I’ve always pondered this. It was funny for the first year or two when everbody was hell raising and then (for whatever reason) it became a hackneyed, preachy, predictable goulash starring Saint Hawkeye with the characters degenerating into well… cartoons practically, and yet it was very popular all the way to the end.
I never understood this. Will some diehard MAS*H fans (or whomever) 'splain the appeal to me without flaming me for my take on the show. I really want to know what the hell the appeal was.
I’m a big fan of the show, however, toward the end, it went way downhill. For the most part I enjoyed the witty word play. Especially when Co. Flagg would appear.
I’ve started catching some re-runs recently, and I think the show still works in general. As Mr. Blue Sky wrote, the wordplay is the best part, along with some of the silly pranks and the like.
As a general rule, if you catch an episode and B.J. has the 'stache, or if Klinger’s not wearing a dress, be on alert for icky preachiness (although even some of these episodes were funny).
Because even at its preachy worst, each scene was well-written, with fairly sophisticated humor. Some of its popularity may have been people too used to watching it to turn the channel, but for every moralizing tale, there were always some hilarious sub-plots going on. About the time they might have gone into the toilet with hackneyed repetition, they also made some good “course changes.” For example, when Larry Linville and his cardboard cut-out character, Frank Burns, were written out of the script, the replacement, David Ogden Stiers/Charles Winchester was given a more three-dimensional character. (Linville is on record as noting that he was the only relentlessly two-dimensional character on the show.) Other script changes humanized most of the characters so that its appeal was not merely for the laughs, but the character development.
Similar charges (with a similar defense) can be laid on All in the Family/Archie Bunker’s Place.
I think everybody ( especially guys) enjoy watching people camping out, pulling sophomoric summer camp tricks etc… from the comfort of our own living rooms. Which is what Hawkeye and Trapper were doing. Notice that many of the episodes included campy practical jokes. I think these carried the other rather heavy reality based episodes about Hawkeye’s dreams and the ones that depicted death and dying.
This is the pit so if anyone disagrees with my analysis then fuck off.
Like the others have said - MASH was never as funny as it was in its first two or three seasons, but even the later shows were an order of magnitude better than the rest of the crap on TV. I mean, wasn’t it going up against popular junk like “Different Strokes”?
Good cast, good scripts, good directing, people who enjoyed working on the show. There’s a lot of preaching on TV at anytime. Seen Law and Order recently?
I think dhanson has it. Most sitcoms really, really, REALLY SUCK! Even in it’s declining years MAS*H was better than anything else on the tube. Even Hawkeye’s commie-lib preaching was better than Gary Coleman’s nonsense.
I enjoyed MASH initially because it was funny, different and thought provoking. However, the program, to me, had begun to wear thin with the constant screaming fits the Margaret (Hot Lips) character had at everyone. Then the dippy Major, Frank Burns started wearing very thin also and the arrival of the new Commander, Sherman Potter helped salvage the series.
However, Radar leaving kind of started the show on it’s down swing as far as I was concerned. By then I was tired of Hot Lips shrilly screaming at everything and Hawkeye, while good, started to annoy me with his sanctimonious slamming of the military and consistent rebellion against authority.
The show ran long enough to allow for some interesting experimentation in television as well. The “clock in the corner” episode presaged “reality television” and the annoying logos you now have to endure on every cable channel. Another episode attempted to capture an entire year in twenty-two minutes–fairly well. Some episodes were even stately enough to eschew the laugh-track.
I think the series’ success was largely based on the writers’ correct estimation of their viewing audience as discerning individuals with at least a modest education. Even the silliest sequences that echoed Aristophanes or the Marx Brothers were still tied to an overarching dramatic theme or a modestly sophisticated plot–not too shabby while attempting to provide a laugh-a-minute.
Still, these days, I don’t linger while channel surfing if I don’t see Larry Linville or McLean Stevenson. After that, I believe the show took on a certain solipsism (not unrelated to the show being largely produced in-studio rather than outdoors, I think).
It was so popular because it was one of the first of its kind on many fronts: humor, subject matter, characterization.
Other war sitcoms were rather sterilized (Hogan’s Heroes, McHale’s Navy). Sure, they killed people, but from a distance. And they certainly didn’t show blood.
Alas, MAS*H evolved, and rather strangely. It turned more dramatic, they did more soundstage shots than outdoors, they got rid of the laugh track. In the last season, it was so dramatic it lost its humor, IMO. E.g., Klinger’s new wife looking for her lost parents; Col. Flagg being an actual bad guy, not just comic relief; Hawkeye’s breakdown (last episode).
And of course, the fact that this show was on the air about 4 times longer than the actual war was strange. The continuity fell apart too: did Hawkeye have a sister or not, was he from Maine or Vermont?
“it became a hackneyed, preachy, predictable goulash starring Saint Hawkeye with the characters degenerating into well… cartoons practically, and yet it was very popular all the way to the end.”
Um, so’s “Touched by an Angel”. And “Friends”. And “Seinfeld” for that matter. The producers put out what the public responds favorably toward. The list goes on and on, and will continue that way until people get brain implants from the aliens from Nebulon IV.
Really, is there any question why “South Park” is relegated to a late-night time slot on a cable channel? Sure, it’s “popular”–but only with its fans, not with mainstream producers.
