M*A*S*H Season one created by Larry Gelbart (1972-1973)
14 October 2006I can’t believe I didn’t already have this in my reviews because these DVD’s are something that I seem to be able to watch again and again. I grew up watching this series, and whenever I have time off and just want some entertainment on in the background I start washing M*A*S*H and can just keep on watching. This is the amazing first season, which was the most like the film, and still included Spearchucker Jones and Ugly John the gas passer, who were underused and dropped after this season.
This is about the hijinks of the drafted US Army Doctors of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 4077 in South Korea just 3 miles from the fighting during the Korean War. This was the first war that this was done, and the high rate of success spoke for itself, but the conditions were tough, so these doctors play a lot of jokes, and womanize all they can.
Alan Alda plays Capt Bengamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce a drafted doctor in Korea who bunks with his best friend, the married and also womanizing Captain “Trapper” John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) who both get no better joy than torturing their other tentmate Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville). Burns is a horrible doctor, religious and yet cheating on his wife wit the other military Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit), and the two of them are always going over the head of their not very GI commander Lt. Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson). Blake is assisted by his slightly psychic company clerk Corporal Water “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff) and the major cast is rounded out by Father Francis J. Mulcahy (William Christopher) and the cross dressing Corporal Klinger (Jamie Farr).
In this season we get the Pilot that introduces us and has an extended opening which we never see again.
TO MARKET, TO MARKET is about the black market that is stealing all their goods and how Hawkeye and Trapper steal Henry’s antique desk to get the medication that they need.
REQUIEM FOR A LIGHTWEIGHT has Hawkeye and Trapper falling for a new nurse that Hotlips decides to transfer and Henry will help keep her if one of them joins the boxing tournament, so Trapper does it, and wins with some chloroform.
CHIEF SURGEON WHO? is when Henry makes Hawkeye chief surgeon above both himself and Frank.
THE MOOSE is where we learn about GI’s having local Korean girlfriends, and Hawkeye wins one in a bet, who he tries to let free, but it doesn’t work out.
DEAR DAD starts a recurring theme of Hawkeye writing a letter home to his father in Maine.
TUTTLE has Hawkeye making an imaginary friend an officer so they can donate to the orphanage, but when he becomes famous they must manufacture his death so they can get away with it.
CEASE FIRE has everything thinking the war is over, and Hawkeye gives everything away, only to have his hopes dashed because the war won’t end this quickly.
****
Suck a great show, with great characters and writing. Such an amazing show, they don’t make shows like this anymore.
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