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.
Ferret Face suggested today’s topic: Which character would’ve worked better during the drama-heavy later seasons of M*A*S*H: Trapper, Henry, or Frank?
There’s Only One Right Answer
This is a tough question because it’s hard to pluck one of these three characters from the time they were on M*A*S*H and stick them into a random episode from Season 9 or Season 11. If Henry is there, that means Colonel Potter isn’t, right? So the show is very different. If Trapper is around, presumably B.J. isn’t. If Frank never left, Charles never arrived. But take a step back and don’t try to be specific. Think big picture. Is Trapper a character who can survive in M*A*S*H during Seasons 8-11? Is Henry? Is Frank?
Personally, I think it’s obvious which of these three characters would’ve fit in best during the dramatic years of M*A*S*H. It’s Trapper, without question. We know from several episodes during the first three seasons that Trapper (played superbly by the late Wayne Rogers) is more than a carefree joker and womanizer. He has a dark side. He can be pessimistic. He gets depressed. That said, I have trouble picturing Trapper in episodes from the last three or four seasons because the character is so linked in my mind to those first three seasons when the show was heavily skewed towards comedy.
It’s true Henry was more than an incompetent commanding office who often came across as more of a buffoon than a serious leader. Unlike Trapper, however, Henry doesn’t seem like a character who could evolve to it the changing tone of the show. Henry is a wonderful character but he’s a character who works best in lighter moments.
That just leaves Frank. I don’t see any way Frank could work once M*A*S*H began transitioning toward heavy drama. That’s why Larry Linville left. There was nowhere to take the character.
Hit the comments with your thoughts.
Frank was handicapped in two ways: his character was a one-trick pony who was never allowed to be anything but a ridiculous foil for the rest of the cast and secondly he was joined at the hip with Hot Lips (in more ways than one!). Once Margaret married and transformed into a totally different character Frank no one to confide and conspire with. Watching Season 5 of Frank Burns is just a sad exercise. He really was given nothing worthwhile to do.
I agree that Trapper would probably most easily has transformed into a ‘drama’ character (not that I would have liked him that way, but he had the most potential for change and growth of the 3). Henry may have been able to evolve but he was never going to have the ‘regular army’ mentality of Potter that worked well when the show decided to be a preachy drama.
I’ll agree that Trapper could be a very logical choice: his gutsiest moment was “Radar’s Report,” where he was infuriated over his patient dying because of the contaminated I.V. field that he nearly killed the prisoner who contaminated the I.V. That was really, really dark for the earlier, more light-hearted seasons of the show. “Kim” is also another good example of how serious he could be, given he nearly risked his own life trying to save Kim from the middle of the minefield.
Henry might have worked. As I’ve pointed out many times before, if you pay close attention to the Henry Blake of Season 3, you can see some growth and development of the character; “Aid Station” features an unusually serious Henry Blake, and I think had Mac stayed, and Henry continued to develop in that direction, he may have eventually become a more competent commanding officer, whom even Margaret and Frank may have grown to respect a little more.
But Frank would be terribly out of place in the the more dramatic seasons – he would have gone from being a comic foil for Hawkeye and B.J. to being a straight-up comic relief character for the whole show, and it would have been rather cringeworthy to watch.
Trapper is the obvious answer, but honestly, I can also see Henry evolving over the course of the series. Both characters were deeper than they first appeared, or at least *became* deeper over the course of three seasons. Trapper more so than Henry, but I can see either of them working in the more-dramatic seasons.
Of course, Frank wouldn’t have worked at all. Linville left at the right time.
I have to disagree about Trapper – the main reason he’s my least favorite character is because he was the least expanded-upon of the main characters, mainly because the writers didn’t do much for him – not to mention his personality was too similar to Hawkeye’s; other than certain moments (like the aforementioned “Radar’s Report” and “Kim”), I really don’t see how he developed into a deeper character than Henry.
Your reasoning that Henry could have evolved had he stayed, based on what relatively-scant evidence we have, can just as easily be applied to Trapper.
The character development I mentioned is (obviously) limited to the three seasons the characters were present on the show, and while neither Trapper nor Henry were expanded the way they could (should) have been in that time (neither character fully broke away from their “wisecracking goof-off doctor” / “silly commanding officer” auras that colored their tenures on M*A*S*H), based on certain moments and a healthy dose of hypothetical thinking, I just SEE more with Trapper than I do Henry – though as I said in the first place, both *could* have worked moving forward. There were examples (brief flashes, really) of Trapper’s personality that tell me there was more of a fully-realized character there, waiting underneath.
Just as in the particular cases that can be cited for Henry, I can think of moments that say there’s more to Trapper than first meets the eye: his wanting to adopt Kim and the IV incident, sure, but also his cynicism regarding the end of the war in “Ceasefire” (in which he continuously stands alone – and that was just first season Trapper), his drunken plan to go home in “Mail Call” and his eagerness to see his family when it appears he WILL go home in “Check-Up,” his confronting the young GI in “Love and Marriage,” things that are fairly BJ-ish in nature and are attributes that absolutely could have been cultivated and mined for material in later seasons had he stayed and grown.
