Monday M*A*S*H Discussions offers fans the opportunity to offer their opinions on a wide variety of topics relating to M*A*S*H. Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section. My hope is these discussion posts will continue to elicit comments in the weeks and months after they’re initially published. Have a suggestion about something you think might be worth discussing? Let me know and maybe it will become my next Monday M*A*S*H Discussion topic.
HannibalMO suggested today’s topic: What’s your most controversial opinion about M*A*S*H?
Let’s Discuss
I’m curious to see whether fans think any of their opinions about M*A*S*H are controversial. There are a lot of fans who don’t like Hawkeye or don’t like Hawkeye after the first four or five seasons. Is not liking Hawkeye a controversial opinion? There are fans who argue the show isn’t worth watching after Season 7 and fans who will only watch the first 72 episodes. Are those controversial opinions? Is it controversial to take sides on the B.J. with mustache vs. B.J. without mustache debate?
Personally, I don’t know what my most controversial opinion is. That all 11 seasons have episodes worth watching? Is that controversial?
Hit the comments with your thoughts.
While it never seemed to be controversial to me, personally, I have received quite a lot of flak in stating that I much preferred Sgt. Zale over Sgt. Rizzo. I always found Rizzo to be far too broad a character to be at all realistic while Zale’s sarcasm was always a source of great humor for my sensibilities. I was surprised by how many people loved Rizzo. I would have loved to see more of the rivalry between Zale and Klinger, particularly how it might have evolved once Klinger ditched the section 8 business.
Probably a little controversial, and RJ even mentioned it, but I have always hated Hawkeye, which is obviously surprising for someone that’a a huge fan of the show. I just always found his constant jokes to be obnoxious, and hated his arrogance. His disrespect towards women while also womanizing, especially in the early seasons, constant need to be the center of attention, always having to get the last word in, and just general cockiness was always too much for me. Sure he has lots of great qualities, like his devotion to his work, patients, and life saving, as well as his skill as a surgeon, but that doesn’t justify the rest of his personality traits. Just think if you knew someone like him in real life. You’d respect them but also probably want nothing to do with them unless you needed medical attention.
Always hated BJ too. So much so that I don’t even care to type out the things I dislike about him.
Margaret also sucks 99% of the time, and I probably don’t need to explain why.
Other than that, not sure of any controversial opinions I have of the show. There are a few later season episodes that I enjoy, that most people seem to hate, such as Cementing Relationships, A War for All Seasons, & A Holy Mess, mainly because those episodes have something about different about them than most.
I like “A Holy Mess” quite a bit as well!
‘A Holy Mess’ was the first M*A*S*H* episode I ever saw, and made me love the show 🙂
“A War for All Seasons” is such a great episode. Best use of comedy from the later seasons, and Charles’ best comedic episode IMO.
Not one of the first ones I saw but one of the earliest ones I remember watching as a kid with my parents. My mom always liked Mulcahy’s lane to the soldier about “A faith of convenience is a hallow faith”
@Lt Radar
Yea never understood the dislike for this episode. Charles at the end with the knife is hilarious.
@Ferret Face
The general cockiness of Hawkeye possibly arrogance were part of the actor’s character
as well The womanizing I couldn’t/can’t stand
BJ and his mustache by a mile
I think my most controversial opinion is that I’m not keen on the episode “Sometimes You hear the Bullet” . I don’t hate it but it we were to do a survey ranking our favourite episode I doubt it would be in the top 50 for me.
My other controversial opinion is that while I acknowledge that it is a terrible episode, I can’t hate Edwina as it’s the first episode I watched in full.
OMG. Andrea!! Me too. ‘Edwina’ was my very first M*A*S*H episode, so I have a certain love for it despite it being a universally hated one.
That’s not controversial to me. I can’t even watch “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet.” I find it too depressing. It’s probably the only episode I can’t watch; I don’t watch the end of “Abyssinia Henry” but I can watch the rest of the episode. Even “Dreams,” which many fans find disturbing, doesn’t bother me for some reason.
I have a few that I guess could be considered controversial:
– I’m not a fan of the casual attitude towards adultery in the earlier seasons. The womanizing in general doesn’t sit well with me either, but the particular actions on the part of Trapper, Henry and Frank I just don’t like at all.
– The first season is far stronger than often given credit for. Admittedly, I’ve been on the other side of the fence a time or two in the past, but recent viewings have left me with a mostly-positive outlook on the debut year. I’m not huge on “I Hate a Mystery” and especially “Major Fred C. Dobbs,” but there’s no real “skip this!” episode for me that season.
