The Original American Chopper Fan Forum, and the new, and Original Orange County Choppers on CMT Fan Forum

Maribegood · Senior Member

Any M*A*S*H love on this forum?

PAMD · Senior Member

The pre- fall 1975's, with Mclean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers were all very well done; after the "death" of Henry Blake, I lost interest. Five O'clock Charlie was my fave, some great flying there! ..and Klinger, before he capitulated.

Maribegood · Senior Member

Klinger was my second fav. LOVED him. Sydney was also a poet and philosopher-"Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants, and slide on the ice."

1Moparsick0 · Guru

THe show is a honest classic. Couldn't if they tried make a sitcom that could surpass it nowadays. Still stands the test of time.

dahammer_57 · Senior Member

Liked the movie tons more than the series. The first 3 seasons with Henry Blake/Trapper John were very good but the show went soft during the Alan Alda dominated years in my opinion. Watched many an episode in my youth after school when it's reruns were in their prime. Didn't realize how left of left some of the storylines were until viewing them years later as an adult. As with many long run series they really ran out of stories to tell toward the end.

Favotite Character: Colonel Flagg

PAMD · Senior Member

The "real" Radar O'Reilly:

1Moparsick0 · Guru

dahammer_57 wrote:
Liked the movie tons more than the series. The first 3 seasons with Henry Blake/Trapper John were very good but the show went soft during the Alan Alda dominated years in my opinion. Watched many an episode in my youth after school when it's reruns were in their prime. Didn't realize how left of left some of the storylines were until viewing them years later as an adult. As with many long run series they really ran out of stories to tell toward the end.
Favotite Character: Colonel Flagg

To me... After they went to the show being a set, instead of the early ones done on a recreated encampment. with 5 o'clock charlie, a the other more outrageous moments of the show, but in all one of the best shows that the greatest era of enetrtaining T.V. I.M.H.O. If with all the technology of today could have the writers of that time.. Why can't they produce product better than the classic shows..

rumple · Senior Member

I remember reading an interview with the cast of M.A.S.H. right after the finale (sorry, I can't find a link) and it seemed to be generally agreed by all that Gary Burghoff (sp), who played Radar, was an insufferable prick in real life.

Supposedly, McLean Stevenson annoyed Alan Alda - by then a producer of the show - so much that when Stevenson announced he was leaving the show, Alda and the writers decided to kill off his character - instead of merely retiring him - so there would be no chance they'd ever have to work with him again.

I found this interesting comment on the Wikipedia page for the show, which helps explain the changes in the show over the years:

CHANGE OF TONE

As the series progressed, it made a significant shift from being primarily a comedy with dramatic undertones to a drama with comedic undertones. This was a result of changes in writing and production staff, rather than the oft-cited cast defections of McLean Stevenson, Larry Linville, Wayne Rogers and Gary Burghoff. Series co-creator and comedy writer Larry Gelbart departed after Season Four, the first to feature Mike Farrell and Harry Morgan. This resulted in Farrell and Morgan having only a single season reading scripts featuring Gelbart's masterful comic timing, which defined the feel and rhythm of the show's first three seasons with predecessors Rogers and Stevenson, respectively. Larry Linville (the show's comic foil) and Executive Producer Gene Reynolds both departed at the conclusion of Season Five in 1977, resulting in M*A*S*H being fully stripped of its original tight comedic foundation.

Whereas Gelbart and Reynolds were the comedic voice of M*A*S*H for the show's first five seasons (1972–1977), Alan Alda and newly promoted Executive Producer Burt Metcalfe became the new dramatic voice of M*A*S*H from Season Six until the show ceased production (1977-1983). By the start of Season Eight (1979-1980), the writing staff had been completely overhauled; with the departure of Gary Burghoff, M*A*S*H displayed a distinctively different feel, consciously moving between comedy and drama, unlike the seamless integration of both in its first five years. Storylines were more political in nature, while several episodes experimented with deviations from the sitcom format:

PAMD · Senior Member

Rumple, I wholeheartedly agree! M*A*S*H really took the proverbial nose-dive after Larry Linville's character, Frank "ferret-face" Burns jumped into the hot tub with General and Mrs. Kessler. I was unaware that their best writer also departed; this, too, explains a lot. I never thought that the "Hawkeye" delivered the "punch" that everyone who was supposedly in the know with regards to show business did.

Harry Morgan did help a bit in balancing this out.

Radar O'Reilly's character would have best been allowed to follow the perverted/shifty route which started to take place at the beginning of the series, personally, I would have enjoyed viewing an episode entitled "Radar gets the clap at Rosie's - and it wasn't because of his drum playing talents".

