When did MASH jump the shark?

[WI_DEM]

or did it?
p.s.
oops, I put this in the wrong forum.

[Kerrytravelers]

1. That is one show I'm not sure ever jumped the shark.

[LynneSin]

61. It jumped and it jumped hard

They were prepping for the jump when Charles Winchester joined the group and officially did it when Radar left

[LynneSin]

62. dupe

dupe

[MistressOverdone]

2. Wrong forum or not

I really don't think it ever jumped the shark. I thought it would when the colonels changed, but it didn't. Maybe when Hot Lips calmed down, but that was a natural sort of thing.

[sabbat hunter]

4. when klinger became a sergeant

here was a guy who tried every trick to get a section 8 and they give him a promotion?

[WI_DEM]

8. and he stopped wearing women's clothing

[soothsayer]

23. yes!

[LynneSin]

63. I always thought it was when Radar left

because Klinger did become more serious about the job, Hot Lips ceased to be 'Hot Lips' and more Margaret Houlihan and it seemed every episode was more of a preachy-preachy about something wrong in this world instead of somehow trying to keep a bit of comedy in the sitcom.

I realize you can't have people like Alan Alda and Michael Farrell in a TV show without going anti-war (which is ok in my book), but they turned they show into a dreary thing

[WI_DEM]

3. I think it ran it's course by the time Radar left in '79

[Roon]

5. according to jumptheshark.com

most voted that they never jumped.

[Burma Jones]

21. The Overwhelming Majority say it jumped, they just differ as to when

Jumped The Shark when... Votes
Never Jumped 336
Alan Alda's Moralizing 198
Death (Henry Blake) 190
Charles replaces Frank 172
BJ replaces Trapper 159
Radar goes home 114
Hair Care (BJ grows a mustache) 98
Klinger stops dressing like a woman 85
The laugh track 62
Day One 35
Hot Lips becomes Margaret 33
Hotlips facial surgery 25
They took the "com" out of sitcom 20
Hair Care (Hotlips) 20
They Did It (Hawkeye and Hot Lips) 20
Puberty (Radar) 17
Hot Lips and Lt. Penobscot 13
The Korean War lasts 11 years 12

[tuvor]

6. With AfterM*A*S*H

Don't know if that counts, but there you go.

[Kutjara]

9. And lets not forget "Walter."

Radar moves to the big city and becomes a cop. What were they thinking?

[tuvor]

10. I woudn't if I'd ever heard of it.

How long did THAT last?

[Kutjara]

13. Technically,...

...it didn't even last the entire pilot, since Jesse Jacksons DNC speech in 1984 pre-empted it on the West Coast. The ratings it received for it's East Coast showing were sufficiently poor, however, that the show never got made.

More at: http://www.finest-kind.net/miscellaneous/walter.php

[dad]

71. Comparing Frank Burns To George W. Bush

You have to check out this page from the site you just linked to:

http://www.finest-kind.net/misc/burnsorbush.htm

I think the most obvious difference, of course, would be that Burns served during wartime.

[sabbat hunter]

15. a pilot episode

that never even aired i believe

[Kutjara]

16. It sort-of aired.

See post 13 for details and a full plot synopsis, if you dare. :)

[Kutjara]

7. It think it saved the real shark jump...

...for "AfterMASH." That one jumped the shark ten minutes before the first readthrough.

[LynneSin]

64. Aftermash sucked but I loved "Trapper John MD"

because it wasn't really about extending M*A*S*H but instead taking a popular character from M*A*S*H (Trapper John, who left after like season 3) and creating a show about his life running a hospital some 20 years after the war. It was a really good show and Gregory Harrison rocked - he was like a younger combination of both Trapper John AND Hawkeye

[Left Is Write]

68. I loved that show too! Of course, I did have a huge crush on Gonzo Gates.

the Gregory Harrison character.

[baldguy]

11. 1975

Korean War 1950-1953
MASH 1972–1983

[tuvor]

12. Yeah, but...

The Korean War was on every day. M*A*S*H, only once a week.

[nosmokes]

17. bald guy - you missed the poiont ;)

vietnam war(conservatively)

gulf of tonkin resolution 1964 -

evacuating embassy in saigon 1975


it was always an *open secret* that the korean war was simply an allegory for vietnam. and more perfect it couldn't have been. undeclared wars in both instances against the big bad communist boogeyman.

the movie was absolutely brilliant, and i thought they were nuts trying to move it to the small screen, but they pulled it off better than anyone before or since. although i do think the show ran about twice it's past due date.