– I find season 7 to be more terrible than it isn’t; while they aren’t flawless either, I easily prefer seasons 8-11 over 7.
– The cracks at the quality of the food in the mess tent, that grew more numerous as the series progressed, are more annoying than funny.
– Several characters, I feel, evolved for the worse. BJ without the mustache I like a lot, but he grew noticeably whinier when he began sporting one. Margaret I (usually) found pretty shrill, but at least in her earlier antagonistic years it fit the character. Her treatment of Klinger in particular (see: “The Birthday Girls”) I find deplorable. Also, I dislike Potter transforming from the mostly-patient homespun father figure to one that too often resorted to crankiness or outright yelling. (On the other hand, Hawkeye’s womanizing was downplayed considerably as the series went on, which I like, but it was replaced by a moralistic attitude that frequently crossed over into “preachy” territory.)
I guess those are the biggies for me.
I agree with much of what you said.
Agree with everything you said except the part about season 7 over 8-11.
You are absolutely right about BJ and Margaret. Her treatment of Radar is deplorable too, such as when she wants to call Donald and the phones are down. She screams her head off, tears up his office, puts a trash can on his head and then kicks him out of his office. I guess it was supposed to be funny? Maybe? But it actually gets me pretty angry every time I see it.
Yes, she was pretty terrible to both Radar and Klinger. I can understand her being short with them due to the rank differences, but she could go beyond that and be outright cruel.
IMO it makes whenever she’s decent to them stand out even more (i.e., when she’s by Radar’s bedside during the rabies treatment, though that could be chalked up to a nurse just being a nurse, too).
I’m sure I’ll be criticized for saying this, but IMO, Margaret came across as having undiagnosed bi-polar disorder.
For example, she alternately was lovey-dovey toward Frank then threatened to break him in two if he kissed another nurse. She became obsessed with projects (i.e., the nurse triage program) and lashed out when it backfired. If there’s any other examples I missed, feel free to reply.
I wonder if Margaret would have felt better being closer to Donald rather than call him from the 4077 She did get shrill
I think the series should have ended following a shortened l eason 8, much as season 11 was. Or maybe even at the end of season 7.
And as such, there would never have been a Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen. And I would not have missed it. GFA was okay, but I don’t think it holds up so well 35+ years later.
Also, include me among those who feel that Hawkeye isn’t all that likeable.
I still hate the undercurrent of Hawkeye’s jokes about Radar’s alleged lack of personal hygiene. I won’t go into any examples here other than to note that these jokes lasted all the way to “Goodbye, Radar”. Radar was shown in the shower as much as any other character, or so it seems, so this seems to be unfair criticism of Radar, or maybe Hawkeye just chose to be a jerk to Radar in this way.
I think this is just Hawkeye. IMO alot of things that were said down on people such as Radar’s hygiene, Franks complete incompetence, etc. were mostly just Hawkeye being a jerk.
In all fairness, while I think a lot of it was Hawkeye just being Hawkeye, Radar WAS shown to have less-than-stellar hygiene now and then. For example, he specifically complained that Frank made him bathe and checked his toothbrush while in command. And then there was the time he won the trip to Tokyo, and Potter asked him is he has his toothbrush and he stated it broke “last month.”
I think the point of it was to more-explicitly show that Radar was a Midwestern farm boy, accustomed to being outside and ‘natural’.
MASH became famous for stretching a three year Korean War into 11 years.
While I do agree that the series kind of dropped in quality starting in season 8 (though I do think every season is worth watching), I thought season 9 was an absolutely wonderful season. Not without its own faults (every season had its own weaknesses to varying degrees), but I’d easily put it up there in my all-time favorite seasons of the show (along with 4, 6 and 7).
While I can understand why people wouldn’t care for it, I actually enjoy the episode “Hawkeye.” No, it’s not a favorite episode for me, and there were far better experimental episodes, but I do enjoy it whenever I watch it.
And speaking of controversial experimental episodes, I absolutely love “Dreams” and “Follies of the Living – Concerns of the Dead”
For the most part, I’m not that bothered by the preachiness of Hawkeye’s character and the show as a whole. There are a few episodes where it really did get on my nerves, but not enough to affect my opinion of the character or the show.
I like both “Dreams” and “Follies…” as well. “Follies…” in particular I really enjoy. I can understand why some don’t fancy them, but in that more-dramatic period of the series, IMO they both did a good job in respectively showcasing the toll the war takes on the doctors and nurses, and giving another viewpoint to the casualties that come through the 4077th.
