To help mark the end of the 2011-2012 television season, Entertainment Weekly has published its list of the 20 Best TV Series Finales Ever. M*A*S*H ranks sixth on the list; here’s the five shows that were ranked higher:

• 6. M*A*S*H
• 5. Cheers
• 4. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
• 3. The Fugitive
• 2. St. Elsewhere
• 1. Hewhart

You can’t see the whole list anywhere because it is a slideshow, meaning you have to click through to see all twenty shows. As is often the case, a good number are from the 1990s/2000s. But not, surprisingly, in the Top Five.

The UK’s Radio Times website has a poll running asking visitors “What’s the best TV ending of all time?” (both season and series finales) and one of the 20 poll options is the series finale of M*A*S*H, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” (originally broadcast February 28th, 1983). A direct link to the poll can be found here. Currently, M*A*S*H has 3% of the vote, which by my count has it tied for 7th. The current winner is the second season finale of the BBC’s Sherlock, with 41% of the vote.

Yahoo! News has a feature called Who Knew? in which a short video is presented and then a brief quiz offered. Today’s entry is titled Series Finales: “House” And “Desperate Housewives” Ending This Month, Can They Compare To Classic Finales?. The video mentions the series finale of M*A*S*H (“Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen,” originally broadcast February 28th, 1983) about eight seconds in. Here’s the video followed by a partial transcript:

The gold standard for series finales is still the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983. 106 million viewers watched the poignant goodbye to Hawkeye, a record that still stands. The final episode of The Fugitive in 1967 owns the record for the largest share of the audience, though. 72% of American households tuned in to see if Doctor Richard Kimble caught the one-armed man.

Notice anything wrong with that statement? Perhaps not. I doubt most M*A*S*H fans know without looking it up but “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” averaged a 77% Nielsen share, giving it the record for the largest share of the audience for a series finale, not The Fugitive as the video asserts. It was correctly identified as drawing the most viewers, however. Fun fact: that 77% share was not a record back in 1983. Read more at my Goodbye, Farewell and Amen Ratings Analysis.

I am a week late posting this, so this month’s poll will have to run a bit shorter than usual. Last month, I asked visitors to answer the following question: “Have you seen any episodes of Trapper John, M.D.?” Out of the 178 responses, 63% said Yes and 37% said No. That’s very close to the response for March’s poll the same question about AfterMASH (the percentages were 60% Yes and 40% No). I was surprised that so many people had seen AfterMASH but I am not at all surprised to see so many people watched Trapper John, M.D.. For starters, it was on the air for much longer than AfterMASH (from 1979-1986). And Trapper John, M.D. was syndicated in the States, unlike AfterMASH. FX actually aired the series for a while in the late 1990s, airing two hour-long episodes back-to-back early on Sunday mornings. And AmericanLife TV (now known as Youtoo TV — seriously) aired the series at one point.

Are there any rabid fans of Trapper John, M.D. out there waiting and hoping for the series to make it to DVD?

I don’t play poker. But a lot of people do. And some of them even write about it. One such player and writer is Martin Harris, who pens a column at PokerListings called “Pop Watch,” in which he plans to explore “the many ways poker and pop culture intersect.” He recently wrote about the history of poker on M*A*S*H. He discusses five episodes involving poker: “Deal Me Out,” “Payday,” “Lt. Radar O’Reilly,” “The Merchant of Korea” and “Wheelers and Dealers.” The article also mentions “Your Hit Parade” and Double Cranko (which is included in not one but two Wikipedia articles). Poker plays a role in a number of Season One episodes, including “The Moose,” in which Radar uses a telescope to help Hawkeye cheat at cards (and almost blows the whole thing by eyeballing a good-looking nurse rather than the cards), and “The Long-John Flap,” in which Trapper loses Hawkeye’s long-johns during a game.

“The Moose” – Can anyone identify these legs?

Personally, my favorite poker moment is the aforementioned game from “The Moose.” What other episodes involved poker?