On September 18th, 1972, the day after M*A*S*H premiered, The Chicago Tribune published Clarence Petersen’s review of the pilot and the series. Like others, he pointed out the absurdity of CBS broadcasting the series early on Sunday evenings slotted between two family friendly sitcoms (Anna and the King and The Sandy Duncan Show). He noted that there was a “popular explanation,” one that CBS never addressed, for the scheduling, that the television version of MASH was a “sanitized, pallid version of the motion picture that would offend no one.”

After viewing the first episodes of both M*A*S*H and The Sandy Duncan Show, Petersen concluded that neither were fit for Sunday. He admitted that M*A*S*H was “neither as bloody nor quite as sexy as the movie” but was still very much “a series for adults.” As for The Sandy Duncan Show (which was a reworked version of Sandy Duncan’s earlier sitcom, Funny Face), Petersen wrote that it “does not seem designed to please parents of small children either.”

As for M*A*S*H itself, Petersen liked what he saw. Here’s an excerpt from his review:

They do not expose any naked nurses in the show nor do they spread the bloody innards of the wounded out on the operating table, but the TV version of M*A*S*H still bends the proprieties of television almost to the breaking point.

[...]

Without the blood and gore, you do not get the same sense of horror that made the film for so many who saw it an anti-war polemic. The operating tent sequences here are filmed in red, but that isn’t the same as focusing the camera down into the wound.

As a wild and wooly satire on army life, however, M*A*S*H will delight anyone who has spent even eight weeks in basic training let alone fought in the war. Hawkeye and Trapper John may not answer the classic question, “How do you get out of this chicken outfit?,” but they are experts at plucking all the feathers.

Sources:
Petersen, Clarence. “Sunday on CBS Short on Family Fare.” Chicago Tribune. 18 Sep. 1972: C13.

Related Posts:

• TIME Reviews M*A*S*H
• More on M*A*S*H’s Cancellation/Renewal in Late 1970s
• “Dreams” Goof
• Attempted Assassination of Reagan Pre-Empted M*A*S*H
• Thirty-Five Years of M*A*S*H

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