Fionn, thanks, I’ll have to look for that one. It shouldn’t be too hard since Capt. Spaulding was in only three episodes. I always liked the character (and Loudon Wainwright) and wish they had kept him around longer.
MASH was shown for years on BBC2 in the UK, with the laughter track removed. One day they accidentally left the canned laughter in, and the BBC received some enormous number of complaints from people who thought it’d been added specially.
Watching the repeats on cable with the laughter track just emphasised how much funnier it was when I wasn’t being prompted on when to laugh.
FX has been running the non laugh-tracked versions. Not often, but enough that it’s noticeable when they do. But I agree, it’s glaringly obvious when switching from a non-laugh tracked version to a canned version that they way overdid it.
And I too (Along with the others) despise the later episodes. The liberal, pacifist, contrived crappola that constituted the last couple of seasons makes it unbearable to watch, in my humble opinion. Give me the first couple of seasons!! (The last sentiment is one I unfortunately hold for many long running shows, Cheers being another one).
Sorry, but B.J., Charles and Col. Potter were better, more human, and far more interesting characters than Trapper John, Frank Burns, and Col. Blake. It’s certainly true that the black comedy whitened as we progressed from the book to the movie to the tv show, but that doesn’t mean the first couple of seasons of the show were all that good. They went too far into slapstick and caricature. Once they finally started to make the characters human the show improved tremendously.
I’m with Exapno on this, especially about Frank Burns. The pilot episode had a moment when Hawkeye and Trapper are being their irreverent selves and Burns looks at Blake significantly, trying to prompt him to pull rank on the Captains and tell them to show some respect. Shortly after, Blake tries to take Hawkeye and Trapper to task, saying something along the lines of “Lay off Burns. He’s a good doctor and we need him.”
As far as I know, this is the first and only time Burns’ surgical skills were mentioned in a positive light. Every later episode portrayed him as an incompetent anal-retentive martinet (which made the oft-quoted 90+% patient survival rate at 4077 unlikely at best) and I found Hawkeye and Trapper’s antics to be one tiny step above active bullying. At least Winchester was intelligent enough to fight back.
I have to agree with Exapno Mapcase and Bryan Ekers. I know a lot of diehard purist MAS*H fans prefer the Colonel Blake & Trapper John years, but Frank became a one-note (and therefore boring) character. I never saw what Margaret saw in him.
Winchester was allowed to develop in a much more interesting character. Yes, he was pompous, but we got to see his human side quite a bit. And you got the feeling that Hawkeye and BJ weren’t bullying him as much as they were just good-naturedly teasing him.
And Colonel Potter had his good moments. I love the show with the tontine from WW1, where he’s the last surviving member and gets the bottle of wine.
It was the radical change in Hawkeye that ruined it.
I proudly remember the episode where we saw Sparky (who was a thin, lanky farm boy, I seem to recall).
Also, was there ever an episode were they actually showed the 8063rd (I think I remember one tent scene, but that’s about it).
It wasn’t just the radical change in Hawkeye’s character. The writing just got BAD. Excrutiatingly bad. I never realized just how bad until I watched the series front to back multiple times over.
The thing is, the characters all began behaving so far over the top that none of them were believable. They just didn’t act the way real people would.
For an example, consider the episode where Winchester has his French Horn. He blasts it day and night, refusing to stop even when his bunkmates were trying to rest. So Hawkeye and BJ go on a ‘cleanliness strike’ and refuse to shower until he stops.
What’s wrong with this picture? A) Charles had manners. Even he wouldn’t play his French Horn at all hours. B) The problem would have been solved in real life by the CO telling him to knock it off, pronto. That horn would have carried through the entire camp. C) The idea of not bathing until the noise stops is ridiculous. First of all, you’ve got to go quite a few days before the smell is noticeable more than a foot or so away from you. But these guys very soon stunk so badly that they could clear the mess tent. D) They are DOCTORS. Doctors are supposed to be clean. Are we supposed to believe that they would be allowed into OR so filthy that they reek? E) How about the patients in post-op?
And so it goes. Bad writing. It depended on every single character acting so outrageously as to be unbelievable. And to top it off, they end the episode by destroying the French Horn (what’s wrong with Potter saying, "Winchester, I ORDER you to ship that thing home. Hawkeye and BJ, I ORDER you to bathe).
Any plot that relies on everyone to act irrationally and unbelievably just to keep the plot moving forward is simply bad writing.
And this isn’t just one episode - it was every bleemin’ episode towards the end. Hawkeye wasn’t just sexist - he was so over-the-top sexist that he got literally furious when a female doctor just tried to do her job. And of course, he tried to get her into the sack. And she refused. But of course, once he sees how sexist he’s been, he redeems himself how? By trying to get her into the sack again. And of course, now that he’s ‘redeemed’, she agrees. Only to have him revert to sexism again.
In the earlier episodes, when Potter was cranky he’d just bark a few orders and then usually apologize. That’s what real people do when they are in a bad mood. In later episodes, Potter would become a raging tyrant, screaming at people, shutting down social events, insulting his friends, etc. He became a caricature, just like the rest of them. Bad writing.
