Discuss: Would You Watch a M*A*S*H Remake?

33 Comments

After two weeks, it seems my Monday M*A*S*H Discussions are a big hit with readers. Last week’s discussion has generated more than 20 comments so far, just like the first discussion did two weeks ago. My hope is that these discussion posts will continue to elicit comments for weeks and months after they’re initially posted.

Today’s topic requires some imagination: Would you watch a M*A*S*H remake?

The 4077th for a New Generation?

Notice I’m not asking if you think M*A*S*H could (or should) be remade. Personally, I feel there’s no way anyone will attempt to remake M*A*S*H, for both creative and financial reasons. But that’s a topic for another week. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend a television network, cable channel, or streaming service has announced plans to remake M*A*S*H.

Hypothetically speaking, in this scenario, would you watch the new version of M*A*S*H?

There’s no wrong answer, of course, but I suspect most readers will state they have no interest in watching a remake of M*A*S*H. Personally, my gut reaction is to say is no way. Absolutely not. There’s no chance I’d ever want to watch a remake of M*A*S*H. It won’t be anything like–or anywhere near good as–the original series, so what’s the point?

On the other hand, sheer curiosity may drive me to watch at least the first episode. That’s what happened with the latest Star Trek TV series, Star Trek: Discovery. It didn’t intrigue me at all yet I still watched the series premiere, simply to satisfy my curiosity. Would I do the same with a M*A*S*H remake?

Let’s Discuss

The very idea of M*A*S*H being remade may offend some fans. But why does it? No matter how poorly the remake performed, or how badly it suffered creatively in comparison to our beloved sitcom, the original version would still exist. It would still air in syndication on television. It would still be available on DVD.

Perhaps those outraged by even a hypothetical remake feel they’d have to be loyal to the original version. Maybe they think they’d be betraying the memory of Larry Gelbart if they watched a remake.

Other fans may be intrigued at the possibilities of a remake. Are you one of them?

Hit the comments with your thoughts.

33 Replies to “Discuss: Would You Watch a M*A*S*H Remake?”

  1. So are we talking about strictly a show remake, or a movie remake? Either way I think my answer would be the same, but there could be a lot of differences in the outcome if it were a single movie as opposed to a show. Either way it’d be garbage.

    Regardless of if it was a show or a movie, I’d watch it for sure, just to confirm my suspicions of how terrible it would be. Highly doubt I’d make it very far into the series though if it was a show. I’m a huge star trek fan as well, and as soon as the JJ Abrams series of movies started up, I knew they were going to be basically a travesty to trek fans. I watched the movies anyways just out of sheer curiosity and to confirm my suspicions. While the first one wasn’t so bad, the rest were pure garbage and I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch a single second of the new show.

    I suspect M*A*S*H would be similar. It would be very modernized, & very Hollywoodized, filled with cussing, sex, violence, and all the other stuff stupid young mainstream audiences want these days, but in a way that is most definitely not…tasteful without being gaudy.

    Personally I hope they never ever try to do it for the reasons I mentioned above. Unfortunately since Hollywood has run out of ideas, and MASH is still so heavily watched on rerun syndication, I won’t be surprised one bit when it happens one day.

    1. Well, seems like that days coming. Frankly, I think they SHOULD leave well enough alone!!!! Being a child of the 60’s/70’s, and STILL watching MASH to THIS day [thanks to syndication], I think the show is as good now as it was then!!! Why does the Hollywood Elite think they need to Remake the Classics?!?!?!?! Most times remakes NEVER work!!!!! I personally, WILL NOT be watching this remake that I’ve been hearing is being made!!! Call me “Old School”, but I’ll stick to the Classics!!!!!

      1. A remake wouldn’t necessarily mean a bad thing- I grew up in the 90s, long after Goodbye, Farewell and Amen and yet I own the series on dvd, I watch it through over and over. Bringing that joy to so many of my generation and on would certainly be a welcome experience as opposed to some of the content we’re spoonfed today.

      2. The thing about MASH that makes it unique is the same reason I’d watch a remake. This show was based during the time of the Korean war, basically it captured the every day life of a soldier. MASH did a phenomenal job at this it showed the good times and most importantly the hardships. Mow basically every veteran you meet has a story and these are their story’s but, we dont see it to much now a days rather, we see reality TV or fantasy shows. A remake or even a show like MASH might make people see or appreciate the trials of a soldier in war.

      1. Watch a M. A. S. H. re-make?!? Absolutely not! M. A. S. H. is another great older classic film that should NOT be re-made, under any circumstances!

