# Things that bother me about M asterisk A asterisk S asterisk H (the TV show)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** tv-shows-scripted
**Created:** [June 4, 2021, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583 "2021-06-04T02:10:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/61 "2021-06-04T22:32:46Z")
> [@terentii](#):
>
> Henry wasn’t regular Army, was he? So he would have handled the staff differently than a professional officer.
>
> It was in the B&W television interview where Potter emphasized the doctors weren’t regular Army. He understands that and wouldn’t treat them as if they were, because he wouldn’t get the same results.
>
> In the documentary on the making of the show (narrated by Mary Tyler Moore), Alda said they had originally wanted to recycle the appendectomy episode the way it was, but Mike Farrell objected, saying BJ would never do that. They were arguing the point when they realized Farrell’s objections would actually make a much better episode, so they changed it I thought it was interesting that in neither episode did Hawkeye express any remorse for his surgical mutilation.
It doesn’t really make sense that Henry isn’t regular army. He’s not there to be a surgeon he’s the commanding officer. He’s not going to get drafted, be made a LTC and put in charge. The job requires more than operating room skills. It might make sense for him to be a WW2 surgeon who stayed in the reserves in between the wars and then got called up. Its not so bad that it’s impossible to suspend disbelief.
As for the hair and discipline, in real life right now in the regular Army it’s much more lax in medical units than other army units. Many of the officers are direct commissions which means their only formal military training is a short course which barely teaches them to salute and put their uniform on right. Grooming standards aren’t ignored like in MASH but they are often bent to the breaking point.
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/62 "2021-06-04T22:38:06Z")
> [@Loach](#):
>
> It doesn’t really make sense that Henry isn’t regular army. He’s not there to be a surgeon he’s the commanding officer.
He’s there because he mouthed off to a brigadier general regarding the general’s prescription of a coffee enema. He was on a plane to Korea within 12 hours of asking said general, “With cream and sugar?”
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/63 "2021-06-04T22:38:31Z")
> [@Loach](#):
>
> It doesn’t really make sense that Henry isn’t regular army. He’s not there to be a surgeon he’s the commanding officer. He’s not going to get drafted, be made a LTC and put in charge. The job requires more than operating room skills. It might make sense for him to be a WW2 surgeon who stayed in the reserves in between the wars and then got called up. Its not so bad that it’s impossible to suspend disbelief.
According to [the MASH Wiki](https://mash.fandom.com/wiki/Lt._Colonel_Henry_Blake), the film version of Blake was a career Army surgeon. The TV version was a reservist, who was called up to active duty; I don’t think that he had served active duty previously (or, if he had, I don’t remember it ever being mentioned). I remember an episode in which Henry talked about the very limited training that he got regarding being a CO before being assigned to the 4077th.
Whether that makes sense or not, from a real-world POV, is another question entirely.
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/64 "2021-06-04T22:40:47Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> I remember an episode in which Henry talked about the very limited training that he got regarding being a CO before being assigned to the 4077th.
Which particularly focused on surrendering.
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### Author:  [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/65 "2021-06-04T23:37:50Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#):
>
> Seven seconds of research indicates that the movie version may have been an even bigger offender, hair-wise:
>
> [https://imgur.com/8lijJf2](https://imgur.com/8lijJf2)
Aside from the hair, the film had what I thought was another glaring anachronism - a black neurosurgeon, Dr. Oliver Wendell Jones. The military had only just been integrated four years earlier - black cooks and latrine-diggers, sure, but no way they’d commission an African-American doctor, right?
Wrong. [Dr. Alvin Vincent Blount, Jr.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3994465/) was not only the first African-American surgeon to serve in a MASH, he was the first to serve as Chief of Surgery. He later became the first black doctor to operate at the until-then all-white Moses Cone Hospital in his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, after he was one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that forced the hospital to integrate.
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/66 "2021-06-04T23:54:56Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> I remember an episode in which Henry talked about the very limited training that he got regarding being a CO before being assigned to the 4077th.
“Sometimes You Hear the Bullet”?
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2021, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/67 "2021-06-04T23:55:43Z")
> Look, all I know is what they taught me at command school. There are certain rules about a war. And rule number one is young men die. And rule number two is, doctors can’t change rule number one.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/68 "2021-06-05T00:28:55Z")
> [@terentii](#):
>
> “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet”?
It wasn’t the quote that @Andy_L shared in the post after yours; it was something about a bunch of doctors running around and trying to be soldiers.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/69 "2021-06-05T00:54:32Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#):
>
> Which particularly focused on surrendering.
“I think they said not to.”
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### Author:  [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/70 "2021-06-05T01:36:48Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#):
>
> Aside from the hair, the film had what I thought was another glaring anachronism - a black neurosurgeon, Dr. Oliver Wendell Jones. The military had only just been integrated four years earlier - black cooks and latrine-diggers, sure, but no way they’d commission an African-American doctor, right?
