M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

I can't remember even smiling once at a joke.
I've really given it a try. Probably watched at least 30 episode, but it's quite boring.

And the two doctors, Alan Alda and the other, they're bordering annoying. They're not greater than a bit more competent and less idiotic Beavis and Butthead.

[EIM]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

The film is amazing, though. Right?

[WOM]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

M*A*S*H* can be a toughie. In the early years, it was very '60s in its mindset. Absurdist humour with a cast of loose-cannon characters who made the lines work. Colonel Henry Blake, Klinger, Radar, McIntyre and, brilliantly, Burns. Alda was almost the straight man, but was given funny lines. His humour tended very much toward old Jewish style writing. Very Catskills/vaudeville almost, with a character very much Groucho Marx.

However, after the first few seasons, they gradually replaced the absurdist characters with stock, straight ones. Blake with Potter. Burns with Winchester. McIntyre with Hunnicutt. Radar left. Klinger became straight-laced. Tertiary characters like Spearchucker, Ugly John, Ginger, etc, all went away completely.

By then, of course, the show was a hot financial property and they stopped taking chances altogether. The factory cranked out increasingly mediocre episodes until it died on its ass, yet people kept watching until the end.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

Hm, now that you mention the Groucho Marx thing, yes.

EIM, I've never watched the film.

[Toby Gymshorts]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

Then you should. As EIM / GBS says, it's amazing.

[matt j]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

I love the series, pretty much everything after the early episodes of the first season and until Henry Blake leaves is really good. Then almost everything up to when Burns leaves is decent. After that is pretty uneven, though there are probably some classics in there I'm forgetting.

Anything where they play poker, anything with the psychiatrist (forget the actor's name), 'Five O'Clock Charlie' and 'For Want of a Boot' are classics.

I'm not really sure I agree with WOM about them stopping taking chances. I think they took a lot of chances in the final seasons (some of the episodes were quite risky - though of questionable quality), but they cranked the maudlin up too far and lost the humor that I enjoyed most.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

Toby Gymshorts wrote: Then you should. As EIM / GBS says, it's amazing.

I will, during the weekend.

[WOM]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

I suspect matt j is referring to episodes directed by Alan Alda. Chancy, yes. Successful? Not often, in my opinion. Obviously he was looking to explore deeper ideas in war and personalities, but I thought they were heavy-handed and rarely ever funny.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

It was, by its subject matter, too dark to be intended to be out-and-out comedy, surely? I mean it was never afraid of getting into stuff like patients (and main characters) dying, amputations, psychological trauma and breakdowns, terrible treatment of local civilians, etc. There were whole episodes of Hawkeye wrestling with his sanity. Real laugh-a-minute stuff. Even Corporal Klinger's futile attempts to "prove" his insanity (and so be sent home rather than court-martialled and shot for desertion), which formed so much of the "comic" element, are darkly sad, when you think about it.

I remember one episode where Henry finally gets to go home, having completed his tour of duty, and they throw a huge party with all the ensuing madcap antics, and the episode ends with Radar coming in (a few days later) to shakily read out a despatch announcing that Henry's plane home had crashed in the Pacific and he was dead. Pan around shocked cast, nurses bursting into tears. End of episode. I recall an interview with Alan Alda where he said NONE of the cast - include the actor who played Radar himself - had been given that script until the very moment they were gathered to film it, so their shock and grief on-screen was pretty much genuine. I mean, comedy? Fucking hell.

[VTTBoscombe]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

I think MASH worked well for me originally, was that the BBC did not include the laughter track.
When I heard it with the canned laughter - it immediately became less funny

[Cal Alamein]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

matt j wrote: I love the series, pretty much everything after the early episodes of the first season and until Henry Blake leaves is really good. Then almost everything up to when Burns leaves is decent. After that is pretty uneven, though there are probably some classics in there I'm forgetting.

Pretty much agree with all of this. I loved the Henry/Trapper/Frank episodes. Larry Linville's portrayal of Frank Burns produces one of the all-time great characters in television. Henry's finale was quite powerful for my young brain that was used to happy resolutions.

Post-Frank, the last years were ludicrous. Klinger gave up trying to get out of the army. Hot Lips was too chummy w/ Pierce and BJ. Winchester's act got old after a half of a season. The series went on about three times longer than the actual war.

If you only started seeing the series in the last 10 years, then yeah, it might appear pretty cheesy and unfunny.

My favorite occasional character was Colonel Flagg.

[linus]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

It still is the best American TV comedy series of all time, it's aged better than Seinfeld.

[KGR]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

This reminds me, where is the 'Popular things that other people have done but I have never done' thread?

[Gangster Octopus]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

VTTBoscombe wrote: I think MASH worked well for me originally, was that the BBC did not include the laughter track.
When I heard it with the canned laughter - it immediately became less funny

Totally right.

[Crusoe]

M*A*S*H has never made me laugh

Gangster Octopus wrote:

I think MASH worked well for me originally, was that the BBC did not include the laughter track.
When I heard it with the canned laughter - it immediately became less funny

Totally right.

Yes, absolutely. I remember being bewildered at how the same programme could immediately seem so much worse. If I remember rightly the BBC was deluged with complaints when they left the laughter track in for at least one episode.