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In the summer hiatus between seasons three and four of M*A*S*H, Wayne Rogers unexpectedly left the series. Having signed onto the show in the expectation that Hawkeye and Trapper would be co-leads as in the movie, he was disappointed with his seeming relegation to the sidekick role as the series went on. And in fairness the early seasons did struggle to find a role for Trapper and to differentiate him from Hawkeye. It made sense for Rogers, but it left the show in an extremely uncomfortable position moving into the new season now with two major cast members to replace and the necessity to explain away Trapper’s absence from the cast. It forced a change, but one that was inevitable.
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“Welcome to Korea”, the season opener, functions as a second pilot, the first hour-long episode of the series. In its’ first half it bids an off-screen farewell to Trapper, who got his discharge while Hawkeye was on R&R and whom he just misses taking off. In the second half, it more fully introduces his replacement B.J. Hunnicutt, and thrusts him, Hawkeye and Radar into a combat situation more intense than any ever seen on the show before. Many have interpreted this as a statement of intent. This was going to be a very different M*A*S*H. From now on, shit was going to be serious.
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It wasn’t an entirely accurate forecast. Even just a week later, the show would be back on it’s usual irreverent footing when introducing Colonel Sherman Potter as the new regular army commanding officer. But there was indeed a shift afoot. The show would tackle the consequences of war more often, explore the characters’ psychologies around it, and it would take on even a more experimental approach to storytelling to serve these themes. An early glimpse of this is the episode “Hawkeye”, in which he is the only main character to appear, suffering a concussion in a jeep accident and keeping himself active in real time until help can arrive by entertaining a local Korean family.
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But one of the best examples is “The Interview” from the end of season four, an entirely black and white episode told in the style of a newsreel with real Korean War correspondent Clete Roberts interviewing the various personnel of the 4077th who are, with the exception of Frank and Klinger, generally stark and solemn. The standout moment comes from Father Mulcahy describing vividly the experience of doctors warming their hands over open wounds when it’s particularly cold -probably the high point of the series for William Christopher. It’s one of the best and gravest episodes of the show, written by the guy credited with M*A*S*H’s early comedic tone, Larry Gelbart -though it would be his last episode -he left the series at its’ fifth season. Not long after, Gene Reynolds took on a less active role as well, “Movie Tonight” from season five being the last episode he had script credit on (though occasionally he would have story credit on a few episodes until 1980), and “Margaret’s Marriage”, the season five finale, being his last directing credit. Essentially, he would be something of a consultant for the rest of the series.
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In Gelbart and Reynolds’ place, the reigns of the show passed to producer Burt Metcalfe and Alan Alda himself, who had begun writing episodes from season one and directing from season two. Eventually he would be responsible for a lot of the most intrepid episodes of the last eight seasons. Metcalfe and Alda would supervise a larger writing room that consisted of the likes of Ken Levine and David Isaacs, Thad Mumford and Dan Wilcox, Ronny Graham, Dennis Koenig, David Pollock and Elias Davis, John Rappaport, Karen Hall, and Mike Farrell, who alongside fellow co-stars Harry Morgan and David Ogden Stiers also began directing for the show occasionally. It became perhaps a little more insular in this sense, but creatively it thrived.
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The show did an excellent job establishing new characters and reorienting the old ones. Pretty quickly B.J. becomes a welcome and endearing addition to the show, quite different from Trapper in attitude and personality, even if he did join in on Hawkeye’s foolishness. Unlike Rogers, Mike Farrell had no qualms playing “the sidekick”, and I think that works to the characters’ advantage. He doesn’t have to compete with Hawkeye for wit or goofiness, allowing him to be more flexible, more relatable. B.J. can be sardonic and sweet, smart and sincere -and he might be my favourite character for it. Colonel Potter, in addition to having decades of military experience, has the charm of an affable country geezer -coming with his own cool temperament and slang, a lot of it from Harry Morgan himself. He’s more authoritative than his predecessor, but liberal enough to tolerate the occasional hijinks. An immensely understanding figure and proud equestrian.