I realize you fought your own ignorance on that, but there a couple of other problems with your supposition.
1. Most of the doctors on the show were draftees. A local draft board might collude to exclude a Black doctor because they didn’t want him operating on White boys, but if an M.D. were drafted, he’d get a direct commission in the Medical Corps, regardless of race.
2. That would have been true _before integration_. A lot of people get confused about this. Even before Truman desegregated the armed forces, there were Black officers, and Black Army doctors (and Black combat infantry, another one a lot of people seem to get confused about). There were Black Soldiers in most of the specialties - it’s just that they had to serve in segregated Black units, and there was a glass ceiling on their promotions. The first Black medical officer in the U.S. Army, by the way, was [Alexander Thomas Augusta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Thomas_Augusta), who received his commission in _1863_.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/71 "2021-06-05T01:53:15Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#):
>
> Dr. Oliver Wendell Jones
Sorry, nitpick: Dr. Oliver **Harmon** Jones (Movie and TV).
As many times as I’ve seen the movie, I never realized Jones was played by Fred Williamson.
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### Author:  [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/72 "2021-06-05T01:56:26Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> He’s certainly more business-like than Henry, and takes a while to become friendly, but yeah, he’s not the gung-ho type they had been afraid of.
>
> There was also some concern about whether he could cut it (heh!) medically, but he quickly demonstrated his capability there.
That was my big beef with the show. Blake and Potter doing surgery. They were the COs. There are 200 people in the camp. They had plenty to do in the CO job. The actual COs of these camps were not practicing surgeons. Blake and Potter should not have been in the OR. It was ridiculous.
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### Author:  [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/73 "2021-06-05T02:03:25Z")
Isn’t Oliver Wendel Jones ones of the kids in Bloom County? The computer hacker with the sentient Banana Junior 2000?
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/74 "2021-06-05T02:11:50Z")
> [@Loach](#):
>
> …As for the hair and discipline, in real life right now in the regular Army it’s much more lax in medical units than other army units. Many of the officers are direct commissions which means their only formal military training is a short course which barely teaches them to salute and put their uniform on right. Grooming standards aren’t ignored like in MASH but they are often bent to the breaking point.
I don’t disagree, but the point I was making was not that the military allowed loose grooming standards, but that _nobody_ in the 1950s sported 1970s hair, _especially_ in the army.
mmm
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/75 "2021-06-05T02:17:03Z")
> [@Reeses\_Monkey](#):
>
> Isn’t Oliver Wendel Jones ones of the kids in Bloom County? The computer hacker with the sentient Banana Junior 2000?
That would indeed be him.
[ ](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/92/b5/4292b5ed5f7873306836f18a7f77b35b.jpg)
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### Author:  [@sinjin1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin1)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/76 "2021-06-05T03:41:55Z")
The long hair drove me crazy back in the day. My dad was in WWII and in Korea. He and none of his contemporaries ever had such long hair/beards. It was just stupid 70’s bs.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/77 "2021-06-05T03:58:25Z")
Sitcoms back then were just vehicles for jokes. They weren’t really that invested in historical accuracy or avoiding anachronisms. They were happy if they got another season at all.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/78 "2021-06-05T04:05:36Z")
Well, I don’t think the producers were getting kickbacks from Big Tobacco. And now, we see smokers as bad guys, so seeing Hawkeye light up, would be devastating.
Mostly in older films and TV shows, they did not show that much smoking. Look at The Longest day.
Recently, however, Big Tobacco, barred from ads in many forms of media and barred from promoting their particular brand in films- pays producers a lot just to show smoking as cool. There is more smoking now in film, there there was during the heyday of smoking or in years past:
> **[On-screen smoking in PG-13 films has doubled since 2010, CDC says | CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/health/tobacco-use-movies-increase-trnd/index.html)**
>
> Instances of characters smoking on-screen in youth-rated films jumped more than 120% between 2010 and 2018, the CDC found. Health officials say young people are more likely to start smoking when they see it more frequently in media.
> **[Why is there so much smoking in modern movies?](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/dec/08/health.smoking)**
>
> Can you imagine Humphrey Bogart chewing gum instead of smoking in The African Queen? Or Clint Eastwood rolling up his poncho to slap on a nicotine patch? Or how about Gandalf in Lord of the Rings putting away his pipe and taking up sudoku?
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/79 "2021-06-05T04:07:50Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#):
>
> The haircuts weren’t just inappropriate to the time, they were inappropriate to the milieu, as well - these guys were in the military.
Look at Stripes, they show all the lesser stars getting buzz cuts while Murray and Ramis just get trims.
And yes, much leeway in the field.
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### Author:  [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2021, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-about-m-asterisk-a-asterisk-s-asterisk-h-the-tv-show/943583/80 "2021-06-05T04:23:32Z")
Aha! I thought I recognized that name.
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