… and if not, would y’all support a MASH based on our current wars, or (preferably) WWII?
Caveat: It would need to be written with as much insight, empathy and feeling as the MASH we are used to. I would not accept anything less, and neither would y’all, I don’t think.
I know, I know: We’re not going to have Hawkeye, BJ, Trapper, Radar, The Colonel, Hot Lips or Frank, but couldn’t we have the basic premise, Kiddos?
Sorry, but count me as one of the “burned-out” on the “franchise” cop/legal shows.
I need positive-ness. (In the midst of all this negative-ness).
It took place on the Korean War, as sort of an adaptation of the book series by Richard Hooker and the Robert Altman movie, but it depicted Korea as generically Asian and was generally regarded as a statement about the then-current Vietnam War. Since the name is so closely associated with an existing intellectual property (and the term M.A.S.H. is no longer used by the US Army), I wouldn’t advise calling an updated version anything with the word M.A.S.H. in the title.
IIRC, the pilot for Union Army Surgical Team was bit of a disaster. The test audience didn’t really go for a bunch of doctors making wisecracks while sawing off limbs.
It depends- do you think that public sentiment right now for the Iraq war more or less matches the dissatisfaction with Vietnam during the run of MAS*H? I don’t think it’s quite as pronounced, and so I wonder if a basically anti-war show would play as well right now.
But I don’t miss the service-comedy aspect, I miss the excellent writing and acting.
The Altman movie was (and the show) but the Hooker book was definitely not anti-war, and his later books even less so. Hawkeye in the books is not a sensitive New Age guy. In the last one he tells a tall tale about how, when the A bomb fizzled, he convinced a sea serpent to incinerate Hiroshima. :eek: He also used “Democrat” as a curse.
Though is was set in Korea, I thought MAS*H was about Vietnam.
ETA: Er, the movie and series. The book was about drinking and screwing in Korea. Okay, so were the movie and series, but the book had little other message, and its sequels even less.
ETAA: I can’t believe I read so many of the sequels. :eek:
I liked that show. The theme song in conjunction with what the show was about always made me tear up. Hell, anything like that makes me tear up anymore.
I won’t. We old fucks know to we need to keep our misery to ourselves. With an exception for anonymous user names on boards for punk kids who don’t know any better.
For those who haven’t the pleasure, there are two sets of sequels. The first, by Hooker, has Trapper and Hawkeye (and Spearchucker, I think) go to Maine to set up the Finest Kind Medical Clinic and bait shop. There is a second series - MASH goes to Paris, MASH goes to hell for all I care, which had the basic TV characters together again. They have Hooker’s name, but were clearly written by someone else. I read one and got sick.
I wouldn’t want to see a remake or reboot or anything with the same name but an original military medical show could be interesting. I’m not sure it would do all that well - there don’t seem to be many fictional military series getting aired in the recent past. The only two of I can think of are JAG and NCIS. And there’s that delicate balance of being neither ‘too soon’ nor ‘past due’.
Good Morning Vietnam: The Series?
How about a military version of Seinfield? It could be set on some Special Forces firebase in Afghanistan or wherever where nothing happens.
I liked those books. Funny stuff. Hawkeye, as noted above, is pretty conservative, but they have the wacky tone of the early TV episodes. Hot Lips becomes a priestess of a gay church, Radar is a multi-millionaire owner of a restaurant chain, there’s a cajun oil millioniare, an opera singer, a bumbling news anchorman, at least one Sheik, etc.