[Blue-Jay]

14. When Jamie Farr stopped cross-dressing.

[SeattleGirl]

18. Never.

Well, that's my humble opinion. One of the best shows ever on TV.

[Burma Jones]

19. When Henry Blake and Trapper John left

it started to get progressively more sanctimonious after that. Once Ferret Face was gone, that was the clincher.

[CTyankee]

35. Frankly, the sexism of the movie and the earlier episodes turned me off

I liked it that they gave Margaret a more human role. I don't like the sense I'm getting that the "better" MASH was the more sexist and "truer" one. Seeing the movie MASH now is embarrassing for women to watch.

[Goblinmonger]

72. 2 things to consider

1. Don't you think that the older is a more accurate representation of what life would have been like during the Korean War? Would you rather that any treatment of Henry VIII makes him a very sensitive guy who believed in the equality of women?

2. You have to judge MASH in the context/era it was made. What seems as overly sexist right now was not so much in the 70s. Take a look at H.G. Wells writing. He was extremely progressive for his time but comes across today as a raging bigot.

[CTyankee]

77. I've heard this argument many times and I don't agree with you entirely

It isn't true that women weren't so concerned over sexism when it was obvious and much worse. Indeed, that sexism was so bad that it is what made women rise up to change it. It was sexist then to many women (including myself)and it's sexist now.

As to your first statement, yes probably, it is more accurate. However, that wasn't the issue I was addressing. I was talking about not liking the earlier episodes because they were so sexist.

[Dean Martin]

41. I liked Honeycutt more than Trapper John

TJ was just a mirror of Hawkeye. They were too much alike, too much overkill. I thought Honeycutt's character was better than Trapper John's character.

[LynneSin]

65. I liked Honeycutt until he grew the mustache and wore the pink shirt all the time

It seemed after that point he lost his comedic edge

[LTR]

20. When Frank Burns left

The show started getting serious not too long after.

Quite frankly, I preferred the first three seasons.

[xultar]

50. Yeah...that whole thing about Frank going nuts was stoopid.

[mduffy31]

56. But that is what happened in the film

So I think that is why they did that. In the movie Frank punches Hawkeye and ends up in the brig and goes away.

[deutsey]

75. There were some good episodes with Charles, but for the most part

I agree that it started going downhill after Larry Linville left.

[El Fuego]

81. I loved Frank Burns

He got that send-off because of a contract dispute.

[Lerkfish]

22. When alda and other stars started controlling things.

loretta swit demanded an anachronistic hairdo and a softening of her image, alda wanted to make mash his own personal psychiatrist's couch, and when every plot was either:

1. an elaborate practical joke
2. a pscyhoanalytic circle jerk
3. or a melodramatic interview by a journalist/cinema verite


pretty much then.


or, when radar left.

[enigmatic]

36. Me too

MASH stopped being funny when Radar left, but ir started the road when Henry Blake was killed off..

[WI_DEM]

39. I didn't mind Blake being killed off

I loved Henry Blake, but Stevenson left the show and I think they did it right--they killed off a beloved character because they were showing that in war even nice guys die.

[enigmatic]

42. I can understand that

I know McLean Stevenson wanted to have his own show and it was planned, but it seemed that the more Alan Alda took over writing and producing the show the less funny it became, which was too bad. There were some great shows scattered, but it turned into the "Hawkeye and his self-analysis" show for me, and threw in too many gimmick shows, too..

[JVS]

24. When the show lasted much much longer than the war

[Lautremont]

25. When Spearchucker left.

[WI_DEM]

26. The what, fifth or sixth show? I often wondered why a so-called liberal show

like MASH got rid of the one minority character on the show, and one who had a fairly substantial part in the movie?

[Dean Martin]

28. Why was the one minority character given a racist name?

Because Spearchucker was definitely a racist name.

On an unrelated note, Hawkeye said in season one he was considering wearing women's clothes to get a section 8 before Klinger came along.

[WI_DEM]

31. good question.

[Lautremont]

38. Spearchucker was a holdover from the movie,

(though I can't remember if he was in the book) and the name was, I imagine used to make a point. He was a quarterback with a great throwing arm, but the customs of the time demanded that this talent be celebrated by giving him a racist nickname.

