Discuss April 2014’s Poll

3 Comments

Last month’s poll was suggested by Crabapple Cove and asked readers which character’s development on M*A*S*H they enjoyed the most: Klinger, Margaret or Radar. Here are the results:

Klinger (47%, 55 Votes)
Margaret (28%, 32 Votes)
Radar (25%, 29 Votes)

As you can see, Klinger was far and away the winner, with Margaret in second place and Radar bringing up the rear. I voted for Klinger, even though there wasn’t all that much development to his character. He just stopped wearing dresses and trying to get out of the Army after Radar left. It was a switch, to be sure, and allowed the character some growth, but he still acted much the same.

Margaret definitely developed and evolved significantly over the years, from Hot Lips to Margaret and beyond. I’ve always felt that Radar didn’t really evolve as a character over the course of the series but instead devolved. Season One Radar was very different from Radar in the rest of the series.

Preview May’s Poll:

This month’s polls asks readers which (recurring) general on M*A*S*H was their favorite: General Clayton, General Hammond, General Mitchell, General Barker.

3 Replies to “Discuss April 2014’s Poll”

  1. yes, i have to argue that what Klinger went through is not character development but rather a trope called characterization marches on. he did not go through a process of growth and development, like you say, he basically became a diffirent character when Radar left, he stopped wearing dresses. Margret defintley went through character development.

  2. I voted for Klinger. Although I think Jamie Farr did a decent job with this ‘gimmick’ character in the series, I never really liked the whole cross-dressing thing. It seemed at the time, and even moreso in retrospect, like a cheap trick to stop eyeballs from flipping the channel (i.e. “wait honey, stop here, isn’t that a guy wearing a dress?”).

    I enjoyed the later, company clerk version of Klinger better. I also appreciated the irony at the end of the series and carrying over into AfterMASH that Klinger gets promoted and re-enlists then ends up working at Veteran’s hospital after the war.

    As for Margaret, she was just never my favorite throughout the series. If anything I like her better as the one and only friend of Frank Burns. Once they broke up, Frank really had nothing to add (see Season 5).

    Radar remains one of my favorite characters in the show, but I agree with comments above that he failed to develop and in fact devolved as the show went on. I enjoy the shifty, conviving Radar of Season 1.

  3. …I’m going to turn things on their head a bit, here, and toss in that I really didn’t care for the character development aspect of the show…in the sense that it was far too drastic. Of course, much of the so-called character growth or development was labeled as such simply because Gelbart left and the characters changed because the writers changed. Sure, I loved Hot Lips in Empty Arms and the occasional moment where a character maybe turned a corner, showed some deep emotion or what have you. But whether it’s Hawkeye, Margaret, Klinger, and to a lesser extent Radar, BJ and Potter, the characters were almost unrecognizable from their original conceptions. Margaret progressed nicely from season 1 to 5….maybe even 6. But after that, she began a rapid side into something totally different. So, after such a long ramble, I guess I would rephrase the poll question (no disrespect to the original poll) to “which writer or writers and set of producers did the best characterization of any given character”

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