Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. It’s time for turkey and stuffing and rolls and pie. Football will be played, belts will be loosened, and perhaps an episode or two of M*A*S*H will be watched.
Despite running for 11 seasons, M*A*S*H never presented a true Thanksgiving episode. One episode took place the day after Thanksgiving and several others referenced the holiday. AfterMASH did feature an episode built around the Thanksgiving meal during its first season.
Here’s a complete look at Thanksgiving on M*A*S*H:
“Hot Lips and Empty Arms” (Season 2; December 15th, 1973)
Hot Lips mentions Hawkeye and Trapper’s Thanksgiving “Come as Your Favorite Nude Pilgrim” party.
“In Love and War” (Season 6; November 1st, 1977)
Hawkeye tries to explain what his name means to Kyung Soon and winds up telling her about turkeys being eaten on Thanksgiving. She tells him about the Korean version of Thanksgiving, the autumn festival of Chuseok.
“The Yalu Brick Road” (Season 8; November 19th, 1979)
The episode took place the day after Thanksgiving while most of the 4077th was recovering from salmonella poisoning caused by Klinger’s questionable turkey. My review of this episode can be found here.
“The Yalu Brick Road” (Season 8; November 19th, 1979)
“Trick or Treatment” (Season 11; November 1st, 1982)
Hawkeye tries to help a wounded soldier who refuses to eat. His commanding officer put together an early Thanksgiving meal and while he was getting seconds his buddies were killed when their foxhole was hit by artillery.
AfterMASH – “Thanksgiving of ’53” (Season 1; November 21st, 1983)
Sherman Potter and his wife hosting their first family Thanksgiving dinner in many years, with Father Mulcahy, Klinger, Soon-Lee and others invited to join.
“Thanksgiving of ’53” (Season 1; November 21st, 1983)
A big thank you to the readers who reminded me of various references to Thanksgiving I left out in my 2013 post.
Who plans to spend part of Thanksgiving watching M*A*S*H?
As I post every year, since M*A*S*H never took the time to do a proper Thanksgiving episode, I took the liberty of writing one myself in the form of a fanfic I called THANKS FOR NOTHING.
For this year, I can’t believe it: here it is Thanksgiving Day, and I . . . just got sick! First time ever I had to skip Thanksgiving while the rest of the family is off for the dinner – feels kind of strange and awkward, but I’m just not in any kind of shape to go.
Feel better soon BDOR. I too missed a Thanksgiving one year with illness. Very strange to be home alone on that day.
Excellent script BDOR. You can definitely tell it was written by someone with a strong understanding of M*A*S*H and its characters. I could actually see this having been made produced.
If you don’t mind a teeny bit of constructive criticism, the only thing I noticed is the dialogue between Radar and Potter at the beginning is very reminiscent of Season 4 Radar and Potter when Radar was still pretty shy and nervous around him. While reading it I was thinking “Ah BDOR must have wanted this episode to be in Season 4”, but then Charles is there.
Other than that though, excellent script, very well done!
And feel better! You too Crabapple. I started getting that initial tickle in the throat of feeling sick last Friday but I popped some Emergen-C and it seems to have taken care of it. Maybe go pick some of that up and give it a shot. It always seems to do the trick.
I always like it when other people see something in my work that I don’t see – after all, art is always open to interpretation. While I can assure you that was unintentional on my part, looking back over it myself, I think I can kind of see what you mean about Radar: a few too many “ums” and “uhs” in his dialogue, so I can see where you’re coming from. But I’m certainly glad you enjoyed it, thank you!