I believe he was gotten rid of because it was discovered that there simply weren't any black surgeons in Korea. I don't know if that's true or not, but I do recall reading that somewhere. His name couldn't have helped.

He disappeared after episode #7, "Chief Surgeon Who?"

[Dean Martin]

40. there weren't any females in the camps either

...but that didn't stop them. My dad was in Korea, and he said the camps, both military and hospital were strictly male. No mixing of soldiers and nurses. So they should have kept Spearchucker's character.

[Lowell]

76. I don't know where you heard that, there were Army nurses

in Korea throughout the conflict and they worked side by side with the physicians. Check out this link and tell the lady she was not there.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2001/n03302001_200103301.html

<snip>

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2001 -- A half-century has passed since retired Army Maj. Julia Baxter worked as an operating room nurse in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH, in war-torn South Korea.

The 80-year-old veteran remembers when more than 1,000 wounded soldiers were backlogged waiting for care in the yard outside the hospital.

<snip - snip>

Each day, she was reminded of the brother she'd lost in World War II.

"When I first went to Korea," Baxter said, "each soldier that came in the operating room seemed like my brother. It took a little while to get over that. We did a little crying, then got back to work."

After about five months in Korea, Baxter went back to the Tokyo Army Hospital where she assisted doctors with plastic surgery and orthopedics for two years. In 1957, while stationed in Iran, she met her husband, an Army captain, and was married in 1958. She became pregnant and was discharged in 1959.

[Dean Martin]

78. I heard it from my father, who was in Korea

But he was never wounded, so probably never went to a MASH unit. However, he said the situations on the MASH program never even remotely came close to the real thing, hence he couldn't stand the program.

[fishwax]

54. he was in the original book n/t

[Igel]

48. Odessa Cleveland.

African-American. Played "Ginger Bayliss" for three seasons, my guess is probably off and on. Nurse.

Ah, but then she was a woman.

(And there's no way I'd have known this if I hadn't needed to search on who "Spearchucker" was.)

[Dean Martin]

49. I knew about Odessa

I knew because my coworker brought season one in to work on DVD last week and I was noticing Odessa. I thought she was the cutest nurse there!

I should have said in my post, "Why was the one major male surgeon character given a racist name?" to clarify, because I was aware of Odessa's character.

My apologies.

[LynneSin]

70. Here's an interesting tidbit aboout Speakchucker Jones:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068098/trivia

The character of Spearchucker disappeared after the first five episodes when the writers found out that there weren't any African American surgeons serving at MASHes in the Korean War.

[Bluzmann57]

37. One reason the "Spearchucker" character was eliminated

There were no black surgeons in the Korean War. And since they made him a surgeon the first season, it would have been difficult to make him anything else and have it be believeable.

[Oeditpus Rex]

52. Because they found out

there were no black surgeons in Korea.



Edit: I should follow my own rule and read all the posts. :blush:

[mduffy31]

57. Because in actuality

There was no black surgeons in the Army in 1951.

[CactusJock]

27. what do you call the opposite of jumping the shark?

i dunno, but there ought to be a phrase for it and that's what i reckon MASH did, it just kinda collapsed under the weight of its own mawkishness. I remember one episode and alan alda was on a bus, and everyone had to stay quiet cos the north koreans were nearby, only there was a woman with a chicken that wouldn't shut up, only it wasn't a chicken it was a baby, and the mother had to kill her own baby. and i remember thinking, wtf, didn't there used to be jokes in this?? the last season was like unreleting misery in every episode.

i think Frasier and to some extent Friends went the same way, its like the writers fall in love with their characters or something, and everything starts to get really heavy and emotionally introspective, and all the jokes take a back seat to some unlikely love affair between niles and daphne or joey and rachel.

that's why i loved seinfeld - cos they were all unrepetent a-holes to the bitter end.

so my answer is: alan alda on the bus with the baby/chicken :)

[WhollyHeretic]

29. That was the 2-hour finale

[WI_DEM]

30. Actually I think the finale was 2.5 hours!

and somewhat disappointing, though to me, not as disappointing as the "Seinfeld" finale.

[WhollyHeretic]

33. You're right it was 2 1/2

It was OK as far as finales go, there usually not the best episodes. It's still the most watched show ever (the finale).

