M*A*S*H

Were it not for this series, the Korean War would be completely forgotten except by those who actually fought in the war – and the Koreans themselves.  It’s like “WWII junior” with jets thrown in and the Chinese and North Koreans as the bad guys instead of the Germans and Japanese.  Tokyo is the source of R&R and geisha girls instead of a firebombing target for the USAAF.  It lacks the rice paddies, jungles, helicopters, 60s Woodstock music, marijuana/counterculture, and of course, provocative, pervasive prostitution that the Vietnam War injected permanently into our minds.

Korean War.  June 1950.  North Korea invaded South Korea in a surprise attack, pushing the South Koreans down to the bottom of the peninsula, to a tiny perimeter at Pusan which barely held out.  September 1950.  General MacArthur pulls a stunt: he landed at Inchon, behind North Korean lines, catching the North Korean Army by surprise, and UN forces drove all the way up to the Chinese border.  November 1950: a huge army of Chinese “volunteers” swarmed across the border and pushed the UN forces back down to the 38^th Parallel, where stalemate ensued, until an armistice was signed two years later.

Movie.  The movie came out in 1970.  The theme song, “Suicide is Painless”, actually has lyrics.  Long after being familiar with the TV show, I watched this, and was not very impressed.  While the familiar characters are here, though in most cases with different actors, as well as the elements and ingredients, it strikes me that the TV show had the benefit of running with the concept and developing it much further, plus allowing the various actors to flesh out their respective characters over several seasons and not merely 90 minutes.  The movie also features “Duke” Forrest, Tom Skerritt’s character, who is absent from the TV show.

TV Series.  Lasted from 1972-83 – far longer than the war itself.  (Be sure to catch all 400 seasons of the laugh-a-minute sit-com based on the Hundred Years War!).  The theme song is now an instrumental.

Characters

Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce (Movie: Donald Sutherland).  Played on the TV show by Alan Alda – forever typecasting him as Hawkeye, at least for those of us who knew him from “M*A*S*H”.  From Crabapple Cove, Maine.  Easily the main character, and one of the few to remain throughout the entire run of the series.  He loves his martinis – a very pretentious affectation – and is always wisecracking, though he’s also very sensitive.  He loves to consider himself a Groucho Marx clone.

Captain Trapper John MacIntyre (Wayne Rogers)(seasons 1-3).  Originally played by Elliot Gould in the movie.  He never really seemed to have much of a role than to be a comic sidekick friend to Hawkeye to make them a pair.  In fact, this was the reason why Rogers left the show.

Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell)(seasons 4-11).  From San Francisco, wife Peg and daughter Erin (name of his real life daughter).  He took over from Trapper John mid series, so there was no movie version of him.  I’ve noticed Farrell showed up recently, remarkably only little older than in “M*A*S*H”, as Victor Long’s father on “Desperate Housewives”.  Like Trapper John, BJ really doesn’t seem to have much more importance than to be a supporting character to play off Hawkeye.

Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) (seasons 1-5).  Played in the movie by Robert Duvall.  Married, but having an affair with Major Houlihan.  I notice that all the doctors – even Colonel Potter – consider themselves to be doctors first, and military officers second, with very little care or concern for military formalities beyond the minimum required of them.  Burns was the one who got stuck up in being a MAJOR and an officer, to the detriment of his medical skills.  This is despite the fact that he is not career military and has a private practice back in the US like all the other doctors. Like Colonel Flagg (the idiot military intelligence officer) Burns seems to act as a magnet for civilian hatred of typical military types as being morons and buffoons.

Major Charles Emerson Winchester, III (David Ogden Stiers) (seasons 6-11).  From Boston.  Incredibly arrogant and stuck up, even affecting the snobbish, stilted New England accent.  He inflicts his noxious classical music on his roommates Hawkweye and Hunnicutt, reads letters from his sister Honoria, and typically acts pompous and better than anyone else.  In one episode he gets a taste of his own medicine when an arrogant English officer slams him as a wanna-be and considers even New England Americans to be second-class. Although he took over from Burns, he doesn’t share Burns’ idiocy or devotion to military discipline for its own sake, though he doesn’t share Hawkeye’s anti-military attitude either.

Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Movie: Sally Kellerman; TV: Loretta Swit).  An army brat, no real hometown – the Army IS her life.  Her father is a big shot general.  She takes her role as head nurse seriously but has compassion for the nurses under her.  She has a friendly but platonic relationship with Hawkeye, though at the same time she chafes at his obnoxiously anti-military and unprofessional attitude – and teams up with Burns, her lover, to try to take out Colonel Blake.

Corporal Walter “RADAR” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff both in the movie and the TV series) (seasons 1-7).   The company clerk until Klinger took over.  Very shy farm boy from Iowa, average intelligence, but a nice guy.  I loved the episode where Hawkeye and BJ managed to weasel him a commission as 2LT so he could hook up with a cute nurse who insisted she only dated officers – and who rejected him anyway even with the gold bar.  He clutches a teddy bear and loves grape NeHi soda.

Corporal (later Sergeant) Maxwell Klinger (Jamie Farr).  The Lebanese clerk from Toledo, Ohio – most famous for dressing in drag to get a Section 8 (discharge for insanity).  Of course this never worked, the classic “Catch-22” – applying for Section 8 proves you aren’t insane.  He dropped the Section 8 routine by season 8 when he replaced RADAR as the company clerk. Not only a capable clerk, he knew all the ins and outs of the supply and Korean underground – he knew how to get anything, something which the naive, innocent RADAR couldn’t handle.

Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson)(seasons 1-3).  I never liked him – he was really a slacker, far more so than Hawkeye, who at least brought wit and humor so we could laugh WITH him, not AT him.  He was always wearing a fishing cap or his college sweater.  I suppose some portion of the audience related to him, but I never did.

Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan)(seasons 4-11).  From somewhere in Missouri.  Served in WWI (which he refers to as “W W Eye”).  I liked him far more than Blake – very military, but still a doctor and he had a heart.  Given his extensive service I think Potter is career military and not simply called up for the war the way the rest of the medical staff was.  Potter could see the forest for the trees and understand the spirit of military regs without getting caught up, as Burns did, in the formality and letter of it.  I still think of Harry Morgan as Colonel Potter, even when seeing him in “Dragnet”.  His fondness for his horse and the cavalry led Winchester to slam him as “our beloved Colonel Cowpie”.
 
Father Mulcahy (1LT, later Captain) (Movie: Rene Auberjunois; TV: William Christopher).  The camp chaplain, always a sympathetic character.  He was religious without being a hard-ass pompous zealot, the perfect combination we seek from men in the cloth.

Minor characters: Ho-Jon, their South Korean servant boy.  No, not Ganymede;  Ugly John, a colorful, mustached Australian trooper complete with slouch hat; Spearchucker, their Afro friend with the charming politically incorrect nickname – I know he’s a tentmate of Hawkeye and Trapper and has an officer’s rank, but I have no idea if he’s actually a surgeon.

I’ve always liked the show, though I probably haven’t seen nearly all the episodes despite having watched it since it was originally on in the 70s.  In later episodes the show got progressively darker and more cynical, to the point where they had nightmares drenched in blood, Hawkeye would sleep walk, and things started getting really strange.  For some reason all the actors and actresses have 70s-era haircuts (e.g. Farrell’s mustache), unlike “Happy Days” where the hair was appropriate for the 50s. The finale show itself was extremely well done, and so depressing you almost wished “hey, why can’t the war continue indefinitely, so as not to break up this family?”  But everything comes to an end – even wars and TV shows.