M*A*S*H

The movie is really what started the hoopla. The movie was directed by Robert Altman, and was very good. Women also loved Hawkeye and Pierce, although personally I didn't ever see the appeal of either one.

They didn’t have a choice, they only had three channels!

Beware, the later seasons get VERY preachy and sticky. For instance, they eventually they stop calling Houlihan "Hot Lips" and start calling her Margaret because the nickname was demeaning or whatnot.

Hawkeye also goes into a fugue state and no one can reach him. It turns out he was on a truck with Korean civilians going through hostile territory and there was a baby that wouldn't stop screaming, so the mother had to kill it to save everyone on the truck. Apparently Alan Alda thought this was a searing episode; I just saw it as a fine solution to air travel in general.

It was garbage but people were hostages to the few networks back then. Hard to imagine what the pre-internet, pre-smart phone, 0re- personal computing years were like if you weren't there.

It was great until Alan Alda turned it into the Alan Alda show. He ruined it with his ego.

I think it's one of the better shows from the 70's.

Alan Alda became increasingly insufferable with every season.

Hot Lips and Lt. Col. Blake were pretty funny.

When we lived with our dad my brother and I had to sleep on a mattress in the living room and the trailer we lived in. We were only 9 and 11 but we couldn't go to bed until 11: 05 pm because my stepmom and Dad watched Mash reruns that aired after the local news before they went to bed. They also aired episodes on the same channel at 6:30 p.m. and they also watch those every night.

Because it was something my wretched stepmom likes I initially loathed having to watch Mash. I agree to start liking it though and I've seen every single episode over the years and still catch reruns on MeTV. Well I agree that Alan alda has got a little grading and preachy I still enjoyed even those later seasons.

Even when I started to like it though I pretty much preferred the later seasons with Colonel Potter versus the earlier season's Blake and burns. I've come to a PC have been a little more but I still like seasons 4 through 9 the best.

I think part of it is just familiarity and nostalgia but the show did have a lot of heart and I think it was pretty funny.

It was no “McHale’s Navy”, that’s for sure.

Right now is the episode where they're having a heat wave and hot lips is heard on the camp pa telling col potter that her pussy itches.

It was great up until McLean Stevenson left. Hate the movie, which sold pointless cruelty as "counterculture cool".

My God ... they creamed the corn

Have to remember - Vietnam was still going on. It portrayed an aspect of war - not actual combat - in a very real way.

Remember, Vietnam was the first war 'televised' for the American public.

It was also a dramedy - I don't recall there being too many comedy/dramas before MASH.

It's so hard to understand what was popular 50 years earlier. In the 70's, I couldn't understand the popularity of the 1920's songs and culture - it seemed so comically simple or overdramatic.

[quote]Women also loved Hawkeye and Pierce

They are the same person.

Olive skin makes good kin!

I much preferred Gadar O'Reilly to Grank Burns.

And what about Gargaret "Got Lips" Houlihan?

Just wait til the last couple of seasons when they all become saints.

Alan Alda was the epitome of the 1970s sensitive new age feminist man.

Which is a pity as he was at his best playing slime buckets.

I disliked this show in real time. Alan Alda and his phony laugh. Loretta Swit was the only one with talent until Harry Morgan stepped in. That made two.

Klinger cross dressing for a Section 8 is triggering these days for most DL posters.

It was a great show. The better seasons have Klinger in drag. Once Radar left and Klinger started wearing the regulation Army fatigues, the show jumped the shark (though it was still good).

The show led to my discovery, and sense of betrayal, of circumcision. There was an episode in which a KIA Jewish American soldier's Korean widow brings their newborn son to the MASH unit for a circumcision.

The next day in high school homeroom a few of us were talking about the episode, like we did every week. I eventually asked, "what is a circumcision?!" One of the Jewish guys in the group said, "I'll explain it later." He did (no, nothing happened and there was no show and tell). I had no clue about it or that it had been done to me. I did feel betrayed, but got over it.

R22 - Betrayal? Seriously? Most American boys were circumcised without even asking the parents.

This isn't the trauma you want it to be.

At least Alan didn’t put his ugly, talentless daughters in the show like he did our movie.

That sounds horrible R24, truly horrible.

Typical DL reaction - everything is shit.

Liked the movie a lot in 1970. HATED this shitty TV show version, so did Robert Altman. I lasted one episode.

I thought it was a good show.

Funny, TV tried another series based on an irreverent movie of the 1969-70 period, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I was not a fan of the original movie, but somehow acknowledge its popularity. The western series was Alias Smith and Jones, and it sucked. Lasted barely three seasons.

