M*A*S*H (TV Series) - Review

Review

The DVD releases of M*A*S*H have allowed for reappraisal of the show and its merits. The UK-based website Myreviewer.com featured an incisive review of the show in relation to its third season:

"It's hard to narrow down just what makes M*A*S*H work. A lot of it has to be the intelligence of the show. There is an honesty about M*A*S*H that is unique among sitcoms. A conscious decision to treat the war and its consequences with absolute seriousness, and to only find the humour around that implies a sense of intelligence and realism. It's a tense humour on occasion, a gallows humour built around the characters rather than their occupations, the kind that appears in the face of adversity that people find when the only other choice is to breakdown and cry at the sheer inhumanity of the situation. This is coupled with the excellent quality of the writing, a wit sharper than a scalpel that has you paying attention to every nuance.

Then there are the characters, and the ensemble cast who fit together like a well-oiled machine. Where the film was cruder and in your face, the television series naturally had to tone it down. But that only works in its favour as the characters as shown in their day-to-day lives put their work first. The humour comes primarily from how they relate to each other, and where the film works quickly through that in the space of two hours, the series has to show these people interacting over a period of 10 hours of television a year. Alan Alda is immediately evident as the star of the show Hawkeye Pierce, getting some choice lines and most of the stories. Gary Burghoff is excellent as the innocent Radar, mastering bureaucratic doubletalk years before Sir Humphrey Appleby did in Yes Minister; Larry Linville nearly steals every show though with his performance as the lily-livered and mildly incompetent martinet Major Frank Burns, whose affair with the acerbic "Hot-Lips" Houlihan is an open secret. Other fine characterisations include Jamie Farr as Corporal Klinger, who changes dresses more often than the cast of Sex and the City in an attempt to get a discharge, and the Unit Commander Colonel Henry Blake played by McLean Stevenson, who often has to act as the unit referee in the OR, is constantly bemused by the apparently telepathic Radar, but what comes across most strongly is the character's compassion.

There are flaws however; most notable is the character of "Trapper" John McIntyre who, while entertaining enough as mostly a foil for Hawkeye, rarely has much else to do. His character really doesn't shine in this season, and there is a comparative dearth of stories for him...Another problem is the great TV reset button at the end of every episode. Today we are spoiled with television series with ongoing storylines and developing characters. It's hard to remember that this is a recent development, and this is ably demonstrated with M*A*S*H. No matter what happens in an episode, the reset button is pushed at the end credits and everything is back to normal for the beginning of the next episode. Radar gets tired of the short jokes in "House Arrest", and Hawkeye promises to stop, a promise that is broken in the next episode. In "Aid Station", Hawkeye and Hot-Lips share an experience that serves to unite and bond them, but 20 minutes later, they're sniping at each other like nothing happened. There's also an anachronistic feel to the series, and while it's set in the fifties it is most definitely a creature of the seventies, though more often than not this is an advantage rather than drawback. There's not a crew cut in sight or an ounce of Brylcreem, but more than that, it's the writing and style of the show that gives it a subversive edge that screams Vietnam, despite the Korean setting. Also one throwaway quip had me wondering if they had credit cards in 1952.

Nit-picking aside, M*A*S*H is unparalleled television... M*A*S*H is at it's best when it's bittersweet and poignant, and there are many such episodes to choose from here. I'd defy anyone not to shed a tear during the... episode "Abyssinia Henry"; I can feel myself welling up just thinking about it."