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| Larry Gelbart |
The chief architects of M*A*S*H at its’ beginning were Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds. Gelbart wrote the pilot, Reynolds directed it, and the two would spearhead the creative direction of the show for its’ first three seasons. The show developed its’ character under their wing, the dynamics of the cast set in place, their routines solidified. This era of the show was characterized by both a light touch and an abundance of silliness to general premises –a sensibility that often boarded on the anarchism of the movie. It’s curious to see plotlines here that would fly very differently had they come later, such as an unexploded shell landing in the middle of the camp in “The Army-Navy Game” or the whimsy with which they treat one very incompetent enemy bomber in “5 O’Clock Charlie”. This mirrors an attitude towards the war and the American army that is patently tongue-in-cheek –every aspect of military life and every austere military figure is played to the utmost goofball satire.
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It works, and what allows for the show to make it work is an amalgam of two characters: Henry Blake and Frank Burns. Blake, though company CO, is an enlisted man, projecting a very casual air onto the 4077th, allowing it to exist in this space where the war can be, for lack of a better word, “fun”. And Frank, the stickler for military discipline, is a cartoon –an easy villain encompassing the lunacy of the army, its’ pompous grandiosity, bigotries, and ultimate cowardice in a single being. Everything the U.S. military looks for in a man and everything the writers see as what that truly represents is there in Frank Burns. Stubborn, jingoistic, blindly patriotic, will assert undue authority but follow regulations to a ‘t’, and of course not very competent on any front. So long as he’s there, the army and even aspects of the war itself are likewise a cartoon.
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That said, the show was able to make cogent commentary and get serious during this time as well. Gelbart and Reynolds were aware of the necessity for this and famously opposed the use of a laugh track for the series –they managed to persuade CBS to keep it strictly out of the O.R. scenes but it was otherwise a lost battle. And watching it all these years later, you do get used to it but it also is plainly unnecessary and a tiny bit condescending. The writers continued to fight back though against pigeonholing the show, against allowing it to be nothing more than a sitcom in uniform -making their first gamble six episodes in with “Yankee Doodle Doctor”, in which the surgeons make a documentary about what goes on at a MASH. Decrying such things as propaganda, Hawkeye and Trapper turn it into a Marx Brothers tribute in one of the more famous examples of that early goofiness, before ending with Hawkeye coldly and bluntly telling the truth about what they have to deal with: “Our willingness, our experience, our technique is not enough. Guns and bombs and anti-personnel mines have more power to take a life than we have to preserve it. Not a very happy ending for a movie. But then, no war is a movie.”
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Alan Alda excelled in such moments of measured sobriety (ironic given his martini intake), something Gelbart and Reynolds picked up on quickly. Of course they also picked up on his talent for dry wit and a comic attitude of irreverence that could deliver a one-liner with perfect precision. This is what Hawkeye became best known for, what the show even become very well-known for: his witty repartee during surgery, his extremely clever and potent wisecracks, and his endearing turns of phrase. Most great quotes you could look up from the show seem to come from him, and this immediately resonating, strong personality is what centred him more directly than previous iterations of M*A*S*H had as protagonist of the piece -Hawkeye had been something more of an audience surrogate before, there was no way he was now. But again, Alda succeeded in multiple dimensions -he had to or else the character would quickly grow stale. And he somehow found the happy medium that allowed him to transition seamlessly between the fun-loving, slick womanzing, jokester camper and the grimly affected, principled surgeon.
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Nowhere is this more apparent than in perhaps the series’ best episode “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet” near the end of season one -directly following an episode of hijinks between Hawkeye, Trapper, and a visiting colonel played by Leslie Nielsen. This was the episode later credited with making the show, setting the essential template for its’ vision and voice going forward, for what the cast and the writers wanted M*A*S*H to be. Its’ plot sees Hawkeye run into an old friend, conceptualizing a book on the Korean War, only for him to later be wounded in battle -and Hawkeye forced to operate on him. His death is the first emotionally traumatic moment we see for Hawkeye, the first of several in which he is forced to confront just what a war can inflict both in violence and psychology. It is a grounding moment –with Hawkeye at the crux of it.