[Dean Martin]

34. I actually liked the finale

I thought the finale was a very "political" comment on war. After reading about WWI the MASH finale was probably more about the way the bastards handled WWI than any other war. The creators had said the series was actually about all wars, not just Korea or Vietnam. When November 11, 1918 arrived, the ceasefire was due to occur at 11 a.m. A bastard US general ordered some troops over the top at 10:30! The Germans didn't even want to fire at them but were ordered to. So several hundred US troops were massacred 30 minutes before the war was due to end for no reason. And the general responsible was brought up before Congress and I believe they ended up giving him some kind of medal.
MASH's 2.5 hour finale (it was on TV Land last weekend) referred more to that incident in WWI than anything else, the way the casualties kept coming in even though there was a cease fire scheduled.

[hlthe2b]

44. yes... MASH had the captured Chinese band...

who go on to be massacred when their prison truck hit a land mine... That was actually one of the most touching parts of the finale.

[Dean Martin]

46. I agree

MASH's finest moments to me were when it preached about the horrors of war and did less of the sexist comedy.

[Goblinmonger]

73. Heretic

How can you declare the Seinfeld finale disappointing? What did you want them to do? Actually make a point? Actually have the show be about something? Plus the closure with the last inane discussion of the show pretty much being a mirror of the first inane discussion was beautiful.

[Left Is Write]

32. That was the final episode.

[hlthe2b]

43. that was the finale.... Hawkeye developed PTSD and was

sent to a psych facility.... The bus ride was a flash back...

And I agree, that was tough episode to take...

[CactusJock]

45. no kidding

i don't remember any of that other stuff or that it was the last episode or anything but i just kept getting my own disjointed flashback to the crying rooster baby.

MASH gave me PSTD!!!

[QMPMom]

47. When they gave Alan Alda creative control.

It was All Hawkeye, All The Time. I got sick of Alda and his preaching and self aggrandizement on M*A*S*H*.

[Strawman]

51. When Danny Cooksey jonied the cast as Sam

[Left Is Write]

69. Cute. That show jumped the shark long before Danny Cooksey, though.

[Oeditpus Rex]

53. When Potter couldn't open his mouth

without saying something like, "Sweet Nefertiti, Klinger! What in the name of Carrie's corset have you done to the radio?"

[reyd reid reed]

66. Now, be fair...

"Carrie's corset" came when they stole Margaret's tent. And I liked that one...Potter's joke.

[Oeditpus Rex]

74. Maybe, but

you gotta admit there came a time when nearly everything that came out of his mouth was a colloquialism.

[Skittles]

55. when Hotlips started sporting an 80's hairdo

yes INDEED

[bertha katzenengel]

58. At the end of the movie. Series was just ok compared to the movie. n/t

[Richardo]

59. That's it, bertha

:thumbsup:

[noonwitch]

60. When Alan Alda started writing too many episodes

It stopped being as funny, and took on too many serious notes at that point. The finale was such a let-down.

[reyd reid reed]

67. When it stopped being M*A*S*H

and started being the "Hawkeye Pierce Show."

[UTUSN]

79. Sorry, but for me, it did it from Day One. I never liked the snarky-smart-alecky 'tude that was

supposedly a cover for an inner SMARMY sensitivity, supposedly an exterior hardness to cover the DEEP FEELING of pain. This was supposed to be the cover for ALL of the different characters, whether it was cross-dressing or clowning or promiscuity.

I remember when ALDA guested on To Tell the Truth with Garry MOORE. MOORE, of a previous, tougher-minded, generation, introduced the panelists. ALDA was the toast of the town with M.A.S.H. at it's apogee. When MOORE got to him he said (something like), "And the acclaimed star of the runaway hit comedy: MUSH." The MUSH part is a literal quotation.

Sorry, but there have ALWAYS been certain PC-approved outlets that never appealed to me. I never liked Bill COSBY when everybody around me did, either.

My new fad, "Scrubs," has the same cop-out ploy as MUSH: They go through these hardbitten rants at one another, then the voiceover invariably suggests that this is just a cover for dealing with profoundly heartrending situations, that the "doctors" would not be able to function in the long term if they didn't let off steam in this particular way. But I'm loving Scrubs.

[El Fuego]

80. When Alan Alda became a writer/producer/director.