Every Monday, I spotlight a random episode of M*A*S*H, providing a brief review and asking readers to offer their thoughts.
“Rally Round the Flagg, Boys” (#165, 7×21)
Originally Broadcast: Wednesday, February 14th, 1979
Written by Mitch Markowitz
Directed by Harry Morgan
Capsule Summary: Hawkeye treats a wounded North Korean soldier, prompting outrage from a G.I. and a visit from Colonel Flagg.
This was the last episode of M*A*S*H to feature Colonel Flagg, although the character later resurfaced in an episode of AfterMASH. Edward Winter made six appearances as Flagg between 1973 and 1976 (five if you don’t count “Deal Me Out” when he was credited as Captain Halloran).
Why the big gap between this episode and “The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan” back in Season 5? And why was this Flagg’s last appearance? I don’t know for sure but presumably the writers felt the character had run its course. It may have been for the best. Edward Winter did a fantastic job as Flagg but there were only so many ways to get the character to the 4077th and only so many things for him to do once he was there.
Indeed, Flagg’s role in this episode is basically the same as in many of his previous appearances: he’s convinced someone at the 4077th is a Communist. What makes “Rally Round the Flagg, Boys” stand out is not necessarily Flagg but the interaction between Flagg and Charles. But the two meeting, Flagg trying to convince Charles to spy on Hawkeye, and Charles ultimately refusing to do so could happen just once.
Were there ways to bring Flagg back to the 4077th later in the series? I’m sure the writers could’ve come up with something if they really wanted to but it likely would’ve felt repetitive. This was a strong episode for the character to go out on, in my opinion. Flagg did his homework before meeting Charles. He knew exactly what to say to frighten and entice Charles into working with him.
Of course Charles would jump at the chance to not only get away from the 4077th but out of Korea entirely. But even Charles wasn’t selfish enough to go along with Flagg for long. He masterfully turned the tables and pulled one over on Flagg. Even Hawkeye was impressed.
Speaking of Hawkeye, his storyline is a little disappointing. It ties into the Charles/Flagg storyline in that both involve the wounded North Korean soldier. But it just ends. Hawkeye decides to operate on the wounded North Korean soldier and feels justified in that decision. He gets really upset in the O.R. when Basgall won’t stop yelling at him. Later, Hawkeye feels bad about yelling at Basgall but B.J. refuses to let him apologize. Basgall then confronts Hawkeye in the Swamp, forcing B.J. to get a little rough.
Then what happens? We don’t know. Basgall is sent back to Post-Op and that’s the last we see of him. Hawkeye never gets to apologize or reflect on the experience. In the tag scene, B.J. visits Father Mulcahy to get a boxing lesson, wanting a way to blow off steam so he doesn’t rough up any other patients. But what about Hawkeye?
I wonder how many times Goldman tossing his lunch in the garbage had to be shot. There’s no jump cut so presumably Edward Winter really was in the garbage can and really did get a a tray full of food thrown at him.
When Colonel Flagg turns out the light in the Swamp, there’s a momentary freeze frame while the tent is dark and Flagg makes his escape.
Can anyone identify the magazine Charles finds in Hawkeye’s footlocker? From what we see of the cover it looks like it’s called FUN. Was it a real magazine or something the prop department came up with?
Every single guest star in this episode made at least one other appearance on M*A*S*H.
Margaret does not appear in this episode. Margaret makes an appearance in the O.R. scene that somehow I completely missed. Thanks to Doc Funnypants for pointing it out.
Ken Levine has said before that the reason they stopped writing for Flagg was because he was becoming too broad and silly a character, and that he would have ended up becoming an ill fit for the show given the shift in tone it was going through.
And the reason Hawkeye took the North Korean casualty first was because he was hurt the worst and needed surgery immediately.
And I just recently realized the guy who played Basgall was the same patient in “Tea and Empathy” whom B.J. tried to cure of his morphine addiction.
All that said, I love Potter’s reaction to finding Flagg in his office, as well as these exchanges between him and Hawkeye:
FLAGG: Pierce! I’m going to give you a change: why’d you do it.
HAWKEYE: Oh, I don’t know, why does anybody do it?
FLAGG: Now you’ve done it!
HAWKEYE: Well you’ll have to clean it up.
And. . . .
FLAGG: Now, you took a yellow Red before a white American, which is pretty pinko.
HAWKEYE: You’re even boring in Technicolor.