    2. Yes I would love a mash movie remake Ryan Reynolds as Hawkeye Pierce Will Ferrell as trapper John McIntyre Adam Sandler is Klinger Jim Carrey is lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake Will Smith as spearchucker Jones

      1. Also Margaret houlihan should be played by Leah Remini Steve buscemi as Frank Burns

  2. Yeah, my answer would be the same too: my own natural curiosity would be to at least see the first episode (or if it’s a movie, see that at leastonce) just to see how it’s handled and executed, but I doubt it would be something I would commit to. I don’t know why, but it seems like by the late-2000s, remakes just started going bad, and have progressively gotten worse since then, so I certainly would not have any high expectations of a M*A*S*H remake.

    Now, believe it or not, M*A*S*H’s rival sitcom, HOGAN’S HEROES, is getting a remake: co-creator Albert Ruddy (who also, curiously, co-created WALKER, TEXAS RANGER, and the GODFATHER movies) recently bought back the rights to the series, and is working on a movie as we speak. The last I heard, SNL’s Fred Armisen is being considered for LeBeau.

  3. I agree with BDOR and 007. In my opinion, the remake would be awful in today’s translation. What they would lack in creativity and intelligent writing would be substituted with profanity, nudity and Hollywood subpar standards. It would equal ruination of an iconic show. Seen as a cash grab failure and forever linked to the original as an ugly footnote.

  4. Short answer: Probably, at least the first episode, simply out of curiosity.

    To give a more detailed answer, I’ll have to get into my viewpoint on whether they should do such a remake. A while back, somebody asked me that very question, and my answer was a definitive, 100% “No.” I couldn’t see it working at all. Since then, I’ve eased up on my stance, at least slightly.

    Now, I think that if they did a new series, it shouldn’t be viewed as a remake of the original series, but rather its own thing. Its own vision on the characters. After all, we’ve had a novel, a movie, and a TV show, all with very different takes on the characters and setting (despite the movie taking several stories from the novel), and I think all of them worked to varying degrees, because they were all personal takes by the person/people involved, rather than being a soulless way to capitalize on someone else’s vision.

    So yes, I would probably watch the remake in hopes that they were able to pull it off, and give a unique take on the series, that could be enjoyable in its own way. Unfortunately, despite being a bit more accepting of the idea of a newer series, I’m still about 99% sure that, if it did happen, they would go into it with the mindset of trying to capitalize on the popularity of the original series, which would likely lead to a forgettable, ill-conceived attempt at resurrecting the franchise.

  5. The succinct answer, no. CBS’ reimagined properties (or their entire lineup, depending on who you talk to) these days are VERY bad, cheaply produced, badly acted, with mediocre creative teams at the helm. Just see how bad their remade Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver shows are…

    While I’m against such a remake of MASH, I can’t deny that I’m intrigued by a hypothetical remake, one where all the elements seamlessly click. I’d like to see a strong showrunner handle a 1hr dramedy (which the original was the progenitor of), where all the characters get their own spotlighted episodes, as opposed to just Hawkeye, or where continuity is more strictly observed, and especially a remake where the lifespan has been already determined.

    However, since you can’t recreate the chemistry of those original actors and characters, then you shouldn’t even try…

    1. I agree pretty much, with the exception of Hawaii Five 0, the series is very good started really slow and bad but yhey fixed it, besides Hawaii paying to keep it running for free advertising, the show IMHO holds on its own! Would watch MASH reboot out of curiosity mainly, nothing would ever replace the original.

  6. I don’t think I have ever been a fan of any remake of any show. Can only think of maybe 1 or 2 that were watchable. With that said, I would be curious to see a reboot of M*A*S*H if it represented another conflict/war. The characters could be Hawkeye or B.J. like, but in another time and place (Gulf War or Bosnia or one of the more recent conflicts of the 2000s?). Still, all of this is probably too fresh in everyone’s minds to make it as a comedy.

  7. I’d like to see a show based on the surviving members of the cast. Maybe Hawkeye and B.J. meet up somewhere, a conference or something and then contact the others for some kind of a reunion. That to me would be fun to watch. I think though, thatiwould watch a remake of M*A*S*H if it ever happened. The actors would have to be superior, but more so would be the writing of the show.

    1. That I would like to see..But in like a mini-series format of 3 or 4 parts of about 90 minutes each..and in an interesting twist maybe reuniting with recurring character from season 1..such as having car trouble on the way to a camping trip they find Ho-Jon is the mechanic working on their car at the local garage they went to..or whatever..

  8. A remake of Mash…. no. BUT maybe something similar …. more of a medical drama in a Mash like setting in Iraq or Afghanistan…. more of an action drama but less of the comedy. A Greys Anatomy meets the brave and seal team all rolled into one. What can I say…. I would tune in.

