Good-Bye Radar (Part 2) Voted Favorite Episode from Season 8

14 Comments

Last month visitors to MASH4077TV.com voted “Good-Bye Radar (Part 2)” their favorite episode from Season 8. “April Fools” came in second with “Old Soldiers” a close third.

A total of 159 votes were cast, down from 194 votes for July. Every single episode received at least one vote, with “Lend a Hand” and “Stars and Stripes” each getting just the one. Here are the complete results:

  1. Good-Bye Radar (Part 2) (14%, 22 Votes)
  2. April Fools (11%, 18 Votes)
  3. Old Soldiers (11%, 17 Votes)
  4. Heal Thyself (7%, 11 Votes)
  5. Period of Adjustment (6%, 10 Votes)
  6. Life Time (6%, 10 Votes)
  7. Mr. and Mrs. Who? (6%, 9 Votes)
  8. Dreams (6%, 9 Votes)
  9. Good-Bye Radar (Part 1) (3%, 5 Votes)
  10. Too Many Cooks (3%, 5 Votes)
  11. The Yalu Brick Road (3%, 5 Votes)
  12. Are You Now, Margaret? (3%, 5 Votes)
  13. Dear Uncle Abdul (3%, 4 Votes)
  14. Morale Victory (3%, 4 Votes)
  15. Yessir, That’s Our Baby (3%, 4 Votes)
  16. Captains Outrageous (3%, 4 Votes)
  17. Nurse Doctor (2%, 3 Votes)
  18. Guerrilla My Dreams (1%, 2 Votes)
  19. Private Finance (1%, 2 Votes)
  20. Bottle Fatigue (1%, 2 Votes)
  21. Back Pay (1%, 2 Votes)
  22. War Co-Respondent (1%, 2 Votes)
  23. Goodbye, Cruel World (1%, 2 Votes)
  24. Lend a Hand (1%, 1 Votes)
  25. Stars and Stripes (0%, 1 Votes)

Personally, my vote went to “Old Soldiers” and I am honestly surprised it did not win. I equally surprised that “Good-Bye Radar (Part 2)” topped the poll last month. I didn’t realize it had so many fans.

Hit the comments with your reactions to the results. Which episode did you vote for and why?

And don’t forget to vote in this month’s poll, which asks visitors to chose their favorite episode from Season 9.

14 Replies to “Good-Bye Radar (Part 2) Voted Favorite Episode from Season 8”

  1. I also voted for Old Soldiers because it is so well acted and has an interesting storyline. I have always had mixed feelings about Good Bye Radar (pt 1 & 2). I am glad his character got a farewell (unlike Frank or Trapper), but sadly it seems that what we saw in those episodes was a disgruntled and troubled Gary Burghoff, not the character of Radar that so many of us love.

    I was even more shocked that Dreams got 9 votes. I look forward to hearing from those voters as I have hated that episode from the first time I saw it and have a hard time even including it in my personal M*A*S*H “universe”.

  2. I voted for “Too Many Cooks.” Why? Because it was the only decent episode that whole season – after that, the rest are terrible. Awful.

    Regarding Crabapple Cove’s comment, I’d argue that Trapper and Frank did receive proper farewells. Trapper’s just wasn’t when he went home for good, his was when he had an ulcer and they thought it was his ticket home: he and Hawkeye share an intimate moment in the Swamp, and the rest of the camp threw a farewell party for him in the Mess Tent. They didn’t necessarily have to go through that all over again when he really did go home, but I will agree it was a bit of a buzzkill to end one season with Trapper being there and begin the next with him gone. Frank’s departure may not have been on-screen, but they handled it in a very clever way by having him go berserk throughout Tokyo, but the fact that the MPs kept calling Potter to update him on his escapes and having Frank actually call up Hawkeye and B.J. to inform them of his transfer and promotion made it feel like he was still among them, if only in spirit.

  3. I voted for ‘The Yalu Brick Road’ which I thought was the best episode of Season 8 followed by ‘Mr. and Mrs. Who.’ Nothing much else to say about this episode except that the appearance of Soon-Teck-Oh made it go from an okay episode to a pretty good one.

  4. Interesting to see that each response (comment) here so far was for a different episode. I myself voted for Morale Victory. Being a violinist and pianist, I often thought many many times what would happen if I would lose a hand or even a finger or two, Heaven forbid? All of that work, practice, lessons, time and money down the drain……But, this episode really shows that that really isn’t true. I absolutely love Winchester’s part in this episode. I could watch his scene in the Officer’s Club over and over. I remember my reaction when I first saw the soldier tell Winchester in Post Op that he was a concert pianist….I had that hollow feeling in my stomach.

    I also enjoy watching Hawkeye and BJ try to figure out how to boost the camp’s morale…..and their solution is fun to watch.

    BTW – Ravel’s Piano Concerto for One Hand truly is a fun piece to listen to…. 🙂

  5. Um… the current poll says I voted for “Death Takes a Holiday,” but I have not voted in this month’s poll yet.

    1. I am not sure why you are seeing that. The poll logs indicate four people have voted for “Death Takes a Holiday” but I have no way of knowing if one of those votes came from your IP address. Perhaps a gremlin got into your computer and cast a vote for its favorite episode…

      1. Darn them gremlins! Now I apparently voted for “Your Retention Please,” though I didn’t. 😛

  6. BTW, you copied over a paragraph from last month’s column (where you mention the S7 episodes that got 0 votes).

    I voted for “April Fools” because I thought it was the funniest episode of the season, at least when I first saw it, but I considered changing my vote over to “Morale Victory”, since I loved the Winchester subplot with the pianist (played by James Stephens, who’d just appeared the previous year on “The Paper Chase”). Winchester is my favorite character from this series, and this episode gave him a great spotlight. It is a bit of a shame,
    if you consider these episodes in original airdate order, the morale boost from “Morale Victory” was short-lived, since the next week’s episode, “Lend a Hand”, had morale back down in the dumps so far that there was a phony birthday passed around to help morale.

    1. I know!! I was waiting for it to post almost all day on Tuesday and again, almost all day today. Has RJ stopped with the NTE game??

      1. He’s probably in the Swamp of life. I mean swamped with life. That’s okay, he can take a break if he needs to; in the meantime, I’m going to comtemplate what I might vote for this month, and hope no more gremlins mess with my comp.

    2. I completely forgot about it on Tuesday and did not remember until late Thursday. Next week things will go back to normal.

  7. This was a tough one. “Old Soldiers” has such a definingly great moment for Potter and his 4077th comrades at the end. “Dreams” is one that I’ve long found to highly inventive — something that would’ve played well as a short film just as it is, even if the “M*A*S*H” TV series had never existed. And I think “April Fools” is the one that contains one of the absolutely greatest punchlines of the entire series, where Houlihan asks where her tent is and BJ responds: “We gave it to a dog. Now it’s a pup tent.”

    But I had to go with what turned out to be the eventual winner on this one. Sure, it tugging moments in the last several minutes, plus there’s the classic finish with the teddy bear. But, I had to pick it because: It’s the first “M*A*S*H” I ever saw!

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