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Margaret of course transforms in this period of the show, being treated with an ever more sympathetic touch and beyond her relationship to Frank. “The Nurses” for instance really hones in on her lack of female friendships and how alienated she feels in a place where no one seems to really like or understand her. Loretta Swit takes to these new developments vigorously , as her military background and father issues are more ardently explored. New dimensions of comedy open up for her as well, and she proves herself a more dynamic comedienne. Radar is allowed to grow a bit, gaining more snark and confidence, and becoming more fully-rounded beyond his country bumpkin stereotype. Father Mulcahy, finally granted main cast status with season five, becomes more useful a character as a kind of moral centrepiece of the cast -though still sometimes in the background, he gets to be the star of a few of the best episodes. And Klinger as alluded to before, becomes a bit more self-conscious of his gimmick, often embracing it seemingly divorced from his Section 8 ambitions. He tries different methods for this too, and has his own tragic storyline when the girlfriend he married by distance back in season three leaves him in season six. Even Klinger can be taken seriously.
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Lastly of course there’s Hawkeye, who I would argue came into his own during this time. His personal principles became more solid a foundation to build out the anti-war themes, and he was treated with far more depth to both silly and dramatic ends. His humour became ever more apparently a coping mechanism and he matured into quite a respectable figure, in spite of his penchant for immaturity. Where in the early seasons, he still seemed to be that wild counterculture symbol, now he radiated authority (reflecting Alda’s own on the show) without giving up those counterculture values. In fact after the departure of one character, everybody more or less adapted around him.
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Indeed the only figure on the show who couldn’t evolve was Frank, whose abrasive, heightened, pathetic personality was becoming old by season four and not really fitting with the tone that M*A*S*H aimed to establish going forward. And of course, it was an anchor on Margaret’s character development to keep her tied to this ignorant buffoon. Season five made the attempt to shift this dynamic with Margaret’s engagement to Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscot while in Tokyo, effectively ending for good her trysts with Frank, much to his petty annoyance and despair. Unfortunately there are no real efforts to let Frank move on from this in a sustainable way, and it was too late to draw him in any sympathy, so one can hardly blame Larry Linville for leaving the show at the end of that season.
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This effectively splits the middle years of M*A*S*H into two halves, pretty much at the midpoint of the series overall. Frank’s departure is a further sign of change as it marks the end of an acrimonious main cast. So long as Frank was around, the M*A*S*H gang could never fully get along, but they could conceivably under his successor. And don’t get me wrong, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, who enters season six fully formed, is as much the pompous windbag that his name suggests. But unlike Frank, he legitimately is a brilliant surgeon, he can effectively match Hawkeye for wit, and he has stern principles he can stand by. David Ogden Stiers was one of my favourite performers on this last watch-through, and it’s a delight to see the dimension given his character that allows him to be both a source of conflict and a valued friend in the 4077th.
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Some viewers will say they dipped out during this time, though the ratings for M*A*S*H remained mostly consistent its’ entire run. But it’s an understandable sentiment to assume the show got worse, by season six no longer having most of its’ original cast or original creators on board. Yet these years I think are some of the most intrepid for the show (season seven is particularly strong). It took greater chances, got more overtly political with its’ anti-war themes, dug deeper with its’ characters to challenge them, built greater comedy out of character, and expanded the world of the show in new interesting ways. The Officer’s Club, which was set up in the early seasons, becomes a regular hang-out –as does Rosie’s, a local bar run by an austere yet friendly Korean woman (Eileen Saki). Minor or background characters from previous seasons like Nurse Kellye or Igor the mess tent server (Jeff Maxwell) were treated less as extras, often reliably used as side characters further ingratiating themselves as part of the M*A*S*H family. After Margaret’s marriage with Donald dissolves (he accidentally sent her a letter meant for his mistress) in season seven, she hooks up with the roguish Sergeant Jack Scully (Joshua Bryant) –by far the best love interest the show ever gave her. As much as the characters longed for their real home, the 4077th never felt more like one.
