety of Henry Blake and Trapper John’s tenure and most of a season of B.J. happened prior to that. Almost 4 seasons had to be somewhere in the Pusan to Yalu River phase. The next season or so would be the retreat south. They Also mentioned MacArthur being in charge at times. They sometimes mentioned Truman as president and sometimes it was Ike. All those things put them in both the mobile portion of the war and the stagnant.
So yeah they should have been moving a lot for at least part of the run of the show.
It’s been quite a while since I watched the show, but I was under the impression that at least some of the unnamed background characters were also surgeons. A real MASH unit usually had 10 medical officers; I assumed we were watching the adventures of one shift or “pod” of surgeons on a larger staff.
From personal experience (although not quite in that environment):
Yes, but rolling down the flaps every time you want to change and then rolling them back up and securing them is a chore. A small chore, to be sure, but one that almost no one thinks is worth it.
This.
It’s a surgical unit, so I’ve got to think they’ve got a laundry, but in other units…well, you can only carry so many pairs of undies with you, you don’t know when you’re going to have access to a laundry next, and you may not even have ready access to a shower. So…you may not actually change undies all that frequently…
You don’t, necessarily. Some of the hardsite components may be pre-existing buildings that the unit commandeers (I served in a camp where the HQ was a commandeered radio station, and the rest of the camp was a mixture of tents and shipping containters). Some might be modular components - the modern U.S. military makes extensive use of modified shipping containers. And some are built in place over time, then abandoned in place or destroyed during a bug out.
See also: The Waltons. Most of of the males on the show (who still had hair) had glorious 70s mop tops. I doubt that would’ve been acceptable in 30s rural Virginia. But who knows, maybe that was the style at the time.
But you never see any accurate historical portrayals where the characters are wearing onions on their belts.
I mentioned it in another thread, but I’d love to see the show about the other shift. The more straight-laced shift, who everyday wake up and marvel at the wacky hijinks that took place while they are asleep.
I have a vague memory of reading something eons ago that in a lot of shows made in the 70s, many actors refused to cut their hair to be period-appropriate, and if they were important enough, the producers/whatever just let them have their hair. I don’t think I just imagined that, but it was a loooooong time ago.
“To Market, to Market” – the second episode in the series – addresses this. Hawkeye & Trapper trade Henry’s antique desk for hydrocortisone and take down one of the walls in Henry’s office to get the desk out. They just needed to take a few pegs out of the wall.
Sure, they can’t take the OR floor along but everything else can either be folded up or disassembled.
FWIW, I remember from the original novel Trapper’s hair got so long that he started to resemble Jesus Christ, so to make some extra cash (and to relieve some of their boredom) they printed up a kazillion pix of TJ-as-Jesus and went “on tour” to the other camps with Trap affixed to a cross propped up in a jeep, selling pix for a dollar(?) a pop. They cleaned up.
