MASH sucks

[Doyle]

After seeing that Harry Morgan died and Fenris' Family Ties pit, I have to get this off my chest again. MASH was really not that great of show. Hawkeye's one liners were never funny. I compare them to Chandler's in Friends. Canned and contrived. The show was somewhat entertaining when I was young and naive, but to watch it today would be painful. I may be the only one, but you know deep down inside, I'm right.

[Darmund]

I never understood how Loretta Switt was supposed to be hot either. Good theme music though.

[Zeener Diode]

As a comedy it's lost some of its luster.

As a paean to the insanity of war, it's still relevant.

[Yorikke]

I loved it as a teenager - saw every episode a zillion times in reruns. But I tried to watch it a few months ago, and found it unbelievably, painfully unfunny.

Joe

[Wolf]

Yes, yes it does.

[Revs]

Originally Posted by Darmund

I never understood how Loretta Switt was supposed to be hot either. Good theme music though.

Agreed on both points. Loretta Switt always seemed a little funny looking to me.

Originally Posted by hrhomer

I loved it as a teenager - saw every episode a zillion times in reruns. But I tried to watch it a few months ago, and found it unbelievably, painfully unfunny.

Joe

Same here. In high school and into my early 20s I would watch the re-runs religiously. It helped that after midnight one of the local TV channels went to "All MASH All Night" mode.

Fast forward a few years after not having watched it & I find while most episodes are entertaining, any redeeming factors get lost in the preachy-ness and lame jokes repeated over and over. This is especially true for the Alda years when he was using the show as a soapbox & every other episode was a Very Special or MESSAGE! episode.


Overall a decent show but like many other series it lost a lot of steam during it's run.

[Xploder]

My wife still loves it - so much that I bought her the boxed set a couple of years ago. That said, it always kinda pissed me off that instead of actually, ya know, trying for a bit of reality and following the movie (set in Vietnam) they dumbed it down and made it as anti-military as possible. Contrived and crappy, it went on for WAY too many years and I thought that about the only "edgy" thing they ever did was when Hawkeye called Sidney Freeman a sonofabitch which had never before been allowed during prime time. The fact that everything about it was totally unrealistic made it unwatchable to me. Of course, since I bought the damn boxed set for the wife, I've had to sit and watch every single episode with her at least once.

The original movie was great and did exactly what it was supposed to do: spoof the Vietnam War. The tv show would have been better if they killed it after the first year or two. I always found it amazing that they had a show that lasted for what? Ten years? About a war that we were involved in for three years. Sure, I understand that you can't show every aspect of a three year war in three years of half hour sitcoms but still, when your actors have so visibly aged in the span that your show is on, it looks stupid.

[jali]

I dislike Alan Alda's schtick. The rest of the show was okay IMO.

[MarkF]

Originally Posted by Xploder

spoof the Vietnam War

It's late and I am sleepy so I may be misreading but don't you mean Korea?

[Chacoguy]

Vietnam was too sore to be addressed directly at the time, so they used Korea as a metaphor.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by Chacoguy

Vietnam was too sore to be addressed directly at the time, so they used Korea as a metaphor.

Richard Hooker worked on M.A.S.H. for eleven years before it was published in 1968.

M.A.S.H. was never about Vietnam. Anti-war, yes. Of course the writers of the episodes could not help but be a product of their culture regarding attitudes toward the military, but M.A.S.H. was not using the Korean War as a metaphor for Vietnam.

[MarkF]

Originally Posted by Chacoguy

Vietnam was too sore to be addressed directly at the time, so they used Korea as a metaphor.

The original book was set in Korea... and if it was spoofing Vietnam... how exactly?

[Lord Blackmore]

It was funny at the beginning, when it was less about moralizing and more about being funny. Once Alan Alda effectively assumed creative control, it got a on the preachy side.

I still liked the show, though.

[Clothahump]

Originally Posted by Doyle

After seeing that Harry Morgan died and Fenris' Family Ties pit, I have to get this off my chest again. MASH was really not that great of show. Hawkeye's one liners were never funny. I compare them to Chandler's in Friends. Canned and contrived. The show was somewhat entertaining when I was young and naive, but to watch it today would be painful. I may be the only one, but you know deep down inside, I'm right.

You are. The original novel was great. The sequels sucked. The movie sucked. The TV show sucked.

[eleanorigby]

I liked it. It did get a tad stale toward the end, but overall I liked it. UNLIKE most medical shows today (and back then), it was somewhat realistic about the culture of surgeons and the tensions in an OR.

The movie was edgier for its time than the TV show, but so is almost every movie vs its TV equivalent-such is the nature of sponsors and advertising.

One thing that always bugged me about the finale was when Klinger questions Potter on why they have to bug out. Klinger says something like "It's gonna be a clear day--look at that gorgeous red sunrise" and Potter shoots back with "That's not a sunrise-the sun rises in the east, that's a fire to the west of us, move!" or some such. I find it hard to swallow that a grown man didn't know that the sun rises in the east and/or that he couldn't tell the difference between fire and sunrise. I've always remembered that bit and it's always bugged me.

I well remember the angst felt nationwide when McLean Stephenson's character was sent home and what happened to him then. And then Carol Burnett followed that up with MS as a guest and showed him in a life boat, complete with fishing hat, rowing like hell.

I had always heard that MASH used Korea as a stand in for Vietnam as well. I wonder if that's one of those things that we just accepted but is really not true at all?

[Harry]

Fire that is obscured from direct sight, such as behind a hill or three...Korea has lots of hills...will just be a glow in the sky. If it's sufficiently dark, or the fire is clean burning, you may not see much smoke, either. There are many reasons why someone may get their directions confused. Night and adrenaline are two of them, but Klinger is probably reason enough unto himself.

