100 Favorite Shows: #37 — M*A*S*H
“Joking about it is the only way of opening my mouth without screaming.”
In 1968, Richard Hooker published a novel with William Morrow entitled, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, which told the fictional story of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (a MASH) for the United States military during the Korean War. The book was quickly optioned into a 1970 Robert Altman film, which, in turn, spun-off into a television series, M*A*S*H. Developed for the small screen by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds, M*A*S*H spent its eleven seasons (from 1972 to 1983) on CBS slowly eroding the divide between comedy and drama on television. Anchored around “Hawkeye” Pierce (Alan Alda), a top-of-the-line army surgeon, M*A*S*H became the most seminal entry point to the expanded MASH properties. It was so beloved and revered that it spun-off three separate series, AfterMASH, W*A*L*T*E*R, and Trapper John, M.D., en route to becoming one of the greatest television shows ever made. M*A*S*H’s series finale, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” also holds the record for the most watched episode in television history, with 125 million on the final day of February in 1983. It’s a record that will never be broken.
(Attention all medical personnel. Spoilers for M*A*S*H are included in this essay. The television show, I mean.)
“Rule number one is: Young men die,” Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) elucidates to a tearful Hawkeye in the first season M*A*S*H episode, “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet.” “And rule number two is: Doctors can’t change rule number one,” he finishes.
The moment comes after Hawkeye tries and fails to save the life of his good friend, Tommy Gillis (James T. Callahan), after Tommy undergoes a brief stint in the 4077th surgical ward. Tommy cracked jokes before receiving anesthesia, referencing his earlier story to Hawkeye about whether or not a soldier can hear the bullet that kills him in combat. His last words make Hawkeye smile with the thought that sometimes, you do hear the bullet. It’s a ricochet we don’t hear, as the episode’s audience, and we instead trust Tommy’s recollection of the moment. That’s how it’s portrayed “in the movies,” after all.
With Tommy gone, Hawkeye storms out after Blake dismisses him from the operating room only to seek him out in the episode’s conclusion. Initially, Hawkeye is filmed from behind, keeping the audience in Blake’s point of view as he apprehensively approaches his top surgeon. Suddenly, though, the scene cuts to the front of Hawkeye, revealing a tear-soaked face in a moment of rare fragility on network television during the early days of the ’70s.
Like Tommy, Hawkeye maintains his sense of humor during the Korean War so as not to experience an emotional breakdown multiple times a day, but the veneer fades when — for the first time — the patient he loses is a friend. Yet, the tears are just as much a sign that Hawkeye is keeping his sanity as his jokes, proving that he’s still vulnerable to experiencing the unthinkable hardships of an interminable war. It’s this heart within Hawkeye that gives him the hope needed to march on with what another patient needs most.
The other guest star of “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet” is a young Ron Howard, portraying a Marine who is fifteen, pretending to be eighteen. Suffering from appendicitis, Howard’s Marine is first introduced as just a kid pretending to be tougher than he feels on the inside so he can impress his friends back home. What serves as a source of dismay from Hawkeye (he despises the battleground mentality of one being “tall enough to reach the trigger,” so they’re “tall enough to enlist”) is a medal of honor for the Marine, who throws out references to the boys back in his regiment and slurs used to dehumanize the “enemy” — all tendencies he learned in military training, no doubt.
When Hawkeye shoulders the weight of Colonel Blake’s sentiment regarding the rules of war, he channels his grief into one rescue a doctor can provide to a soldier who might otherwise be hapless. It’s a matter of fact that Tommy is dead, but the Marine with a burst appendix doesn’t have to be. Hawkeye turns in the lie about his age and rescues the soldier for a “long and healthy” life full of resentment towards Hawkeye. A life of resentment is better than no life at all and, in that moment, Hawkeye transcended the time-honored rules of combat. He beat the war, if only for a moment.
This was just one of M*A*S*H’s many moments that illustrated the series’ commitment to dramatic (with streaks of lightness) and authentic (many of the episodes’ plot lines were plucked directly from veterans’ own recollections) antiwar storytelling. When the doctors operated, the laugh track was removed, against CBS’ wishes to lean fully into the sitcom style. After hijacking a war documentary in “Yankee Doodle Doctor,” Hawkeye messes with the filmmakers before solemnly monologuing, “Guns and bombs and anti-personnel mines have more power to take life than we have to preserve it. Not a very happy ending for a movie. But then, no war is a movie.” When Stevenson departed the series, Colonel Blake didn’t get home safely.
