raven | Rule number one:

Morning, all. I'm home alone, supposedly reading for an exam on financial regulation - Shim has gone to London - but I'm in a much better mood than this suggests. The sun is shining in a perfect halfway to autumn way and I spent yesterday with

marina and

gavagai and another v. nice fangirl whose LJ/DW name I missed. We wandered by the South Bank, we talked about sparkly vampires and Charles/Erik. It was a good day.

In other news, it has come to my attention that not everyone in the world has seen M*A*S*H. I mean, I knew it was a small fandom - okay, I admit that at one point it was a small fandom consisting entirely of me and my friends - but I did rather think that everyone had dabbled, or at least seen a couple of episdoes, or at least understood the significance of a tongue depressor.

Apparently this isn't the case.

So. Well. I dithered a bit about making this post, because there are eleven seasons of M*A*S*H, almost an entire rotation of the main cast, a change in tone, etc., etc. The problem is, because the main cast changes so dramatically throughout - only two of the ones we start with, Hawkeye and Margaret, make it all the way to the end, and while all the others are there for a few seasons each, they do appear and disappear - it's hard to talk about it as a whole. And talking about it all at once might spoil people who don't want to be spoiled. So I thought I'd tell y'all about the first three seasons of the show, see if that makes you watch it, and if you want more you can tell me so.

Okay, so. The show is a sitcom set at a field hospital a few miles from the front lines of the Korean War. The characters are the doctors, nurses and enlisted personnel who've been drafted to work there, mostly very much against their will. Every day or week or few hours helicopters come in, bringing wounded soldiers from the front, and the unit's job is to return them to the front, if they can, or send them on to Seoul and onwards to the States, if they can't. It's usually referred to as "meatball surgery". Our heroes are the MASH 4077th - the asterisks in the title are something of a mystery.

There are six main characters. Hawkeye was born in Maine, named after the character in The Last of the Mohicans; Trapper's from somewhere else in New England, married with two daughters. They're both very young, mid-twenties, and they're both very, very good surgeons, which is often their only joint redeeming feature - they're also constantly chasing nurses, doing awful things to Frank Burns and living off gin they make themselves in a still they have in their tent. Frank shares their tent. He's a true-blue patriot and something of a worm. He's having a torridly nauseating affair with Margaret, who is much smarter than he is. She's chief nurse, and someone somewhere ought to be writing their thesis on her particular brand of feminism.

Henry Blake is the unit's hapless commander, and he's a good doctor and an awful administrator, and tends to fall apart when asked to make a decision. He drinks a lot, plays golf, and has rings run round him by everyone, but especially Radar O'Reilly, his clerk, who sleeps with a teddy bear and worries about ever meeting girls. (And mails a jeep home piece by piece.) Radar may, or may not be, clairvoyant. It's delightfully ambiguous.

Also, not as regulars but around quite a lot, there's Klinger, who - well, you'll get it when you see him - and Father Mulcahy, the unit's gentle and much put-upon resident chaplain.

And that's it. It's a warm, totally hilarious show in a lot of ways, and very upsetting in a lot of others, often in the same minute. And it is political. It gets more so later, as it moves from being a comedy per se to something between a comedy and a drama, but it was first made in 1972: though it's set in Korea, it's about Vietnam. It's about war as meaningless, and patriotism as empty, for the most part, and it has a strong pacifist and occasionally totally absurdist streak. It can be totally anvillicious one moment and then make you cry. I love it.

(Relatedly. You may watch episodes of this and think, hey, epistolary format, that's been done in Sports Night, hey, real-time, that was done in Frasier, hey, it's about their dreams, they did that on Buffy, hey, a documentary-style episode, they did that on The X-Files, hey, a whole episode where a hospital try to make it so no one dies on Christmas Day, that was done on Scrubs.

....yeah. M*A*S*H is not derivative.)

(And it's the fandom of my heart, it's the show that made me the best friends of my life, but y'all knew that.)

You don't need to watch any of these in order, but I'd watch the last one listed last.

1x12 - Dear Dad
Hawkeye writes a letter to his dad. Stuff happens. This is a very typical early episode.

1x17 - Sometimes You Hear The Bullet
Hawkeye's best childhood friend comes to visit. It doesn't end well, as you might expect. Henry's famous speech in this ("Rule one...") breaks my heart.

2x20 - As You Were
The 4077th are having a lull; Frank's having a hernia. There are gorilla costumes.

3x08 - Life With Father
There's a nun! There's a bris! There's a pony! This episode makes me happy when skies are grey. And the last thirty seconds of it... well, people don't believe me when I try to tell them about it. It actually happens, okay. Just. yeah.

3x11 - A Full Rich Day
Another one in epistolary format, partly based on a true story. The 4077th manage to lose a dead guy.

3x24 - Abyssinia, Henry
Henry finally gets his discharge home. This is probably the best twenty-five minutes of anything you'll see today.

Right. Weeerk.

Current Mood: cheerful
Crossposts: http://loneraven.livejournal.com/713622.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Posted by

sir_guinglain

I should watch some of this - I was too young to get it when it was broadcast first time round, though I do remember the outcry on Points of View every time BBC2 broadcast the US version with a laughter track by mistake.

Posted by

raven

In their defence, it is infuriating. It changes the tone of the show entirely, and wipes out the subtleties. (Apparently I have feelings on the matter!) Anyway, you should watch it, 'tis lovely. :)

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Rule number one:

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