M*A*S*H fans strike back

The comments to my last post include some dissents from my view that M*A*S*H has not aged well and that only the first season or two is watchable. Anthony Strand makes the reasonable argument that it all comes down to whether one is engaged with the characters or not:

[...] Reading your thoughts about it, I get the impression we have fundamentally different views of what makes the show work. I mostly think the Trapper John/Henry seasons are too broad, and that it improved immensely once it figured out how to make the characters into real people. [...]

And I vastly prefer Potter — a believable commanding officer with realistic attitudes and quirks — to Henry, who is a joke. But I understand why you don't, because it's not really the same show. The switch from Henry to Potter signaled "We don't really have any interest in satire anymore. We're just going to watch these guys live."

During what I think of as "the good BJ years" (seasons 4-8 or so), it became a pretty low-key show about day-to-day life in a MASH unit, which I'll admit is pretty far from the broad satire it set out to be. And if the characters bore you, then I can see why you have no interest in watching that show.

A second from Anne Roewe Bulloch:

I'm 35 and I like MASH a lot. I really got into it when I was in high school, although I'd caught it in reruns for years before that.

I agree with Anthony on pretty much every point. I prefer B.J. to trapper, Winchester to Frank, and Potter to Blake. Sure, it got EXTRA EXTRA DRAMATIC in the last few seasons, but MASH had more good seasons than a lot of shows have seasons of any kind.

And Emily says the show evolved, not deteriorated:

Another young-ish MASH fan here, 29. I got into it in high school.

I liked episodes all the way through, but I think that as a sitcom it was better in the early years. . . I'd put Radar leaving as the turning point.

After that I feel like it was still good, but in a different way. It turned into the first dramady on TV (a road it started down in earlier seasons). People knew and liked the characters well enough that the humor could be sacrificed for more in-depth looks at the characters.

I understand the affection for the characters, though I still don't see them as having the inner conflicts that would make in-depth studies interesting. They all started out or evolved into people who always do the right thing (except Frank Burns and Col. Flagg, who always do the completely wrong thing). Replacing Trapper, Henry, and Frank — who all cheat on their wives in Korea — with the morally upright (arguably sanctimonious) B.J. and Potter, plus the asexual Charles, really did turn M*A*S*H into a different show.

By the way, there's a good appreciation of M*A*S*H, and in particular the faux-documentary episode "The Interview," by Noel Murray at the A.V. Club.  Murray mentions the problems the show had getting adult themes past the gatekeepers at CBS, especially when M*A*S*H aired during the "family hour" between 8 and 9. That period happened to coincide with the banning of adultery on the show.*

*UPDATE: A reader points out that B.J. had a one-night stand with a nurse in the 1977 episode "Hanky-Panky" (poor nurse!). I must have repressed the memory of this episode, but now I recall him moping around with guilt as if he had committed mass murder.

Comments

[Anthony Strand]

Wow, thanks for highlighting these comments. I'm really honored.

Also, I should have said this yesterday, but I'm really loving this feature. I can't wait for the next 72 episodes.

[Robert David Sullivan]

Thanks! I appreciate the thought you put into your comments.