KENJI wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2011 3:18 am
One of my favourite episodes was when Henry/Col. Blake was being shipped home which was very moving, but your heart gets ripped out during the last scene when Radar comes into the O.R. and tells the M.A.S.H. unit that Col. Blake's helicopter went down and there were no survivors. I don't think anyone expected that. There are loads of funny episodes, but that one hits the human emotion scale really high. It would be right up there with Magnum watching the tape of Michelle, (***Lily***) and Edward entering a car only to see it explode.
You rightly point out how memorable the death pf Lilly episode was.
I would add when Magnum killed Ivan, and the episode(sorry I forgot the name) when Rick and TC watch in horror as a woman is thrown off of a lighthouse.
Both were shocking, I still remember those moments on the nights they were first run.
The Ivan episode was an amazing moment for the 1980's.
How many TV series have the hero executing a bad guy - he richly deserved it - who was unarmed? And there was no blow back/condemnation from the TV columnists.
These moments were even more effective as they both ended the episode, in a freeze frame.
I would add the shocking moment when Mac died to the above, but somehow it wasn't as effective because it wasn't an episode ending shock.
No one really knows if he killed Ivan. It's just an assumption. He may have just shot his ear off.
I'm not sure why but I think that's very funny. I guess great minds think alike.
I was half watching an I Dream of Jeannie episode where she told a story of a guy named Earless Abdul. He wasn't earless until he couldn't pay back his loan to the First National Bank of Pompeii. That must be where I thought of it.
By kooky coincidence, this long-neglected thread re-emerges just as I have begun a rewatch of season one. Sure, M*A*S*H has some irritating flaws: Nobody chain smokes cigarettes?!? Everyone should be constantly smoking and hustling to obtain them! Kim Il-Sung never mentioned by name..or at all? Anachronistic hairstyles and cultural references that bugged me even as a child. The fact that all of the pretty nurses apparently died along with Henry Blake and were replaced with the unpreposessing Lt. Bigelow remains a television tragedy. Characters named Houlihan and O'Reilly and yet they AREN'T Catholic? Houlihan the alleged itinerant "army brat" who speaks with a strong New Jersey accent?
Despite it all, I love this show and I always will, but man oh man are there some annoying elements of this series. However, Trapper, Blake, and Burns being replaced by Hunnicut, Potter, and Winchester isn't one of them...the show imo improved considerably with the change though I adore the lovable scumbaggery of Blake and McIntyre and the dopey reactionary that was Frank Burns.
M*A*S*H "found itself" pretty quickly during season one. By the time of the episode referenced above, the show "felt" like itself...
It's fun to (re)watch the journey. Dueing seasons 1-3, I prefer the original cast. When the new implants join in S4, I prefer that cast. This is quite an accomplishment to a series in which chemistry between the rather large cast still fires on all cylinders regardless of the changes.