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There is another important figure in that moment though, the one who utters that heartbreaking speech quoted at the top of last week’s introduction, and who gets through to Hawkeye honestly and potently, but as a friend. McLean Stevenson as Colonel Blake is a quietly vital part of M*A*S*H’s early years. I mentioned the significance of the character, but Stevenson himself brings so much to Blake’s exasperated everyman personality –he’s not terribly good at his job as commander, but in a justifiable, purely affable way that relates his simple charm. And few cast members from across the shows’ run better epitomized the essence of their character –in this case a humble G.P. from Bloomington, Illinois who wears his fishing hat full of lures as a keepsake of home. And one of the most endearing by-products to come from this that was never quite recaptured later on was the earnestness of his relationship with fellow Midwesterner Radar O’Reilly, his clerk whom he works most directly with. Radar, the innocent farm kid from Iowa who knows the colonel’s job better than he does, and at the same time looks to him as a role model and surrogate father figure. Blake in many respects did come across as a father figure -especially in that early 70s TV mold, while Radar was such a warm kid in need of guidance -and sometimes he got it from Hawkeye, but he was always more of a big brother figure in the ways he would occasionally razz Radar or rope him into a scheme. Blake was more responsible, more concerned, and in his own way, more loving. That dynamic was no doubt the most successful character pairing of the early seasons.
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And it would greatly inform the emotional heft of the most famous episode from this run of the show, indeed perhaps the most famous episode in all of M*A*S*H, which marked the end of an era. I’m referring of course to “Abyssinia Henry”, the season three finale that wrote Blake off the show after Stevenson asked to be let out of his contract to pursue other TV opportunities. The episode sees Blake being discharged and bidding his farewells to the rest of the unit, with Radar especially affected. In Blake’s final scene before leaving on the chopper he gives Radar a hug and tells him to behave himself. The following scene has gone down in television history: Radar coming into the O.R. sometime later to inform the doctors at surgery that Blake’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. The cast, unprepared for this revelation, are visibly moved as they continue surgery, Radar arguably most of all -Burghoff’s shining moment on the show.
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Gelbart and Reynolds were inundated with angry fan letters after the episode aired, it became a sensation: no sitcom had killed off a character like that before, and certainly not one as beloved as Colonel Blake. It brought a different, renewed attention to the series, not all of it favourable -but the producers through all the controversy stuck to their guns about what was meant by that choice. Not everyone comes home from a war -at the time there were still daily casualty reports out of Vietnam. Home in America though, one could easily be desensitized to that sort of thing, and so the writers took a character whom the viewers felt like they knew, and made him one of these casualties. It was a bold move, but undeniably the right one. The death of Colonel Blake changed television; it gave licence for more shows to break from formula and take chances for the sake of important subject matter or themes. And if folks had brushed off the serious anti-war undercurrents of M*A*S*H before, there was no ignoring it going forward.
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It marks a turning point, the definite end of the Early Years of M*A*S*H. the show wouldn’t be quite so loose going forward, and it would undergo a couple rehauls, not just due to the one cast departure. As will be discussed next week, Wayne Rogers left the series following the third season too, a significant face and personality of its’ Early Years who had been envisioned as a co-lead. That intent and its’ gradual dissolution would directly result in his departure, but we’ll get to that. Suffice it to say, this era is visibly separated by the fact two of its’ most prominent characters are exclusive only to its’ run.
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The season three premiere “The General Flipped at Dawn” features an insane general trying to court martial Hawkeye (said General is played by Harry Morgan, whom will discuss soon). “Rainbow Bridge” sees Hawkeye and Trapper partake in a prisoner exchange with the Chinese. “O.R.” is the first episode to successfully dispense with a laugh track as it sets the entire show in the O.R. -setting the stage for future experiments with format. “Adam’s Ribs” depicts a ridiculous elaborate plot to order ribs from a restaurant in Chicago, the gang fed up with the meagre army food. "Aid Station" represents an early comradery between Hawkeye and Margaret, and one of the first times she is taken seriously as a character. And of course “Abyssinia Henry” is a landmark for all the right reasons. Lastly, an honourable mention to “Radar’s Report”, mostly for the fact that it features the first appearance of Allan Arbus’ psychologist character Doctor Sidney Freedman -who would become probably the most essential recurring character through the rest of the shows’ run.
To be continued...
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