Actually, Margaret does appear in this episode,albeit briefly in the OR. The episode was amusing with Flagg and his extreme paranoia,but one thing does bother me concerning this episode. The tag doesn’t really connect with the rest of the episode.
I can’t believe I missed Margaret in that scene. B.J. even calls her by name.
There always seemed to be a super simple way of dealing with Basgall. The whole BJ/Hawkeye discussion and disagreement didn’t even need to take place. Potter obviously knew of the issue because he defused the blowup in the OR. Potter visits Basgall (He makes it his personal mission to visit every patient, remember?) and explains to him exactly why the doctors do what they do:
– He explains triage and why the worst injured (if they can be saved), must go first
– Basgall’s friend cannot be evacuated the next day with Basgall because he was much more seriously wounded and needs further time to recover before he can be moved, or he could likely die. Heck, maybe even offer to allow Basgall to stay until his friend is ready to leave. Have BJ & Hawkeye make the offer together to help mend the relationship
– Why do we even bother treating and saving enemy soldier? That is super simple to explain to him. We can trade captured soldiers with the other side. The more we save the more POWs we can have returned to us. If we just let them all die, then the enemy will do the same. No more Rainbow Bridges.
– Oh yeah, I completely forgot! They are actually human beings too! (Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there are actually reasons and principles worth fighting, dying and killing for although I’d be happy if any other option to resolve the differences is tried first).
Maybe this episode could have covered those meaningful feelings and issues and everyone could gained some perspective on things (like was done with the enemy gorilla episode where BJ and especially Hawkeye are shown to be far too naive. I really appreciated the fact they did that. Their (and Trapper’s during his time) naivete has always been far too childish in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong though, I love the show lol.
Is this the episode where Flagg and Mulcahy have the most interaction? The one where Potter and Mulcahy come in the C.O.’s office, Potter asks where Flagg came from and Mulcahy replies dryly, “Certainly not from above.” And when Mulcahy tries to leave, Flagg snaps at him, “Freeze, Mr Vatican, no one moves til I do!” , and where Flagg asks Mulcahy, “Who sang Toora-loora and Going my way?” When Mulcahy replies “Bing and Barry”, Flagg retorts with, “Okay, you’re clear..for now”, and stalks off as Mulcahy rolls his eyes at him. That last scene seems to imply that Flagg will target Mulcahy soon, but he never does. A pity, I think, since Edward Winters was a riot, and William Christopher was hilariously funny when they gave him the script material for it. For proof, see Mulcahy’s drunken sermon in “Alcoholics Unanimous”…so funny!
IMHO, they should have had a scrpt where Flagg comes to camp and tries to prove Mulcahy is communist because he helps orphans from both sides in the war, which leads to a crazily funny court-marshall hearing. It would be a riot to see “The Wind” and “The Padre” pitted against each other!
The Flagg episodes are some of my favorites. So what if he was silly? The show could have used the silliness in some of the later super serious episodes. They could have juxtaposed his silly pointlessness with the horrors of war which I think they were doing here. Either way I’m sorry to see Flagg go. His type of humor is the Henry Blake type that’s impossible not to laugh at. The overreacting and anger at everything is hilarious.
If it is true that the North Korean was one of the people shooting and maybe killing our people it makes very little sense that they would bring him to an American medical unit. They have their own doctors as we learned in a previous episode. It is in very poor taste for any medic to pick up the guy who probably has American bullets in him and transport him with guys he shot. However it’s possible he wasn’t in any involved and was a random guy who caught some fire. Hawkeye’s self righteousness was again in rare form again here.
If you had a chance to capture an enemy soldier on the battlefield, wouldn’t you do it? Whether the person is wounded or not you take prisoners when you can so that you can trade them back for Americans as was stated above or at least you’re taking them out of action. Once you have the enemy soldier in your custody then treating their injuries is just the humane thing to do. I view it more like they treated them as long as they were captured as opposed to capturing them for the purpose of treating them.
B.J.’s line “My thermostat is set lower than yours“ was golden to me. I love it a lot
Interesting parallel between this episode and “Morale Victory”:
Flagg: “cooperate with me and I’ll get you out.”
Winchester: “Thank you tin man, I’ll get to Tokyo on my own”
Flagg: “I meant to Boston.”
Winchester (stammering): “Massa —- Massachusetts?”
In Morale Victory, Winchester becomes exasperated with Colonel Potter and the phone operator for saying “Massachusetts?” After Winchester said Boston but here he does it himself.
Fun catch.
