M*a*s*h

[Celtic_Emperor]

Does anyone watch it? Sure, its an old show, but its pretty good.

I haven't been a fan for that long, but I have been watching it. I saw the dvd boxsets for it at the store, so the seasons must have been put on dvd recently.

Whose your favorite character? I like Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce and Major Frank Burns. The opening music is pretty catchy. ^^

EDIT: Strange, when I put in the title for this thread, I have all the letters capitalized like it's supposed to be, but it only capitalized the M.

 

[nessonite1]

Vlad, most places in the forum will "fix" it when you capitalize things. To keep people from typographically "shouting". You'll notice my friend GT's text is all first letter capped cause he types with the caps lock on. 😛

I used to watch MASH reruns all the time. Not really recently but I've seen a TON of it. I much prefer the earlier episodes before Hawkeye got so self-ritious and the show got super-dramatic. I'll list Frank Burns as my favorite character followed closely by Winchester. The former because he was just pathertic enough to be funny and the latter because I think he was the most well developed, three dimensional character there.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Self-rightious how? I can see how he thinks he's doing others a favor, but he really is. Sure, he's a pain in the ass with his pranks and jokes and defiance of order gone too far and he's brash and brutally honest to the point of being hurtful, but I think he's possibly the most genuine and caring character, aside from Father Magilacutty (of course you'd expect that from a priest)...damn I can'st spell right now.

I like Burns because he's a hypocrite and is so easily the butt of pranks and jokes. He thinks its so immoral for officers to be messing around when they have families at home, and there he is having an affair on his own wife with Major Hulahan...or however you spell it, its late..

He's funny without even knowing it because he's just a contradiction, but even he has his good qualities. He's otherwise pretty innocent and oblivious when he's not trying to issue a repremand on someone.

"Look at them....its so disgusting and unbecoming, it makes me sick!"- Frank

*Margret starts seducing him and flirting*

"Oh Margret!" *the two start making out*

LOL! ^___^

 

[coloman]

I enjoyed M*A*S*H when it was on originally and I enjoy it in reruns. I like "Hawkeye" the best but I like almost all of the characters on the show. "Col. Potter" is good and so are "Radar", "Major Burns","Hot Lips", "Major Winchester", "Col Blake","Cpl. Klinger" and "Father Mulcahey". Two characters I was not too fond of were "Trapper John" and "BJ". "Trapper John" because he was too much of a wise ass and "BJ" because he whined too much about being away from "Peg" and missing California so much. Two recuring chaacters that are great are "Sydney" the psychiatrist and "Col. Flagg". That show was well writen and the actors that played the characters are excellent actors especially Alan Alda and Harry Morgan.

 

[featherfingers]

BJ actually is my favorite character because he reminds me of myself. (Maybe not the "whiny" part, so much). I also like Charles Emerson Winchester, III. Beneath his pomposity and snootiness, he really had a heart for others. I still get misty eyed thinking about him breaking that classical album, after the Korean musicians were killed in the final episode.

 

[nessonite1]

That's exactly what stuck in my mind, Sole Man, when I picked Winchester as one of my favorites. They could have very easily made him into a stereotypical Niles_Craneish pompous joke but instead he developed into something far more "real".
The reason I'm not as enamoured with Hawkeye is because he went from one extreme to the other. In the beginning he was a complete smart ass which, I admit, was funny but had about 10,000 too many one-liner quips per episode. It fit cause the show was, in those days, still a comedy, but it's just not so much my style of comedy.
Then in the later seasons the show became so dramatic and depressing and the man said "this damn war" 10,000 times too many per episode. And while hating the war is a noble sentiment it just came off as whiney and repetetive.
I have to say though that the final episode of MASH was about the finest thing ever put on film.

 

[general zod1]

I love the seires basically until Garry Burghoff-Radar-left the show After that it seemed to dramatic for me The earlier episodes were the best to me

 

[MayDay1]

I like Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce and Major Frank Burns. The opening music is pretty catchy. ^^

The game of life is hard to play.
Gonna lose it anyway.
The losing card I'll some day lay.
So this is all I have to say.

That suicide is painless.
It brings on many changes.
And I can take or leave it if I please.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Oh, I didn't know those were the lyrics, thanks MayDay. Now I can actually do something other than hum it or whistle it. LOL

Although its my own fault. If I wanted to know so badly I could have just looked them up on the internet. ^^


EDIT:

How many seasons did MASH run people? I'm not even sure what season its going through right now, since they are reruns. Right now the commander is Blake, but in some of the ones I saw before it was the older man, I forget his name. I'm guessing those are the later ones right?

 

[Cbarton]

IF memeory serves me right it ran 11 seasons.

