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M*A*S*H TV Series

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    M*A*S*H TV Series

    Catching back up with this gem of a series, the cast truly is terrific and the writing frequently sharp. Seems amazing in view of the revisionism the US has gone through since 1980 that such strong anti-war dialogue could make it on to mainstream TV.

    I could nitpick some aspects of race and gender that have not dated well but even in these regards, the show was more progressive than any others I can recall.

    Will be a joy to get through as many episodes as I can, although the overall count of 251 might just be too many, stretching the ideas thinly. You can see there was a lot of attrition in the fact that only Alda and Swit appeared in every show, although Farr and Christopher also appear in both the first and last series. Some actors felt their characters were being marginalized in favour of Hawkeye. It seems rather scandalous that Swit was not allowed to take the Cagney and Lacey job, although it would have left the writers without a character who carried many of the plots, being sole strong female.

    #2
    Frank Burns (played magnificently by Larry Linville) is one of the greatest tv characters of all time.

    Last few seasons were pretty awful - they were all too chummy and the series went way longer than the actual war.

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      #3
      Ah, M*A*S*H*. Huge fan since way way back. I could go on. The first 5 or 6 seasons are stellar, and the last five or six aren't too shit hot. It really shifted tone over the years, from a way-funny irreverence and antidote to the Vietnam war into a weirdly preachy not-so-funny sitcom with a message.

      I've written before, somewhere around here recently, that they replaced a lot of great characters (Frank Burns, Henry Blake, Trapper John, Ugly John, Spearchucker Jones, Ginger, etc) with a much more narrow and small ensemble that didn't have as much breadth (Colonel Potter, Winchester, BJ Hunnicutt, etc).

      I could go on...as you can tell.

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        #4
        Yes I think that becomes even more noticeable when you watch repeats in random order and a great irreverent episode from 1973 crashes into some moralizing dirge from 1981. But even early on they made some bad decisions like discarding Spearchucker Jones after just 5 episodes because they mistakenly believed there were no black surgeons in the Korean War, as if such details mattered in a show that was really about Vietnam to a large extent but disguised as Korea.

        However, I think the actors playing Trapper John and Frank Burns chose to leave so the show cannot be blamed for that, although it could have looked after those characters better maybe by giving them some of the good lines that went to Hawkeye.
        Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 22-04-2018, 17:00.

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          #5
          It was much more interesting as an ensemble piece, but became clearly focussed on Hawkeye & Friends in the middle-to-later years. And then, ugh, there were the Written & Directed by Alan Alda episodes, about which the less said the better.

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            #6
            I wonder if I finally got rid of my M*A*S*H* trivia books*....



            *just two...I'm not a nut or anything.

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              #7
              I've said it before somewhere (either here or on oldtf) that it jumped the shark when Henry was killed off. Until then, it'd been vital television.

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                #8
                Yes, and a very contentious decision at the time. The producers apparently felt that, as a show 'about' a war, there was really no skin in the game if the viewers never lost anyone they cared about.

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                  #9
                  Was it spiteful revenge at the expense of the actor choosing to leave; a symbolic homicide?

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