Discuss: Your Longest Break from M*A*S*H

7 Comments

Yesterday’s Monday M*A*S*H Discussion post failed to publish as scheduled. Sorry for the delay.

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.

Today’s topic is: What was your longest break from watching M*A*S*H?

One Week? One Month? One Year?

If you’re a fan of a M*A*S*H, you probably to watch M*A*S*H. It helps if you own every episode on DVD and can select the specific episode you’d like to watch whenever you want. The show also airs on multiple cable channels and recently starting streaming on Hulu. But even the most hardcore fans of M*A*S*H need to take a break from the show, right?

Maybe not. Maybe you never get tired of watching M*A*S*H, even if you’ve seen all 251 episodes a dozen times and can recite every line by memory.

I’ve probably mentioned in the past how I keep careful track of what I watch on television. So I can tell you that between January 2007 and April 2009, I watched exactly zero episodes of M*A*S*H. That’s over two years! I was still a fan during those two years, and I owned the Martinis & Medicine Collection on DVD, but I didn’t want to watch any episodes. I don’t remember why but it’s safe to say I was probably burnt out on the show.

I’m currently in the middle of another long break. The last time I watched M*A*S*H was last October, when I finished rewatching the show for my Episode Spotlight reviews. After watching and reviewing an episode (or more) every week for close to five years, I was ready to stop watching for a while.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about picking a DVD at random and watching an episode or two. Maybe not this month but soon. I can all but guarantee this break from M*A*SH* will be over before the end of the year.

What about you? What’s your longest break from M*A*S*H? Have you ever consciously taken a break?

Hit the comments with your thoughts.

7 Replies to “Discuss: Your Longest Break from M*A*S*H”

  1. Interesting topic.

    I don’t remember watching an episode of MASH for many years. After it went off CBS in 1983, I don’t remember it being in widespread syndication at that point. In fact, I don’t recall it being on any channel when I lived in Vermont after I graduated college in 1987. Or even in the 90s, by which time I’d moved to Arizona. I seem to remember the movie popped up a couple of times. When we got our current house in 2006, we went from cable to DISH, and I think it was on Hallmark Channel (home of those crappy Christmas movies), and maybe I watched a couple of episodes. Now, since it is on more channels–TV Land, AMC, Sundance, WGN America, and MeTV–I watch it fairly regularly.

    As for the discs, I’d pretty much only want seasons 1-3. I prefer the Henry/Trapper sitcom years, personally.

  2. After I graduated high school, I didn’t really watch the show for probably 5-6 years at least. Just had too many other things going on now that I was working and starting a family.

    After I picked it back up I started going through “phases” or “cycles” basically with all my favorite shows. Those being M*A*S*H, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Voyager, Friends, X-Files, & Lost.

    Basically I’ll get the urge to watch the show again, and then end up going through the whole series in a 1-2 month period. Then I’ll be burnt out again and not watch for at least a year. I been repeating this cycle (although not so much with X-Files & Lost, but definitely the other 5) for the past 8 years or so.

    Oddly enough I’m in a M*A*S*H cycle right now, currently in season 5 since the beginning of July or so. Just finished a Star Trek Voyager cycle last month, knocked out the whole series.

  3. I am currently in a lull period of M*A*S*H, occasionally pulling out a DVD (I own Seasons 1-4) to watch a particular episode, or if I flip by METV and they are showing a good one I will stop — they I quickly get annoyed with the scene-cutting that METV does to the episodes.

    Going back further, I was a M*A*S*H addict from when I first discovered it (somewhere in Season 3 I think – I was only a kid at the time). So from the mid-70’s through the end of the run of AfterMASH in the mid-80’s was my most active period of viewing.

    While in college in the mid-80’s I didn’t have a TV, so I didn’t watch MASH or anything else. After college came marriage and I still did not own a TV until the mid-90’s. Starting back in the mid-90’s I would catch occasional re-runs. I bought the Season 1-4 DVDs around 2005 I think. That served to re-ignite my viewing and I have been a sporadic viewer since then.

  4. 5 yrs has been my longest break from the series. I watched the show daily for several years and felt i needed to stop watching for awhile. Before that i would catch it on cable channels or a local channel that aired it in the afternoon. I purchased the dvd’s then began watching daily Seasons 1-8 again for many years then felt that i needed to stop for awhile. I’ve done this with other shows that i either have on dvd or watc

  5. That would be between the last broadcast in 1983 and whenever I found out that it was on cable. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but it was likely about 20 years later – circa 2003. I’ve gone on occasional breaks since then, for a few years at a time, but that was the longest.

  6. A break from M*A*S*H? Perish the thought!

    But in all honesty, I would say the longest amount of time I go without watching an episode might be up to a month or so.

  7. I actually watched an episode of M*A*S*H on Monday morning, just an hour or so before this post was scheduled for publication. I then watched another episode on Tuesday.

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