And I agree with your August 11th post.
If the series had shifted too far away from where Flagg could be used, that is not a good thing, no matter how anyone tried to spin it…
Much as I love the Flagg episodes, in my opinion it’s actually a genuinely good thing he was in so few episodes. I do think a significant part of the reason as to why the character and his appearances are generally thought of so fondly by people is precisely because they were never given an opportunity to go stale or significantly jar with the darkening tone of the show (I seem to be something of a rarity – at least on this site – in that I actually appreciate that the show gradually shifted towards taking itself more seriously throughout its run; even in the earlier seasons I always thought of the show more as a “dramedy” than anything else). As consistently hilarious as Flagg is, the character really was something of a one-trick pony. A very fun one trick, sure, but there genuinely is only so much that could be done with him, especially when the main cast, while scared of him in terms of what he was willing to put himself through, were also never exactly intimidated by him in terms of taking him very seriously as a threat; whenever he showed up, he was always treated more as an annoyance by the other characters than anything else and that kind of came to a head in this episode with even Radar telling him off.
This episode was probably the wackiest Flagg’s character ever got and it was a high note to send him out on, with his increasing silliness and idiocy being lampshaded at every turn – my personal highlight of the episode is when Charles “finds” the piece of paper on the North Korean’s pillow and has to literally explain to Flagg what the drawings are. David Ogden Stiers and Edward Winters made a great comedic duo throughout the episode but there’s something about Charles constantly rolling his eyes while you can almost see the cogs slowly moving in Flagg’s brain as he tries to piece it all together that’s just…endlessly hilarious to me.
Well said!
You may be in the minority – at least on this site – but I’m right there with you.
IMO just about everything was amazingly well done in the series.
*The goodbyes and recasting were well done.
*How it developed and matured was incredible.
*The humor was done in such a fashion it didn’t insult, take from, or down play the serious.
*There are so many different ways humor is presented (Flagg’s one of them; I agree with you, more would probably have been too much).
*Talent all the way through!
Great episode!
Agreed on all points. To me, throughout the entire run of the series I always appreciated how the humour helped to make the drama more poignant and the drama helped the humour to stand out. I don’t even think the series necessarily got all that darker throughout its run, it’s just that the humour gradually became more grounded and less wacky and they began handling the drama in an increasingly mature manner – the material itself (in my opinion and in terms of the sorts of storylines and topics covered) stayed fairly consistent all throughout the run. So I think a big reason as to why this episode works so well is because it’s sort of situated right in the middle of the change in styles. You have Flagg being quite early-series-level wacky and it’s kept from seeming TOO silly by everyone else displaying the later series’ groundedness (if that’s even a word…). But Flagg had sort of reached the peak of his character and as much as I do adore the character for how bizarre he is, sending him out with this episode is the best move they could have made.
Again, well said O.R. Chatter.
Few of the great lines (delivery better than reading):
[Charles] “I’m already convinced that you are mad.”
[Hawkeye] “Not mad, justifiably paranoid. It’s called the Flagg Syndrome.”
[Charles] “Colonel, the very notion of Pierce being a spy let alone a sympathizer, is absurd. Pierce has a big mouth. He’s always butting into other people’s business but that makes him obnoxious, not a spy.”
[Flagg] “Doesn’t wash. I’m obnoxious and I’m a spy.”
[Flagg] “Cooperate with me, and I’ll get you out.”
[Charles] “Thank you, Tin Man. I’ll get to Tokyo on my own.”
[Flagg] “I meant to Boston.”
[Charles] “Massachusetts?!”
[Flagg] “Did you bring me something?”
[Charles] “Yes, I did. My resignation.
I will criticize Pierce, I will ridicule him, I will even humiliate him, -but I will not spy on him.”
Charles and Flagg’s scenes are incredible.
When Flagg is in the garbage bin he tells Charles if he wants to go home to Wellesley while Charles always claimes he’s from Beacon Hill. Complete different areas in Boston and pretty far away from each other.
Another moment is one of my favorites in the episode. When Charles and Hawkeye discuss Flagg, we get a call back from “Officer of the Day”, one of the Evil Flagg ones (like “Quo Vadis, Capt. Chandler?”), as opposed to the Wacky Flagg ones. Hawkeye informs Charles about Flagg shooting a prisoner and having him patched up just to execute him. Once the captain leaves, Charles has a look a deep concern on his face. This info shocked Charles as much as it did Hawkeye and Trapper originally. Nicely acted by DOS.