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Geeky thoughts
It may sound geeky, but I'd like to take a minute to talk about M*A*S*H... again. Of course it's funny.... it's very funny... and sweet.... Hawkeye/Trapper smarm makes me melt into a gooey heap on the floor.
But there are times when it's not funny, but dark. Really, really dark. I was watching an ep just now - I started watching it in the middle, so all I know is people are giving blood and there are scores of wounded, while they're running out of thread and all manner of surgical paraphenahlia. Frank tells Hawkeye he is certifiably insane, so Hawk starts a tirade on the futility of the war and pointlessness of it. The patient he's just been working on goes into cardiac arrest, and Hawkeye saves his life.... only for the guy to die four hours later. Cue the darkness... he just sits there in the middle of the OR, crying, while the resident psychiatrist is working on the wounded guy behind him. He goes back in to work, and then Henry has to make a decision - save one guy, who will need eight hours work and countless units of blood, or save lots of them, who need less work and blood? They fade out then, so you expect comic relief, but the last scene has no dialogue at all, apart from over the PA, someone saying all personnel can stand down. It just shows Hawkeye falling asleep in the OR, on one of the tables, absolutely covered with blood. It's really disturbing. The ep is good, with all the freefall M*A*S*H craziness, but so dark and deeply disturbing.
Of course, it is also this ep where Hawkeye informs all the doctors and nurses at large that as blood soaks through every layer of clothing you've got, he doesn't wear any underwear while in surgery. So I may be wrong.
But there are times when it's not funny, but dark. Really, really dark. I was watching an ep just now - I started watching it in the middle, so all I know is people are giving blood and there are scores of wounded, while they're running out of thread and all manner of surgical paraphenahlia. Frank tells Hawkeye he is certifiably insane, so Hawk starts a tirade on the futility of the war and pointlessness of it. The patient he's just been working on goes into cardiac arrest, and Hawkeye saves his life.... only for the guy to die four hours later. Cue the darkness... he just sits there in the middle of the OR, crying, while the resident psychiatrist is working on the wounded guy behind him. He goes back in to work, and then Henry has to make a decision - save one guy, who will need eight hours work and countless units of blood, or save lots of them, who need less work and blood? They fade out then, so you expect comic relief, but the last scene has no dialogue at all, apart from over the PA, someone saying all personnel can stand down. It just shows Hawkeye falling asleep in the OR, on one of the tables, absolutely covered with blood. It's really disturbing. The ep is good, with all the freefall M*A*S*H craziness, but so dark and deeply disturbing.
Of course, it is also this ep where Hawkeye informs all the doctors and nurses at large that as blood soaks through every layer of clothing you've got, he doesn't wear any underwear while in surgery. So I may be wrong.