I can give you examples all day long. The later episodes of MASH were occasionally brilliant, and some of those later episodes rank among the best television ever made. But the average ones sucked pretty badly.
One of the poorly written episodes that showed just how clearly the show had veered to the left… Basically, Hawkeye gets pissed at the amount of casualties coming in one day, so he suddenly jumps in a jeep and drives to the peace conference between North and South vietnamese ambassadors. First, it just strains realism that the MPs to such an important meeting are stupid enough to let him in, and then we get to see Hawkeye ranting pointlessly about how they don’t understand each other.
Furthermore, Father Mulcahy was another to become annoying. In the early seasons, he was laid back, and rarely did much. As he developed, he wasn’t as much a preist as a smart guy at the place who wasn’t a doctor. But then he grew a split personality- You’d see him at the poker table, or drinking, in one episode, then in the next he’s harping about the breakdown of decency and integrity.
I have two parents that love MASH exorbiant amounts, so I’ve seen quite a few episodes. I must say that I disagree that the earlier seasons were the best. I far prefer the later seasons, with the new characters (in my opinion, far more developed) to the early ones. I especially despise Frank Burns, and loved Charles, although he became far more tolerable when Margaret started snubbing him. I never understood why she ever liked him, although the episode where she got kind of drunk explained a bit.
I also liked watching Klinger develop. In the beginning, he became something of a one-trick pony, but as he developed, they actually found interesting ways to play off his cross-dressing. Even when he abandoned it, the character stayed. Twas interesting to combine his antics with his hatred of fighting.
His interaction as a hostage was one of the series’ finest moments.
I will mention that Radar worked far better while being played off Henry than Potter. Radar really was more or less running the joint, and everyone knew it. Sending the lamb home was just plain classic, as was Henry signing off for his correspondence school test.
Note that I didn’t read the book or watch the movie, so this is based solely on the TV Show.
I don’t understand how folks can like the later episodes. As previously mentioned, the writing became worse and worse. Charles was a decent addition to the cast, but he was the rare exception.
Klinger, Father Mulcahy, Sgt. Zale were three examples of bit characters that should have never been developed. To be fair, since the series lasted so long, it would have been difficult to keep Klinger in dresses for 8 years. However, they could have done it if he remained a secondary figure.
The Henry Blake, Trapper John, Frank Burns episodes always make me laugh. I missed the “ferret face” after he left.
A small bit of MAS*H trivia. Does anyone remember that Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan) had appeared in an earlier episode? He was General Steele, a racist, nutty general that brought charges against Hawkeye.
Does anyone know if the laugh track was on the show as it aried in Canada?.. I don’t remember it… but I do kinda remember it…
lenin, “North and South vietnamese ambassadors”?
jk, we knew what you meant.
Hmm, guess I can’t add much here that hasn’t been already said. I watch some of the early series recently and while I can believe how sexist Hawkeye was, this being the 1950s, I couldn’t believe what a smug, smart-mouthed jerk he was. Were we really supposed to like this guy as some kind of lovable joker? Sure, Frank Burns was an idiot, but half the time you wondered what he’d done to justify the out-and-out bullying and harrassment he got. And what did Hotlips ever do other than having a poor taste in men and the ability to resist Hawkeye’s dubious charms?
Much of the justification for Hawkeye’s antics was it was just high-jinx, and a way of releasing stress from a highly pressured situation. But you never saw him at the receiving end of one of the pranks, did you?
But to get to the OP; what I’d like to know, and what I at first thought the question was about, what happened to Radar the actor? He left MAS*H and vanished from our screens. Was he so type-cast that he couldn’t get any other TV parts?
The IMDB shows a pilot for Burghoff in 1984 called WALTE*R.
“After Walter “Radar” O’Reilly returns home from Korea, he joins the local police force. His adventures include tracking his stolen wallet, breaking up a fight between two strippers, and helping out a homeless boy.”
Gosh. How amazing is it that this never made it into a series.
Even the most vehement Early Season lovers will have to admit that the folk singer guy that they brought out a couple of times was abysmal.
Speaking of the laugh track, I remember that it was big news when they showed a new episode that didn’t have one. The early shows have such a loud laugh track that it’s more annoying than usual.
I don’t think that Blake was as much of an idiot as he just didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t regular Army and hated regulations.
Haj
Well, Burghoff did appear (as Radar) in a guest role for an episode of the excreable “AfterMASH.” (I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I actually watched a few episodes of this.)
I thought I remembered hearing at the time that part of the reason Burghoff left “MAS*H” was that he was dissatisfied with the role and feared being typecast.
I also seem to recall that his disaffection made him loath to give interviews commenting on the series for years – which made his participation in the recent reunion special surprising.
In any event, I believe the official explanation is that Burghoff left acting to concentrate on the animal rights causes that are most dear to him.
Did you know the writers gave one of the PA guys a name in one episode? I don’t know the episode title but it was the one with the missing Luxembourg soldier.
Actually, yes, but only in a few episodes. Burns once turned the tables on him and BJ played a joke on him by not playing a joke on him. Wasn’t there also an episode in which Charles had Hawkeye and BJ playing pranks on each other?