Trapper, while similar, wasn’t always JUST Hawkeye Part II, and had Rogers stuck with the show, I think we could have definitely seen him moving more away from that, while never abandoning it completely. There’s some cynicism lying underneath, but also a love of family that just wasn’t explored enough. I’m not saying he would have turned into the steadfast family man that BJ was, but I can certainly see something akin to that developing over the course of the remaining series – as well as a deeper, more complex Hawkeye /Trapper dynamic (not unlike how the Hawkeye / BJ dynamic evolved, honestly).
So why not Henry? I’m not saying Henry had no potential moving forward; he certainly did (as I allowed in my initial post). And of course I can point to specific instances where Henry yearned for home or otherwise broke out of his shell (so to speak) just as I can Trapper, but Henry’s role as a commanding officer that was constantly bamboozled and admittedly disinterested in the “army side” of his command, to me, made him the lesser of the choices to move ahead into those more-dramatic seasons. Could he have evolved out of that and become more serious without losing all of the aspects that made him, well, HIM? Absolutely.
But from my viewpoint, Trapper was better suited to continuous character growth, based not only on personality traits he had shown but also because of his role as a doctor, as opposed to Henry’s as leader; the commanding officer role in the dramatic-era of the series, to me it seems they’d have had to more-seriously alter Henry than they would have Trapper. Granted, it would have been a gradual alteration, but the alternative, in my opinion, would have been like Radar, where the more-comedic aspects of the character were increasingly out of place as the series progressed. I think Trapper could have weathered that storm better than Henry.
So, my choice of Trapper is based not only upon certain glimpses of his personality and actions, but also his role in the series as a whole and what he finished his run as. To me, he was the better-prepared character to move forward, had things worked out in Wayne Rogers’ favor.
My opinion is almost certainly unpopular, but I would have gotten rid of Frank and brought in Col. Potter to run things. Since Henry is so loosey-goosey with discipline and general leadership ability, he could have been moved down to Potter’s XO which would chafe for several episodes, but then he might have evolved into someone who can accept the situation in a practical sense. As for the drama of losing a character to death on the way home, it could be played for sadness with Trapper or poetic justice with Frank.
First, let me say that penguinphysics’ idea for having Potter come in with Henry as XO is interesting. Part of that is that by removing Frank as the XO, it would take away some of the tension that was supposed to exist because Frank wanted to be in command. Also, you would have four competent, highly skilled surgeons in Potter, Henry, Hawkeye, and Trapper. However, I wonder if it would have worked out.
As for Henry, Trapper, and Frank staying into the heavy drama seasons, I think it might be a moot point. Would the show have taken that turn had McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers stayed? I do think that Larry Linville would have left at any rate had the writers continued to use him as a punching bag for Hawkeye and Trapper, even had they not decided to have Margaret get married.
I also think that had the cast remained as it was, the series would have ended much earlier than it did. The show would have become static–like a stalemate between Hawkeye and Trapper and Frank and Margaret. Look at season 4–before Margaret met and eventually married Donald. There were signs even then that the relationship between her and Frank was straining. And she was beginning to become less rigid and more human.
Would the dynamic of seasons 4 and 5 been changed had Henry and Trapper been changed? Somewhat. Both characters, although married, carried on extramarital affairs. Neither Potter nor BJ did so. We wouldn’t have seen Radar evolve even more, nor would we have seen Father Mulcahy and Klinger become more integrated into the ensemble. So, in my opinion, it was probably better for the show that McLean, Wayne, and Larry left when they did. On the other hand, maybe it would have kept that screwball comedy feel, even if the series ended sooner.
Trapper is also my pick to stay on through the later years. He had the complexity to evolve beyond a nurse chasing, practical joke playing, intoxicating himself doctor. However, i’d still want B.J. to be introduced as a balance for Hawkeye and Trapper. They needed someone who was grounded, had faith, values. but could still play jokes, drink, and have fun. Frank would not have gone well in the later years without the character evolving significantly from Seasons 4 thru 6. However, all that effort just to go down a more dramatic, serious path doesn’t make sense. Henry as a second in command Lt. Col for Potter would’ve gone well Seasons 4 thru 7 and beyond that if the series had not taken the more dramatic serious route.
Hey why not Henry? Is there any character on the show who evolved more and did practically a 180 degree character arc than Klinger, as he evolved from the madcap days of his cross-dressing and schemes to becoming company clerk and actually staying in the army to help Soon Lee? Anyone?
(Ok the few of you with your hands in the air, I will yield your point on Winchester, but moving on…..)
Henry showed signs in season three of becoming a better commander and that could have continued.