Reality was always palpably present on M*A*S*H, but never as crushing as in the (then-shocking) season three finale, “Abyssinia, Henry.” I had always known about a shocking death associated with M*A*S*H, but I had also genuinely avoided spoilers for who it was my entire life. So when a horror-stricken Radar (Gary Burghoff) stumbled aimlessly into the surgical ward to inform the operating doctors about the death of Colonel Blake (shot down over the Sea of Japan), I was walloped. I knew something was coming, but I still wasn’t prepared. All I could say was, “Henry was a good leader. He was a good leader.”
And he really was! We see that earlier when Blake knows he needs to be there for Hawkeye, comforting him through the loss of a friend that he couldn’t prevent. We see it in every wary attempt at striking a balance between Hawkeye’s need to goof around and Frank Burns’ (Larry Linville) need to tattle on his colleagues. It wasn’t enough to take Blake, a source of levity and hope for the doctors in the 4077th, out of the show’s formula. They really had to go and kill him. How do you have hope after that?
Fortunately, his replacement, Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan), ended up being just as solid a leader as Colonel Blake was. Morgan was able to match the series’ shift towards solemnity better than I think Stevenson (who always looked like he was anticipating a fishing trip) could have managed, but it’s a testament to M*A*S*H’s impeccable characterization that both leaders were effective and beloved. Both could have stretched the entire eleven season run. And we were so lucky to experience both at all.
The characters did change on M*A*S*H. Blake became Potter, but Hawkeye’s best buddy, Trapper John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers), became B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell). B.J. fit into the series even better than Potter did with the former’s first episode, “Welcome to Korea,” introducing him in a manner that felt he’d always been around the 4077th (while also paying proper homage to Trapper John’s impact on Hawkeye). Trapper John was a solid player in the cast, but to me, he always felt like a clone of Hawkeye, whereas B.J. possessed individual idiosyncrasies (I dream about his iconic pink shirt on occasion), a wry speaking pattern, and the ability to be an occasional foil for Hawkeye’s sometimes over-the-top antics.
The role of the foil might have been M*A*S*H’s biggest upgrade over the eleven season run. At the end of the fifth arc of the show, Frank Burns departed when Linville felt the character was too buffoonish to progress anywhere believable on the series. Tapping in for him was Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers), a well-educated, snobbish, cultured surgeon from Boston. Initially, Winchester was an insufferable knob who arrogantly stood in the way of Hawkeye and B.J.’s selfless heroics. Over time, though, Winchester became more grounded and more well-rounded, en route to being a figure on M*A*S*H who could effortlessly wring oodles of emotion from any viewer with a heart comparable to his.
These developments towards three-dimensional characters (way more than ever could have been presumed from the original Altman film) were also reflective of a series in flux, too. The first couple seasons reflected the mentality set out by Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould’s cinematic performances as Hawkeye and Trapper John, respectively. Frank was the horse’s ass antagonist who was cheating on the missus back home, Radar was a highly competent clerk with immense memorization skills, Captain Tuttle was, well, a figment of lofty imaginations. At first, M*A*S*H was rarely more than a hokey sitcom from the 1970s, complete with Marx-driven comedy (Hawkeye even dons a goofy pair of glasses, complete with affixed mustache and nose) and ever-present sexism (Margaret Houlihan (Loretta Swit) is the only woman in the main cast and it took until the final season to give Nurse Kellye (Kellye Nakahara) her own episode, “Hey, Look Me Over.”).
Slowly, the yuks on M*A*S*H (Nurse Nancy (Lynette Mettey) is Hawkeye’s kind of girl: drunk! What a knee slapper, right?) were overtaken by feelings of dread, misery, hopeless, grief, and — still — growth. Houlihan transitioned from a rule-following heel to a “part of the gang” by the end, a friend as valued by Hawkeye as B.J. and Trapper John. Winchester became a respected and trusted mind within the unit. The show proved its ability to develop its characters as having close bonds because, in the Korean War, they were all they had. What war wouldn’t have seen those bonds forged deeper?
The comedy eventually took a minority position in the sensibility of M*A*S*H, as more and more episodes preferred to experiment, dramatize, and portray the harsh realities of war. By the end, it almost seemed like the creative team felt it was irresponsible to make light of the horrors of war apart from an occasional aside or prank here and there. After all, surgery was always there to call the doctors away. It was the obligation of the show to depict the war as it is, not as it could have been, just as it was the doctors’ and nurses’ obligations to subject themselves to countless sleepless nights.