MeTv is showing Hawkeye episode Friday The experimental episode
Mash should have ended in a shortened Season 8 with everyone going home at the same time. I would rather have seen Trapper stay and become best friends with B.J. than the Hawkeye and B.J. pairing. That is because i really wanted more insight into Trapper, his marriage, family life, and him truly connecting with B.J. versus the friendship out of convenience he had with Hawkeye.
Well, I recently posted what may be a controversial opinion on the Yankee Doodle Doctor episode spotlight. In essence: I think there is an inconsistency between the morally questionable behavior of some of the characters and their moralizing about how awful the Army is. Here’s how I made the argument on that old thread:
“In the Pilot episode, Hawkeye and Trapper disobey orders and hold a party where they dishonestly rig a raffle (yes, I understand why but it’s still cheating). In Market to Market, they steal Henry Blake’s new desk. In Requiem for a Lightweight they cheat to win a boxing match. In The Moose, they cheat at gambling. So these early episodes pretty much establish that the show’s protagonists aren’t exactly the most, well, honest people in the world.
“Now, I know the justification would be that they did these dishonest things for a good cause – to raise money for Ho Jon, to get needed medicine, to set a Moose free (though that case is harder to make re. cheating in a boxing match just to bring a nurse they have the hots for back to camp). But then we get into the sticky ethical argument of whether the ends justify the means, which I’d rather not wade into here. Suffice it to say that, justified or not, Hawkeye and Trapper are not above lying, cheating and stealing to get things done (and I haven’t even mentioned the sometimes cruel pranks they played on Frank).
“However, in Yankee Doodle Doctor, when they decide that the Army is being less than honest about the war, boy does that get their dander up. How dare the Army lie! So what do they do? They expose the film to light, destroying property not their own (akin to stealing). Then, when Col. Blake confronts them, they play dumb, pretending they didn’t know about it and never owning up to the deed. IOW, they lie – exactly what they accuse the Army of doing.
“Pot. Kettle. Black?
“Now, I understand that M*A*S*H is entertainment and that we don’t look to the characters as moral guides or role models. So I’m not complaining from that standpoint; it’s a sitcom, not a Sunday School class. I’m just saying that the immoral behavior of the characters doesn’t jibe very well with their moralizing. Maybe it’s a clash between the madcap hijinks of the movie M*A*S*H (which the sitcom tried to imitate) and the heavy anti-war message that the writers felt compelled to keep inserting into the show. You end up with the uncomfortable disconnect of amoral characters getting all sanctimonious about the faults of others.”
Anyway, hope that’s not too controversial 🙂
I preferred the episodes where Hawkeye was played by Dick Sargent.
I like Dick Sargeant he was the second Darrin in Bewitched
Margaret never was a very likable character but over the years, they made her bitchier and bitcher to point where, in the last several seasons, she just screamed everything. No matter what she was discussing she screamed it the same with no inflection in her voice. I couldn’t stand her. After Frank left, she became a very uninteresting character.
I couldn’t stand B.J. He was so self-righteous and not a good match for Hawkeye. They should have found someone closer to Trapper’s personality.
I couldn’t stand Winchester either but at least they developed his character (unlike what they did with Margaret and B.J., for example).
Contrary to what most people here say, I much prefer watching the show with the laugh track on. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, every comedy show had a laugh track or a studio audience, so that’s what I’m used to. The more recent comedy shows that don’t use a laugh track or audience usually don’t seem very funny to me. (There are exceptions, of course, like The Simpsons, King of the Hill, The Wonder Years.)
Sure, sometimes (especially in the early seasons) the laugh track could be overbearing on M*A*S*H; but to me it’s an integral part of the show. Without it, the pacing of most episodes just seems off-kilter. Even some of the episodes that never had a laugh track (especially “The Bus” and the Flagg-Freedman interaction in “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?”), seem odd to me.
Okay, confession time: My favorite controversial opinion is…Mulcahy should have left the priesthood and married the love of his life, (A.K.A. Gail Harris from “Nurse Doctor”!)
It would be sweet to see Mulcahy as a married man, and it would have provided a family feel to the show that was full of constant womanizing and unfaithfulness. I mean, Beej ,Potter, Burns, and Margaret were married, but thier spouses weren’t there. How cool would it have been to have seen the spouse of a maior character interact with them though face-to-face conversations instead of letters?