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M*A*S*H grew up during those middle years, and so it only seems right to mark their endpoint with the series’ signature innocent youth flying away. Radar had low-key been the heart of the show for its’ first seven years, and even if he wasn’t critical to the series’ function, more than Blake, Trapper, or Frank, it really would not be the same without him. But Gary Burghoff experienced significant burnout, to the point he was notably absent from a bunch of episodes in season six, and felt he needed to leave the show and spend more time with his family. His farewell episode, though intended for season seven, was moved into early season eight. The two-part “Good Bye Radar” was no “Abyssinia Henry” though. Like Trapper and Frank before him, Radar made it home –but unlike them he got an appropriate goodbye. He was sent back to Iowa to take care of his mother after his uncle died, and though he needled on leaving (feeling he was too necessary to the 4077th) he eventually left; gazing through the O.R. door he had once come through to announce the death of Colonel Blake, and Hawkeye from surgery saluting him –something he famously never did sincerely.
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With Radar gone, M*A*S*H entered its’ final stretch, but before we get to that, I’d like to as before, run through some highlight episodes. “Welcome to Korea” is a perfect soft reboot for the series and a smooth transition into the new status quo. In “The Late Captain Pierce” (written on spec by future Cheers creators Glen and Les Charles), Hawkeye is mistakenly pronounced dead by the army, which is quite fun until it suddenly is not –one of the shows’ finest balances of silliness and sombreness. “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler” sees both Colonel Flagg and Sidney Freedman get involved when a patient is convinced he’s Jesus -an out-there episode, but a fascinating one. “The More I See You” allows M*A*S*H to temporarily become Casablanca as Hawkeye reunites with an old flame played by Blythe Danner. And we’d be here all day if I went more into the greatness of “The Interview”.
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Early in season five, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” follows Hawkeye temporarily blinded by a gas pocket explosion and adjusting to the new perspective it gives him. “The Nurses” delves deep into a feud between Margaret and her nurses and does maybe the most work to humanize Margaret at this stage in the series (also the first episode to be both written and directed by women, Linda Bloodworth and Joan Darling respectively). “Dear Sigmund” depicts Friedman’s experiences at the 4077th while feeling a bout of depression. In “Mulcahy’s War”, the priest in an effort to connect with a patient, decides to go to the front lines –and ultimately is forced to perform an impromptu surgery himself. And “Movie Tonight” just sees the gang gathered for a showing of My Darling Clementine and having fun while working through technical difficulties with the reel.
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Season six’s opener and Winchester’s debut, “Fade Out, Fade In” is a masterclass on introducing a new character to an ensemble -he immediately feels like a perfect figure to shake up the dynamic. “Fallen Idol” has Hawkeye reckon with his potential culpability in Radar being injured, while Radar loses faith in Hawkeye, both ultimately blowing up at each other in a pair of fantastic performances. “War of Nerves” is another Friedman episode as he recuperates and deals with several personal conflicts, including Klinger’s transvestite crisis. “Point of View” is filmed entirely in long unbroken takes from the first-person perspective of a soldier undergoing throat surgery.
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In “Dear Sis”, Father Mulcahy writes of his feelings of uselessness at Christmas, unknowingly showing his value in small humble ways to everyone at camp -it’s honestly one of my favourite Christmas specials. “C*A*V*E” has Hawkeye confront his claustrophobia while the hospital is evacuated. “Rally Round the Flagg, Boys” features the last appearance of Flagg, investigating Hawkeye for giving preferential surgery to a communist soldier. “Preventative Medicine” is one of the darkest and most ethically compelling chapters of the show, wherein Hawkeye compromises his Hippocratic Oath to put out of commission an arrogant general with a high casualty rating. Alternatively, “A Night at Rosie’s” like “Movie Tonight” is just a very fun single-location show that allows the characters to play in a different environment -in this case an upbeat and charming bar. And lastly of course is “Good Bye Radar”, dealing earnestly with Radar’s conflicting feelings yet ultimately giving him a worthy, fond farewell.
To be concluded…
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