When they took the about face in Season 2, and returned him to a pre-pubescent cherub status, much of the "oomph" that his character possessed disappeared, severely limiting the growth potential of the beloved Radar.

One thing rang true with regards to the series; a MASH trained trauma surgeon (Vietnam), Dr. William Pfeifer, who was a trauma surgeon at Brandywine Hospital and Trauma Center, Chester County's first trauma center, could perform an appendectomy from start to finish in 20 minutes. Bill would later become semi-famous, as the surgeon who saved the live of singer Gloria Estefan after a horrific bus accident near Tobyhanna, PA. That guy was good, the most skilled pair of hands that I have ever seen, attached to a very self confident physician who treated those around him with great respect. He never succumbed to the "God complex mentality" which so many do.

Maribegood · Senior Member

I cannot remember the name of the Louisiana bayou character who ran the motorpool, but he was another of my favorites. Harry Morgan was great. I never got into the character of BJ Honeycutt, and I kind of found the few interviews I read of the actor, Mike Farrell, off putting. I could not see the point of the Radar character at all and was glad to see the back end of him and the spotlight on Klinger. Shame when they made Klinger respectable. The Trapper John character really was a loss, as was Colonel Blake.

Colonel Flagg, ah yes. Uncle swore there are a few of those in every army. Sure the series ran left, but they were essentially using the setting of the Korean War to probe the wounds of the Vietnam War. It's bound to disturb.

PAMD · Senior Member

Luther Rizzo, portrayed by G.W. Bailey (played Captain Harris in the Police Academy movie series, also)

rumple · Senior Member

PAMD wrote:
Rumple, I wholeheartedly agree! M*A*S*H really took the proverbial nose-dive after Larry Linville's character, Frank "ferret-face" Burns jumped into the hot tub with General and Mrs. Kessler. I was unaware that their best writer also departed; this, too, explains a lot. I never thought that the "Hawkeye" delivered the "punch" that everyone who was supposedly in the know with regards to show business did.
Harry Morgan did help a bit in balancing this out.
Radar O'Reilly's character would have best been allowed to follow the perverted/shifty route which started to take place at the beginning of the series, personally, I would have enjoyed viewing an episode entitled "Radar gets the clap at Rosie's - and it wasn't because of his drum playing talents".
When they took the about face in Season 2, and returned him to a pre-pubescent cherub status, much of the "oomph" that his character possessed disappeared, severely limiting the growth potential of the beloved Radar.
One thing rang true with regards to the series; a MASH trained trauma surgeon (Vietnam), Dr. William Pfeifer, who was a trauma surgeon at Brandywine Hospital and Trauma Center, Chester County's first trauma center, could perform an appendectomy from start to finish in 20 minutes. Bill would later become semi-famous, as the surgeon who saved the live of singer Gloria Estefan after a horrific bus accident near Tobyhanna, PA. That guy was good, the most skilled pair of hands that I have ever seen, attached to a very self confident physician who treated those around him with great respect. He never succumbed to the "God complex mentality" which so many do.

I hated the character of "BJ Honeycu*t," because in context of the original wild, smartass spirit of MASH, he was a complete travesty. Worse, the substitution of a vaguely rogue-ish foil like Trapper with a simpering, flaccid tool like BJ had the stamp of Alda's ascendency all over it. We'll never know if Wayne Rogers felt the same as McLean Stevenson - that he didn't want to play second-fiddle on "the Alan Alda Show" - but simply put, that character and the loss of Frank Burns/Hotlips (you gotta admit, the pair worked, but fat-lips Houlihan on her own just made you miss Hot-lips even more) simply wrecked a good show.

It became less about rim-shots and more about rim-jobs (not really, but my brain just spewed that and I had no choice but to transcribe it).

Ever read; "Catch-22?" One of the best comedies ever written, especially the surreal dialog. I read it every few years, for lessons in writing dialog. Ever seen the POS movie they made of it? ALAN ARKIN as Yossarian? Are you ....... kidding me? Same deal. Bad casting, and the same ham-fisted attitude best portrayed in the character of "Lt. Steve" in "Good Morning, Vietnam!"

You're right, Doc. You always got the feeling that you'd catch Radar (the original version) sneaking into nurse's tents to sniff their socks. There was something about the combination of anarchy and sleazery in the camaraderie of Trapper and Hawkeye that never really made it past the original movie, and then just got diluted more and more by the preachy subtexts over the years.

The best I've ever heard it put was by Chuck Jones, director of those fantastic Warner Bros. cartoons and creator of Foghorn Leghorn, the Roadrunner and many others;

"Bugs Bunny is who we'd all like to be. He's magic. He can do anything, and get away with it. But Daffy Duck is who we are."

Amen.