  9. No.

    I watched MASH as a child, when the show was new; I even saw many of the later episodes when they first aired. After the last episode (which I watched with much of the rest of the country) I watched the movie MASH for the first time. I didn’t like it. I just couldn’t wrap my head around Hawkeye played by anyone other than Alan Alda. No offense to Donald Sutherland; he’s a fine actor. But he just wasn’t Hawkeye to me.

    I imagine I’d feel the same way about a reboot.

  10. I’d watch only if the remake were a straight-out drama, to avoid the often insipid, cutesy tone of much of the original series (with the exception of a few episodes-and what episodes they were!)

  11. Not a chance. A WONDERFULLY politically incorrect show (which is what was so good about it) remade by incredibly politically correct millennials? Not on your life would I watch such a garbage show. JUST PUT THE ORIGINAL BACK ON PRIME TIME NETWORK TV!

  12. The mash movie remake should star Ryan Reynolds as Hawkeye and Will Ferrell as Treaper John and Adam Sandler as klengler and Will Smith as spearchucker Jones and Jim Carrey as Henry Blake

  13. A remake would be fine as long as Jim Carey is not in this movie. You put him mash I’ll never watch it. Simply stated after what Carey said about President Trump he could never play a great American in any movie.. I feel sorry for Canada!!

  14. My mom is a huge fan of the classic show
    she never missed it . Like many she is skeptical. About the remake! Hopefully the non-Disney will not buy rights. To the iconic series. They have monopolized the movie industry and media for far too long. So hopefully the sale of the rights will fall through there was only one MASH. And that was one with Alan Alda.

  15. As a 23 year old women, growing up watching M*A*S*H with my dad, it’s extremely nostalgic for me. We have seen shows and films be remade and not come out anywhere as good as the OG. Take the newest The Stand, it treads on the original and the book. I would not watch a remake just because of the nostalgia and loyalty I feel. Also I feel people around my age and younger wouldn’t appreciate the setting of the show. Most don’t understand the brutality of suffering of war, and wouldn’t be intrigued by lack of “action” hell, I bet most kids now don’t even know about the Korean War. If we want hospital drama we can go to Grey’s, House, and the 100 other hospital shows now being produced.
    Thanks for reading !

  16. Since the question is whether I would watch and not whether it could be done again, I’ll answer that first. In short, I’d give it a shot like I gave all of the iterations of Star Trek, V, and Battlestar Galactica a shot.

    With respect to whether it could be done, that’s a whole different story. Given a Cancel Culture that’s taken deep hold in recent years, I don’t think it’s possible to remake the show. Frankly, I’m shocked that M*A*S*H hasn’t already been canceled, given the fact that the Dukes of Hazzard has been run all the way off the air because of a stupid flag on a car – not because of poor treatment of anyone on the show. With regards to M*A*S*H, “Spear chucker” Jones’ nickname (which would be deemed racist), Hawkeye’s womanizing, and the treatment of transgenderism as crazy (among several other subjects) would likely get whoever is associated with a project like this a “this”-phobe or “that”-ist and they’d be ostracized. Case in point: the Twitter outrage mob winning their fight to get Gina Carano fired from Disney (which essentially has a monopoly in Hollywood now) for offending them.

    Is now a bad time to mention that Disney now owns 20th Century Fox, which owned the rights to M*A*S*H? Disney bends over backwards to placate the very mobs that M*A*S*H would offend to the nth degree. No chance it gets re-made. Frankly, it’s a shock that it hasn’t already gotten the Song of the South treatment, where Disney has treated it as if it never happened and done its level best to ensure nobody ever gets a chance to see it again.

  17. If MASH were to be remade, it should not be focused on events during the korean conflict, but wars that are more current. If that was done, it could be a good series. As for the original series, it is very hard to beat perfection.

  18. I believe the ONLY way to do it would be if they were to faithfully make the novel.
    The novel was diluted to make the movie, and the movie was further diluted to make the TV show.

    The novel was based on hornberger’s actual experiences in the war, and is crazy but down-to-earth.

  19. It should be a PG-rated film. Here is a list of possible MASH characters:
    – David Cross as Frank Burns (notice his resemblance to Larry Linville)
    – Carr Cavender as Trapper John (his look in To Hell and Gone)
    – Emma Stone as Hot Lips
    – James Brolin as Col. Potter
    – Daryl Sabara as Radar
    – (and starring,) Bradley Cooper as Hawkeye Pierce

    I currently can’t remember who I felt should play Col. Blake, Spearchucker, Hunnicutt, or Winchester. I also never came up with a choice for Klinger, or Duke Forrest.

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