Every Monday, I spotlight a random episode of M*A*S*H, providing a brief review and asking readers to offer their thoughts.
“Love and Marriage” (#68, 3×20)
Originally Broadcast: Tuesday, February 18th, 1975
Written by Arthur Julian
Directed by Lee Philips
Capsule Summary: Hawkeye and Trapper try to help a South Korean orderly visit his pregnant wife while also trying to keep an American orderly from marrying a South Korean call girl.
Both the A and B stories in this episode were pretty good, even if they involved some unfortunate realities of the Korean War. The A Story involving Mr. Kwang was resolved nicely with the reunion of father, mother and newborn. Left unsaid was what would become of Kwang. Presumably he would be reassigned to another unit by the ROK Army, leaving his wife and child to fend for themselves. This wasn’t the only episode to touch on forced conscription of Koreans by both the North and the South. It seemed a little insensitive of Hawkeye and Trapper to crack jokes about the practice in front of Kwang.
The B Story involving Private McShane’s scheme to make a quick $1,000 by marrying Soong Hi worked mostly due to the hefty involvement of Wayne Rogers. It was nice to see him given something substantial to do. Dugan either overreacted or underacted in most of his scenes but then again his entire squeaky clean persona was apparently an act. Frank liking him should have been a warning sign that he wasn’t who he seemed to be. As with the A Story, the B Story also ended on something of a positive note, with McShane forced to call off the sham marriage. But he probably just went and found someone else to marry for the money, so all Trapper did was delay things.
I have to wonder about the South Korean woman who was constantly pulling on Colonel Blake’s arm. She apparently wanted teeth. I assume she wanted dentures or dental replacements but why would that come up during pre-marital exams? It’s a small but bizarre part of the episode. The scene does provide a great line from Radar (“Well, I’m not supposed to know, but you must know otherwise they wouldn’t want you to sign it”) and another example of just how incompetent Colonel Blake can be at times, signing anything put on his desk.
Also, would Hawkeye really have delivered Mrs. Kwang’s baby on a moving bus or would he have had the driver pull over? Radar’s reactions are over-the-top but amusing and seeing him carried off on a stretcher is a nice touch.
I suspect if Wayne Rogers had received more scenes during his years on M*A*S*H like the one he shared with Dennis Dugan in this episode, he never would have left the series. It didn’t involve Hawkeye at all and was a significant part of the B Story.
Unrelated, but in that scene especially Dugan’s clothes don’t seem to fit very well.
This episode featured the first of five appearances by actor Soon-Teck Oh (identified in the closing credits to this episode as Soon-Taik Oh) on M*A*S*H, all as different characters. The other episodes he appeared in are “The Bus” (Season 4), “The Korean Surgeon” (Season 5), “The Yalu Brick Road” (Season 8) and “Foreign Affairs” (Season 11). It also featured the fourth of seven different appearances by Jerry Fujikawa. Dennis Dugan would return to M*A*S*H years later, playing a different character, in “Strange Bedfellows” (Season 11).
Hawkeye’s line about it taking a steady hand for a Wassermann is reference to the Wassermann test for syphilis.
Margaret does not appear in this episode. Neither does Klinger.
A good episode. As mentioned, Trapper is fantastic in his scene with McShane and it really makes you wonder how great he would have been had he gotten more scenes like that.
My favorite piece of dialog is from when Hawkeye and Trapper are trying to convince Henry to let them go bring Mrs. Kwang to the 4077th:
Trapper: Kwang’s wife. Can’t we do something for her?
Henry: Hey, there’s a war on, remember? Most of these women have to have their babies in a rice paddy and then go back to work.
Trapper: Henry, we all saw ‘The Good Earth.’
Radar: Hey, what is that?
Trapper: A 20-year-old movie.
Radar: We’re getting that next week.
Burt Metcalfe reminisced during the ’30th Anniversary Reunion’ about Gary Burghoff ad libbing during the bus sequence “I can see her fuzzy wuzzy.” LOL.That would have never gotten past the censors then.
Dennis Dugan now has made a career for himself directing Adam Sandler movies. Just as well…he was terrible in both episodes that he was in.
This episode seemed uninspiring and hard to watch. I’m not a fan of Dennis Dugan as an actor or director. He just doesn’t come across as a likeable kind of guy.