The most sleepless episode of M*A*S*H is one that probably came to mind at the end of the last paragraph for those aficionados most attuned to the CBS dramedy. (Those of us who still follow Swit on Instagram for #MASHbackMondays, rise up!) “Dreams” is an episode from season eight that is highly representative of M*A*S*H’s tendency to tinker with the form of the network half-hour series (like the black-and-white season four finale, “The Interview”), resulting in fans who either adored the experimental swings for Lansdowne Street or reviled it, proclaiming it (and Alda, occasionally) “pretentious.”
I, of course, loved the episode and found that it could have just as easily wowed audiences in 2020, as it did back in 1980. It’s not only a sleepless installment, but it’s a surreal one, as the members of the 4077th attempt to sneak in moments of rest (a “nice long rest,” Potter jokes, requiring his staff to “be back in twelve minutes”) in between their marathon shift of treating 211 patients in 33 hours.
During this time, each character remaining on M*A*S*H experiences a nightmare that turns their worst fears (aggravated by the unbearable wartime hardships) into the foremost thoughts on their minds.
Margaret dreams of her one true love marching off into battle, the camera panning out to reveal a blood-stained wedding dress. B.J. dreams of — at long last — waltzing with his wife, Peg (Catherine Bergstrom), only to have his romantic moment interrupted with a scalpel. Colonel Potter imagines his childhood home, which he defends from a grenade with a polo mallet, and nearly smells his mother’s freshly baked muffins. Charles dreams the surgical ward has become a stage for him to impress others with his magic tricks, which are helpless on a dying patient. Father Mulcahy’s (William Christopher) nightmare begins with him dressed as the Pope, only to be ignored by his disciples when the crucifixion of Jesus Christ behind him turns into a bloodied soldier. Max Klinger (Jamie Farr) dreams he’s finally returned home to Toledo, but it’s since been abandoned and he has been turned into its sole patient. And lastly, Hawkeye’s nightmare revolves around his turning limbless, proving himself unable (and, in his mind, unworthy) of helping a patient who requires his surgical dexterity.
“To sleep, perchance to dream,” Charles quotes from Shakespeare at the end of the episode, prompting the 4077th to ward off slumber for a few more hours out of fear that their nightmares will grip them worse than their reality does. After all, this is pretty heavy shit for a show that started out with an episode entitled, “Bananas, Crackers and Nuts.” Each dream is complex and willfully inaccessible (though, not as much as a film from someone like Charlie Kaufman, shoutout to the Jessie Buckley hive), but they each relate to the crushing reality that this war might never end and that they might eventually be unable to help.
Hawkeye and Winchester both experience nightmares about their talents going to waste in the face of human suffering. Klinger and Mulcahy dream that war will never allow them to return to normal and savor what they love the most in the world (being home and preaching, respectively). Potter dreams of a time he’ll never be able to return to — with the grace of a weary war veteran. B.J. and Margaret dream, simply, that they may never be happy again. It’s a lot to pack into a half-hour of television and it’s a lot for anyone who was first drawn in by early M*A*S*H’s comedy to stomach. So I do understand why some are hesitant to the experimentation. I just ride for the episode, not only as a meditation on war, but also as a means of fantasy and escapism. Their dreams are not necessarily escapes, but for brief moments, they’re waltzing and riding on horseback, returning home and dressed as the Pope. Briefly, they’re happy. Even if a fantasy lasts just one second, that means so much in an oppressive war.
Escapism was present throughout M*A*S*H and I was struck by how crazy it was that humans went that way in our evolution. No other species escapes from living in the moment. Only we do. Only we fantasize about our worlds, our lives being slightly different. Marginally better. In some cases, wildly, extravagantly better. These moments of fancy (whether they come in dreams or in letters written home to family members) are the only way to survive the crushing reality of the Korean War — or of any war. Thank goodness we have a sense of humor to make sense of the hurt we feel at the world’s horrors or else we might not have been a species for very long.
After all, the war has “tattooed [their] brains with permanent ugliness,” as Hawkeye remarks in “Dreams.” A war isn’t what any of them went to medical school for, so who cares if Klinger dresses up as Moses in an effort to be sent home when another soldier is discharged for claiming he’s Jesus Christ and who cares if Hawkeye experiences a genuine belly laugh at the sight of him holding commandments? These characters need these moments because the lives they’re leading are filled with dread. (Ironically, the series ends with Klinger being the only one to stay overseas, even in spite of his resentment for Radar dipping out of the war at the outset of season eight.)