My favorite characters were Radar (us Iowa boys have to stick together) and Winchester. We literally got to see Radar "grow-up' as it were, which was interesting and I thought very realisitc.

Winchester got to face many moral dilemnas as he went for just the foil for HAwkeye and BJ, a la Burns, but as they chose to make him more a part of the 'team', he only got better. The bets epidode besdie teh final to me was the April Fools Day episode with Col. Daniel Webster Tucker, Potter'sold friend when they burned Hawk, BJ, Margaret, and Charles. Perhaps the best comedic timing ever. Too bad the show kept turning into Alda's liberal rah-rah show the longer it went.....

Oh, Vlad, it's Father Mulchahy and Margaret Houlihan...I'll be your temporary spell checker...😉

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Thanks for the info and the corrections. I was typing that late last night when my brain was powering down. 😛 I even got the priest's name wrong at first, I knew that wasn't right, so I just went with what seemed fimiliar.

11 seasons...I wonder how long it will take for them all to be on dvd in boxsets. This is a series fit to own.

 

[Ghost_Host_9991]

I think my all time favorite character was Dr Sydney Freedman, he was only in like 10 of the episodes, but god damn he was funny. THey wrote some great lines for Sydney. Like when a shell shocked soldier goes on a shooting spree, and Radar reports some guy went crazy, Hawkeye says "Sydney you're up." Shots ring out and Sydney replies "I'm not going out there without a bulletproof couch." ...Classic.

 

[MayDay1]

Oh, I didn't know those were the lyrics, thanks MayDay. Now I can actually do something other than hum it or whistle it. LOL

Cheery little ditty, ain't it? There's more lyrics but those are the only ones I can recall right off the top of my head. They sing this in the movie version where the dentist thinks he's commited suicide.

Here's another piece of interesting trivia. Radar is the only character to be played by the same actor in the movie and the tv series. Yup.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Thats odd. Were the other original actors not available or willing?

 

[SheDevil1]

Cheery little ditty, ain't it? There's more lyrics but those are the only ones I can recall right off the top of my head. They sing this in the movie version where the dentist thinks he's commited suicide.

Here's another piece of interesting trivia. Radar is the only character to be played by the same actor in the movie and the tv series. Yup.

It's also sung in the OPENING OF THE MOVIE. 😛

 

[Cbarton]

True...radar was the only one....

last verse of the song
"A young man once requested me
to answer questions that are key,
Is it to be or not to be?
I answered back, Oh why ask me?

For Suicide is Painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please....

 

[Cbarton]

Other trivia...didn't someone other than Willaim Christopher play Father Mulchahy in the first espisode of the first season, where he 'wins' a weekend with Lt. Dish?

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

I know what episode you're talking about, I saw it! Umm...I'm not sure if it was another actor, but it might have been.

 

[nessonite1]

I feel like a tv trivia nerd supreme now as I knew all of the factoids mentioned above. 😛
I think that show ran for like 40 times longer than the Korean war itself did. 😛
And yes Blake was the original top dog. He was replaced by Potter almost exactly the same time as Burns was replaced by Winchester and Trapper John was replaced by BJ.

What I thought MASH was especially succesful in pulling off was casting changes. It would have been so easy to replace Trapper John with another complete goofball but they did not. While Winchester was still initially a pain in the ass straight laced opposite of Hawkeye and BJ he was not the comical fool that Burns was.
And really Potter couldn't have been more different from Blake. The former being the hardened war veteran and Blake with his signature fishing hat who didn't really have any right being head of anything.
I will dive in here with a fun tidbit of my own.
The man who played Potter (who was also Joe Friday's sidekick on Dragnet) also made an appearance as an officer gone completely bonkers in an episode long before he took a leading role. This is quite disconcerting when you see it for the first time.

 

[SheDevil1]

Anybody happen to have a clip/pic of part of a M*A*S*H ep. where Loretta Switt shows off one of her feet? Hehehe I saw it once, but I'm not exactly equipped to get/save that kind of stuff onto my computer..... 🙁


Oh, and the Korean War was like 2 years long.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

I'm glad this thread is full of people that have something to say.

 

[nessonite1]

Or, in my case, far too much to say. 😛 Thanks for the thread, Vlad. I may start catching reruns of the show now.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

I've been hooked on the re-runs for about two months now. And you're welcome. ^^

 

[SheDevil1]

Or, in my case, far too much to say. 😛 Thanks for the thread, Vlad. I may start catching reruns of the show now.

I hope you like staying up until 5 AM! Verrrry late at night/early morning is M*A*S*H on. In fact, I think I'll watch it when it comes on tonight/this morning/whatever! 😛

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

LOL, what a coincidence, its on RIGHT NOW where I am. LOL