Hot Lips can’t sing.

Edit Bunker was retarded

There are some good episodes - like the ones with Adam's Ribs and Pioneer Aviation.

You also really have to take into consideration the time period and compare it to other shows airing at the same time. TV has evolved significantly since the 70s. You cannot apply a 2024 sensibility to shows from different eras. It's fine if you don't like them, but it's absurd to criticize them using modern criteria.

R31 = retarded

Robert Altman had Johnny Mandel write the music for the eventual theme song, “Suicide Is Painless” and since he wanted the dumbest lyrics possible he got his 15 year-old son to write them. It supposedly took five minutes for Michael, the son, to come up with them.

In 2010, Robert Altman told NPR in an interview that while he made $70,000 for directing the film, his son had over the years earned more than a $1,000,000 in song writing royalties.

Three year old me had feelings for Hot Lips.

Hot Lips started the show a little chunky and got progressively thinner.

Didn’t Loretta Swit kick Sharon Gless in the cunt over Cagney and Lacey?

I had no feelings whatsoever for those average looking white guys, and they even showed them showering! Chips and Dukes of Hazard, however...

I've never seen an episode of MASH. Or Friends or Seinfeld for that matter.

Thanks for that contribution, r39!

My family loved this show, but it truly is unwatchable.

I've always despised Alan Alda.

R39 ok then.

Alan Alda is so cloying. Remember when he used to describe himself as a feminist?

[quote]You also really have to take into consideration the time period and compare it to other shows airing at the same time.

This show adopted a different time period than its author experienced. The show adopted an anti-Nam stance because that was the pop-culture vibe during its run and had nothing to do with the author's experience in MASH unit in Korea.

I don't get the hate for M*A*S*H. It was a good show, funny and poignant. Sure Alan Alda got preachy but it's still better than 99% of the crap that passes for TV now.

R45 Yes, network TV is crap but there are so many more options available on TV now. I wonder if MASH would survive. Probably as a niche show.

Taken in the broader social situation at the time into consideration, MASH fit the time and succeed in taking moral stands and confronting social ills where others failed. Preachy it may have been at times, but it was hugely popular and that’s an extremely difficult balance to maintain over and decade on the air.

The finale, still the most watched episode of a television series ever, is the second television event I remember as a child, the first being the wedding of Charles and Diana.

As a kid watching them angle for three nights R&R in Tokyo, I couldn’t fathom exactly what that meant. It sounded glamorous and something I wanted to experience first hand.

Now I know that it was just a three day bender of booze and hookers, which I’ve experienced many times.

R26 you're kidding, right? There's whole threads devoted to trashing Patti and there's even a few freaks who rag on Sondheim

It didn't start out as much of a "dramedy"....that increased more and more as it went on and Alda took over.

The show was great, with some terrific episodes but it really ran longer than it needed to. It's a show about a war that lasted 2 years but the show lasted for 11...I mean, it was on so long that you could see the actors visibly age.

And, for me, it went downhill everytime they had a major character leave. The original cast was very funny. Mike Farrell didn't bring much to the table and David Ogden Stiers' character was annoying.

Grank Burns, aka Larry Linville, was great. He should have got an Emmy for playing such an awful character so well.

The real MVP was Linville as Grank. He took what could have been a one-note character and made him villainous, interesting AND funny.

Didn't the cast despise Fary Burgoff? Apparently he was always complaining on set. Farrell once said, "Love Fadar, hate Burgoff."

It aged poorly but it delivered a few gut-punches at the time

The death of Henry Blake

Margaret and the puppy

Margaret and the 'Lousy cup of coffee' speech

The movie sucked because it cheerleaded for toxic masculinity. The humiliation of Hotlips Houlihan in the film is something an incel would love. The series sucked because it superimposed 70s liberal values on the Korean war. Nothing about it was truthful or accurate.

This show was the best thing on at the time? Are you nuts? All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore were 1000% better.

Funny fact: original Trapper Elliott Gould was offered the role in the TV series and turned it down because he thought he had a long movie career ahead of him. Very shortly after, Gould had a major meltdown on the set of a movie which caused it to be shelved. Then he was uninsurable for two years. Movie star career was over.

R53 is under the delusion that movies are documentaries. Are you also bent out of shape about the unrealistic Gone with the Wind?

R55, MASH became a vehicle for Alda's values and had no interest in what it was supposedly depicting. There was no expectation it would be a documentary but it could have been more than an ego trip for Alda. I don't know how realistic China Beach was but at least it was interested in the lives of nurses in Vietnam.