I don’t hate MAS*H, and some of the episodes are funny. But I once had a roommate whose only real flaw was that she adored the show. This was in the 80s, and she was obsessive about recording it as it was being run in the evenings, so she could get the whole series in order on tape. She planned her social life around catching re-runs (6, 6:30, 10:30 - all different channels). She took it very, very seriously.
In self-defense, I became very aware of all the flaws you list, and it’s hard for me to watch the show at all now. What saved it for me was that another friend wrote a fanfic crossing MAS*H and World of Daarkness/Hunter (sounds weird, but it was hilarious and well-done). Now, every time I see it, I mentally transpose it into the alternate universe, and it’s a great show.
I’ll go with Winchester for the reasons already mentioned although I seem to recall that Winchester became less of a foil and more of a comrade as the series wound down.
There was also a period where Frank was trying to be friends with Pierce and BJ after Margaret dumped him. Of course that was just a prelude for going insane.
One of the problems with the Frank episodes was that sometimes Frank was in the right even though he had to be wrong because he was the cartoon villain. I remember one episode where Frank saw two Koreans burying something near the camp. He thought they might be burying a bomb so, with considerable personal courage, he looked for it with a metal detector. Of course, it turned out that the buried object was some kimchee that was being aged. Hawkeye got a good laugh at Frank for discovering cole slaw. But Frank was in the right! When you see non-military people burying something right next to a military camp, it deserves an investigation. That episode always bothered me.
I distinctly remember someone (Col. Blake?) saying “Why do I almost feel sorry for Frank now?” during the showing of that movie. And I think it was implied several times that Frank had married his wife for her money, in which case he only got what he deserved. If he wasn’t so obssesed with money he would have divorced her and married Maj. Houlihan.
I agree with Burns=funnier, Winchester=more complex and interesting. In later years I’ve really come to admire Larry Linville’s skills as a comic actor, being able to make such an unsympathetic character so funny.
As to the OP, I agree with the consenus. A smart foil is always more interesting than a stuoid one. Plus Winchester was a much more three dimensional character. he was a bit of a snob but he was also a genuinely talented surgeon and, at bottom, a compassionate, ethical, generous human being. You could argue that in some ways he was actually a better person than Hawkeye (like not being a drunk and a lech, for instance). Truth be told, I’d rather have Winchester for a tentmate than Hawkeye any day.
I’ll vote for the Burns/McIntire pairing. I actually didn’t mind Winchester - I think BJ Hunnicut was the bigger problem. I think having Winchester around with Trapper John would have been hilarious.
The early years were the best because, while MASH always remained good, it was a much better comedy than it was a drama. As a drama, it was preachy, melodramatic, simplistic, repetitive, and inconsistent in its characterization.
But as a straight-up comedy with the original cast, it was damned near perfect.
Near the end of Burns’ run, I recall him starting to go nuts after Houlihan dumped him for Donald Ponopscott. I think he drew a rifle on the other surgeons and it got all tense before Radar unexpectedly defused the situtation by setting up a call with Burns’ mother.
Burns: [on phone] Mommy? Whose mommy? … oh, my Mommy! Hi, Mom! … Well, nobody here likes me… They just pretend to like me. You know, like Dad did?
My memories of the scene aren’t perfect but… wow. If Burns hadn’t left the show soon after, any further tormenting by Pierce/Hunnicutt would’ve seemed especially hateful.
Winchester was a more complicated character – pompous, snarky, sometimes devious, but in many ways admirable and occasionally even likable. Burns was too much of a cartoon – stupid, gung-ho but cowardly, fundamentally dishonest, always self-serving, in all ways contemptible. (And I recall in the MASH* movie, Burns was not only a “regular Army clown,” he was a religious hypocrite, ostentatiously praying on his knees.) The ones with Winchester are always more enjoyable to watch. I wonder if it would be possible to create a character combining Winchester’s best qualities with Burns’ worst? That would be a challenge!
From what I remember of the movie, he also seemed to be more of a bully–at least with regard to those who had a lower rank than he did. Additionally, Robert Duvall’s Frank Burns was far more mentally unstable than Linville’s (we last see him being hauled away in straight jacket).
When you mentioned that, somehow the closest match I could come up with is Dr. Mark Craig (played by William Daniels) from “St. Elsewhere”. That character was certainly an exceptional doctor but also an extremely uptight and unlikeable prig when he was out of the operating room (more so than Winchester). However, he wasn’t as much of a bumbling clown as the Linville’s Burns so they may not be such a close match.
I found it especially telling that we learned in the episode that being a doctor was not Winchester’s first choice of career. He wanted to be a pianist. I think his words were, “I can play the notes, but I can’t make the music.”
And of course, who can forget his kindess to a stuttering soldier, and then we learn his sister stutters. I think Winchester is prickly, proud of his family and hometown, his skills as a doctor, and that makes the little glimpses of his compassion all the more poignant.
I’m always surprised that anyone thought Burns funny at all. For me, he sucked the funny out of every scene, and like spooje, I found it impossible to suspend disbelief that the man could have graduated from high school, much less become a surgeon.
In most sitcoms, even the most ridiculous characters have a lot of truth in them. Les Nessman of “WKRP” was a preposterous character, but you really could believe a nerd like him could become the news announcer in a B-market radio station, which is one of the things that made him funny; Herb Tarlek of the same show was funny for the same reason. Glenn Quagmire in “Family Guy” is a ridiculously over-the-top pussy hound, but I’ve known guys who tried to be just like that. Diane Chambers in “Cheers” was a fantastically irritating bich but we’ve all known someone like that, a snob whose station in life does not merit snobbery. Virtually every “Simpsons” character is the same way; they’re all wildly over the top, but in a realistic direction.
Burns, however, was simply impossible to believe. I could see Frank Burns being a really terrible logistics lieutenant, or a dreadful finance NCO, or the world’s most irritating admin captain, but it’s just not possible to believe, even in a comedy, that he could even get into medical school.
Winchester was a great foil. He was over the top but you could believe him.
Yes, one of the critiques of TV Frank is that he was turned into too much of a caricature. FWIW, re: militaryness, one of the setup elements was that except for Potter and Margaret, the majority of the main characters were not career military. Blake, Hawk, Trapper, BJ, Frank(TV continuity) & Charles are mobilized reservists, direct-commissioned as physicians with minimal actual military experience, who had not expected that within 5 years of the last big war there would be another one. Frank, however, had convinced himself that he was a Real Soldier Now (or at least tried to act like it in front of Margaret).
As a worthy foil to give-and-take with the swampmates, Winchester is vastly superior. As broad comic relief, Frank of course prevails, but a character who is a full-time butt-of-the-joke you can take for only so long.