MASH was anti-war, anti-military, period. You can use it as a metaphor for American sentiments about getting involved in Korea, Vietnam, Irag and/or Afganistan if you like. Unfortunately, there will be others you can add to that list.

[threnody]

I liked it. I still do and if the box is on and it's on, I listen to it with half an ear (I watch little tv). I

also love the fact that the director of the film, Robert Altman, made less money than his son, Mike Altman, who was 14 at the time and wrote Suicide is Painless theme song and who made lots and lots of money from it.

[Jack, the Brindle Bulldog]

It was sort of good the first season and a half or so, when Radar was a little wiseass and most of the characters had a little edge. After that they got top-10 fever and insipidized it to make it more palatable to the masses.

[woodstockbirdybird]

Thought it sucked when it was in its initial run and haven't changed my opinion. It was one of my first true "WTF am I missing?" entertainments; everyone else raved about it. Never laughed at it once. Just because it was set during the Korean War didn't mean they had to use the Borscht Belt humor from that era.

[Mustard Stain]

I don't know if this made a difference for anyone else, but growing up on both sides of the border, I found the Canadian broadcasts way better. The U.S. broadcasts are the only ones that had the laugh track. Maybe it was a perception thing and the laugh track somehow "cheapened" the effect for me, but I never saw the show as a comedy growing up. It was more of a light drama with some comedic highlights.

My perception of the show changed immensely when we were back in the U.S. The laugh track implied "zany antics" and that's not the vibe I had from the show at all.

[Xploder]

Originally Posted by Mustard Stain

I don't know if this made a difference for anyone else, but growing up on both sides of the border, I found the Canadian broadcasts way better. The U.S. broadcasts are the only ones that had the laugh track. Maybe it was a perception thing and the laugh track somehow "cheapened" the effect for me, but I never saw the show as a comedy growing up. It was more of a light drama with some comedic highlights.

My perception of the show changed immensely when we were back in the U.S. The laugh track implied "zany antics" and that's not the vibe I had from the show at all.

There were actually a lot of shows that didn't use a laugh track. Those episodes tended to be okay with me for the exact reason you state. It just seemed to me that they tried WAY to hard after Trapper left. Sure tyhere were maybe a few episodes I liked but less than a dozen overall and that says something about a show that lasted as long as it did.

My comment about the Vietnam War was because I never read the book, only saw the original movie that was set in Vietnam.

I don't mind if a show wants to be anti-war or anti-military but they were (or, really, Alan Alda was) way too over the top with it. It just became this vast caricature of how things really were. Every character became a parody and that made it suck in my opinion. The very few times that they actually addressed an issue such as when Hawkeye was at a forward aid station or near the end when he drove a tank into the garbage dump, the premise AND acting were very good. The rest of it was nothing but sight gags and, as someone upthread called it, Borscht Belt humor.

[ivylass]

The puns by BJ in the later episodes got old really quick.

[detop]

<snip>My comment about the Vietnam War was because I never read the book, only saw the original movie that was set in Vietnam.</snip>
[/QUOTE]

A thousand apologies your Modministratorness, but even the movie was set in Korea.

[73 LeBaron]

IMDB sez:

Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. That's where two young surgeons, Duke and Hawkeye end up during the Korean War. There is no plot as such, but instead a series of episodes during which they put their stamp on the camp including a football game against a larger unit with thousands riding on it, a trip to Tokyo to operate on a congressman's son and play a little golf, and finding out if the head nurse is a natural blonde.

Bolding mine. Richard Hooker's book was a fictional memoir from his experience as an Army surgeon (happens that I interviewed him on the occasion of his retirement from private practice); Robert Altman used the setting as a metaphor for Vietnam, as others have said.

[Xploder]

Originally Posted by ivylass

The puns by BJ in the later episodes got old really quick.

True but the practical jokes were pretty funny at the time. I was stoned a lot back then.

[Xploder]

Originally Posted by detop

A thousand apologies your Modministratorness, but even the movie was set in Korea.

Really? You mean all this time I've thought it was in Vietnam it was actually in Korea? Now I gotta go watch it again (no loss cause it's a great movie) just to prove you WRONG!

_{yeah, I know you're right and soon as I pulled the box set out it even stated it right there. damn.}

[Khampelf]

Hawkeye Pierce was my role model growing up, even though I knew I wind up a lot more like Radar.

[gedmonds05158]

This show could have been exceptional for 6 maybe 7 years. But when Stevens Honeycutts characters left the show ot was because of how much Alda complained and complained about how they shouldn't try to much to make light of war. Once again an insipid moronic idea replaced the light hearted but regularly bloody comedy and from season four on the deadpan was truly dead. And for goodness sake did you see how old and gray and utterly rediculous they let the characters get??!! Season one two and three are gems and as for killing of Henry I simply switch it off when he flies away After that there's NOTHING to see except gray hair and horrible jokes!

[The Mighty Quinn]

Welcome to Giraffe Boards, gedmonds05158.

Nice to see you, Khampelf.

[Secret_Squirrel]

Originally Posted by gedmonds05158

Once again an insipid moronic idea replaced the light hearted but regularly bloody comedy and from season four on the deadpan was truly dead.

I could not agree more.

[Guinastasia]

IIRC, didn't the cast argue against a laugh track, but the studio execs insisted on it?

[BJMoose]

Yep. They did get one exception: no laugh track with operating room scenes. So they soon did an episode set entirely in the O.R.