IMO, Dennis Dugan is a lousy actor. Never funny, never credible. Delivers his lines through his nose. Glad Wayne Rogers got a chance to shine, I agree he would have stayed if given better scenes. Having Frank acting like an MP is ridiculous— he’s a doctor, a terrible doctor but not an MP. Seems as if it was an excuse for Alan Alda & the writers to slam the US Military. Having Henry suddenly become a hard ass about a Korean national trying to be with his pregnant wife doesn’t cut it.
Frank wasn’t an MP, he was OD, Officer of the Day.
Some comments here make it sound like Rogers’ great scene with Private McShane is a rare occurrence … it is not … throughout his three seasons he has many that are just as good.
Everyone has their share of great scenes, plus ‘special’ spotlight episodes; Trapper has Bulletin Board, Bombed, Check-Up, Mail Call, Kim, Radar’s Report, Showtime, Cease-Fire, Requiem For a Lightweight.
Trapper’s role is valuable and brilliant, even in the few Hawkeye has more screen time:
* Chief Surgeon Who? (would not have been fun without Trapper!)
* Edwina (Trapper’s perfectly delivered “Hey, what are they? … They’re all soft and bumpy.” is one of his fun lines)
* Dr Pierce and Mr Hyde (Trapper and Radar working together to sedate Hawkeye are fun scenes, and important to the story)
* Carry On, Hawkeye (Trapper’s smaller role is a valuable one)
* The General Flipped At Dawn (Trapper has several quick fun lines but not much screen time, however, it’s General Steele who steals the show)
* Officer of the Day (among other things, Trapper makes a grand entrance in a pinstriped horizontal suit)
* A Full Rich Day (one of Trapper’s great lines is the simple, “He got better.” … and it’s perfect)
* Payday (how Trapper wins at poker and the winnings save Hawkeye is well done and fun)
Still, screen time is pretty equally shared throughout. … This one (Love and Marriage) is a good example of that balance; Trapper has his great scene, Hawkeye has the fun one on the bus, the rest is shared (the template used for most episodes).
I guess I made it sound like Trapper and Hawkeye are the only ones with great scenes … they aren’t; everyone has lots of great ones, and everyone has those that spotlight them each season.
The series focused on the entire main cast.
An interesting and very dark episode (both from the point of view of the storyline and the fact that a great deal of it takes place in dim light or night time). I understand that a lot of people don’t like it and there are parts I don’t like but I found it worth watching and it had some interesting points:
Trapper’s scene with McShane was impressive
Dennis Dugan played the creepy/smarmy clean cut boy very well I thought
A very well photographed poker scene in The Swamp, in my view second only to “Deal Me out” and impressive in how it was directed and the use of light and shadow.
Frank going over the top as O.D. and shooting out the light.
Radar reacting to the impending birth on the bus.
Aspects I did not like:
The whole scenario of GI’s marrying local girls was played for laughs and the only aspect the doctors got involved in was a physical and the impression that the episode gave that there was a long lineup of GI’s involved in this apparently routine process and H and TJ only querying the McShane case (and letting a GI marry an under age, or seemingly under age, girl sail through with only a joke about half price movie tickets).
Contrast this with virtually any other episode, but especially season 2’s “L.I.P.” on the issue of marrying locals and it came up again in later seasons.
I also did not like Father Mulcahy’s seeming involvement in this in a manner of aiding and abetting or normalising this process. In all honesty, if the process was OK more thought should have been given to providing lines of dialogue explaining why Mulcahy organised the whole process, as this is what he seemed to be busy doing.
Other weird aspects was Henry getting all gung ho about the Mr Kwang case yet throughout the episode at no time did H and TJ get Henry involved in stamping out, or even telling Henry about, their indignation about the McShane case, it all seemed to be resolved by TJ. A great role for TJ but realistically McShane would just do it all again later.
Radar and Hawkeye blithely going in a bus (driven by whom?) to get the wife and return to the 4077th is also written as a routine thing, despite going out with no military or MP backup, very different to the drama of “Rainbow Bridge”.
Interesting that not only was there no Margaret Houlihan in this episode, but no female staff member of any kind – no nurses at all. The OR scenes had the surgeons assisted by orderlies McShane and Kwang but no nurses. Very odd.