Just as B.J. (who grew a mustache as a small form of rebellion against the clean-cut army) was racked with nerves that he wouldn’t be able to find friendship in a unit so far from home, so too was Hawkeye, who was disturbed over the thought that he’d lose himself in South Korea. What made Blake and Potter such effective leaders was that they recognized this within Hawkeye, so they trusted him to cut jokes (like Frank praying for chocolate pudding over world peace) and play harmless pranks on his cohorts because they knew they helped keep him sane, human, and always feeling. Hawkeye would have never risked the life of a patient over a laugh (just as Klinger eschewed his various get-ups when it came time to save lives), so they allowed him to run his time in the 4077th by his own standards.
In spite of Hawkeye’s demeanor remaining intact by the end of the series, he’s still irrevocably wounded by the role he was forced to play in South Korea. In perpetual acts of cyclical devastation, Hawkeye “fixes small wounds,” so the soldiers can “go out and get bigger ones.” It’s one of the series’ many antiwar sentiments (it aired during the Vietnam War, but is perpetually relevant to all conflicts) that often inflated anger over the aforementioned escapism. (The briefest moments of hope were always doled out so specifically as to be tearjerkers, like when Winchester clutches a leaf from a child’s letter and whispers, “Autumn in New England.”) Tragically, even when Winchester managed to break through with culture for some strangers in South Korea, the cycle of violence would attack his own spirit right back. His own students in the series finale don’t make it out alive, missing liberation by hours.
By the end, they’re all victims of the Korean War. It’s like Major Sidney Freedman (Allan Arbus), the recurring resident psychiatrist in the war, observed in season four’s “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?” Captain Chandler (Alan Fudge) believes himself to be Jesus Christ and he will not waver from the story he projects to the inquiring doctors, who harvest his dog tags for clues to his true identity. The also-recurring Colonel Flagg (Edward Winter) believes Chandler is lying so he can take the “coward’s” way out of the war and go home. His bravado is tempered quickly by Freedman, who sees both Chandler and Flagg as different kinds of Korean War victims. Flagg is a man who has lost his compassion; Chandler is a man who lost his identity when he dropped one too many bombs on innocent civilians.
In a world that is frequently (and overly) concerned with traditional masculinity and ceaseless machismo, characters like Freedman are to be treasured. He seeks only to help others and he treats the mind with as much delicacy as Hawkeye treats the bodies of soldiers interred at the 4077th. After all, shouldn’t everyone’s priority be to leave? Why should we root against Klinger’s, for example, attempts to go home? Because Colonel Flagg looks down on the act? The world needs more Klingers and Freedmans.
The world also needs more Father Mulcahys. He’s far and away the best religious leader I’ve seen depicted on television (sorry, Hot Priest) because of how much open-mindedness, doubt, and courage he brings to the role of faith in an ill-begotten war. Possessing a gentle sensibility, Father Mulcahy is forgiving and curious when engaging with Captain Chandler, rather than becoming instantly defensive over a perceived affront to the sanctity of his God. Father Mulcahy never attacks Captain Chandler and he never belittles him or pressures him. He only asks questions, seeking to learn what he can from the one who believes he’s Jesus and seeking to help in any way possible.
When Captain Chandler is asked if God answers all prayers, he answers, “Yes,” before shifting to the more skeptical, “Sometimes no.” There’s that sometimes again. Sometimes, God doesn’t answer all prayers (how could he?). Sometimes, you hear the bullet. War is unpredictable. So let them joke. Let them have their teddy bears blessed (Radar just needs someone to look up to in a world devoid of solace). Let them escape reality whenever possible.
Let them engage in their holiday traditions, even as they’re miles and kilometers from home. My favorite episode of M*A*S*H, “Death Takes a Holiday,” from season nine (and directed by Farrell), deposits a spiritual (albeit, fictional) follow-up to the famed Christmas Truce of World War I directly into the television landscape. The spirit of Christmas is kept alive to the best of the 4077th’s abilities, as Mulcahy thinks of the nearby orphans and requests the doctors and nurses sacrifice their treats from home for the kids. Charles takes it a step further when he donates chocolate to the orphanage anonymously (a Winchester family tradition), even as his peers unwittingly hound him for being less generous than they are.
Winchester spirals into a rage when he learns that the chocolate wound up on the black market of South Korea, but his temper is promptly assuaged when it’s explained that the candy bars had to be swapped for the more nutritious rice and cabbage. After all, how could there be dessert without a meal?
Despite the understanding, Winchester is understandably downtrodden by the fact that no one will taste the candy bars as a result of his family’s legacy. It’s just one more thing that doesn’t feel like Christmas to him, one more notch in a rapidly withering belt of normalcy. Just for a moment, though, a semblance of standard interactions is gifted to Charles. Klinger fixes Charles a plate of food from the banquet hall and presents it like a waiter in Charles’ bunk, as the surgeon sits alone in melancholic nostalgia. “Thank you, Max,” he nods sincerely, letting the ranking of titles fall away for a moment of deep human connection in land unfamiliar. It doesn’t feel like Christmas, but at least it felt like love.
The story I love the most from “Death Takes a Holiday,” though takes place elsewhere, in a secret section of the camp (so as not to ruin the group’s holiday party) as B.J., Hawkeye, and Margaret work to treat a patient for whom death is imminent. There’s no saving his life, but B.J. (channeling his own emotions over what would happen if he left Peg and his daughter, Erin, behind) insists on keeping him alive until midnight so Christmas doesn’t become the day a family’s father died (a wreath should be “green, not black”). It’s a selfless, noble act that proves individuals are capable of rising above the capitulation to horror that war insists upon. (It also makes Potter quite proud, as he looks on his three top medicinal helpers in misty admiration. He’s awed by how they hardly think to complain about their own ruined holiday in the face of a man dying in their presence.)
Ultimately, B.J.’s mission doesn’t make it and after an argument with Father Mulcahy (who would never dare interfere with medical work, but insists upon the importance of his role in a soldier’s final moments), he relents. “Does it ever stop?” Mulcahy asks and, for this soldier, it has. It’s time to let him rest. Margaret is just as devastated by their failure and she emotionally waxes about how death comes with no fanfare, just seconds after life.
Connecting strongly with the significance of a family member lost on Christmas Day, Hawkeye slowly rises to his feet, weightily strides to the clock on the wall, and pushes the minute hand forward to 12:05 A.M. December 26. “Look, he made it,” he says with a tone that conveys lightness, but betrays none of it. It’s a bigger fudging than Winchester and Klinger just engaged in, but it’s one that Mulcahy doesn’t think for a second not to go along with. Ever the rule-follower, Houlihan acknowledges that the death forgery would be her first, but she relents, as well. It’s their own form of rebellion against the war that has broken them down and killed many to whom they’re attached. Henry Blake, Tommy, the father on Christmas. In that all-time great television moment, they controlled the narrative, wrestling it back from death and bloodshed. In that moment, the future of one family was theirs. And they treated it with all the kindness of a stitched bullet hole.
After all, these soldiers lost their lives during the Korean War, but it’s not like the M*A*S*H characters didn’t also lose. Hawkeye came close to losing himself when he supplanted a suffocated baby for a chicken and required Sidney Freedman’s unwavering aid. They all lost the times of their primes, the times with their families and kids, loved ones, and friends. War demands sacrifice of everyone, so wouldn’t it be better to just forego the whole thing? Christmas Eve parties sound a heck of a lot more fun.
At the very least, this particular take on the Korean War united the members of the 4077th with one another. How can you not be moved to cascading tears when B.J. and Hawkeye exchange a final goodbye with one another, breathlessly torn between the unifying bond they forged in an interminable space and the “last day of school” rush to just go home already. B.J. struggles with the words and implants them, instead, in a rock formation that he slides away from on a motorcycle. Hawkeye, instead, feels the emotions pang his chest and smiles widely through the tears when he remembers B.J.’s floppy shoes and cheesy mustache, unsure if he’ll ever be able to see them again as they travel to opposite sides of their home nation.
In the final moments, though, despite any antagonism they might have had at the thought that a goodbye would not be shared between the two, Hawkeye and B.J. finally summon the courage to speak their feelings and champion their love for one another. Life just isn’t long enough to withhold the feelings you’ve experienced with your most cherished companions of existence. The M*A*S*H finale gave me the courage to walk right out of my college dorm room, mix the rainfall above with my own tear-stained cheeks, and ask a friend on a date. The relationship didn’t last, but she did say yes to that one date in a moment that wouldn’t have occurred without B.J. and Hawkeye squeezing each other tight and riding away from one another. They’ve since reunited on Alan Alda’s podcast to share stories of their bond, of the show, of their careers since, and of Stiers’ response to their practical jokes on set. But in that moment — the most watched in television history — they’re enshrined forever as a testament to friendship as the world’s strongest antidote to its most corruptible institution. Of the things they carried on M*A*S*H, this was their most profound.
