The Name That Episode game is played Tuesdays and Thursdays, with images posted randomly between 12PM and 6PM Eastern. Players can participate as often as they like. An archive of past rounds can be found here. Today’s image can be found below. Can you name the episode it’s from? Feel free to post guesses in the comments section. As always, the winner gets bragging rights.
And the Winner Is: 007, who correctly identified “The Foresight Saga” from Season 9.
Name That Episode
“Adam’s Ribs” or “House Arrest”
‘The Price of Tomato Juice??’
Yep either this or “The Foresight Sage”
Folks, this right here is a treat that can’t be beat! Fresh made cole-slaw!
*Saga
Sitting here in my hospital bed recovering from a operation, this is giving me something to do. I’ll say either Private Charles Lamb or the episode where Radar trades something for lamb, I think it was called Long John Flap?
I know for certain it wasn’t the latter, because that was before Igor was a character on the show.
Hope you get to feeling better again real soon, though. What was your operation?
Hi, BDOR, I’m in for a heart operation, I’ll be going home tomorrow. Thanks for the well-wishes!
Feel better JocularityGirl! Glad everything went well!
Thanks, 007th! Appreciate it!
I hope you are feeling better soon!
Thank you so much, Chauncey Uppercrust! I thank you all for well-wishes!
Promotion commotion ?
“The Foresight Saga” is correct. Congrats to 007.
Also, JocularityGirl, I’m glad to hear your operating went well. Hope you’re recovering at home as I write this.
Thank you so much, RJ! I’m home and doing great! Thank you so much for making this website, it’s so cool!
Ugh! My most detested of all episodes (only slightly beneath Depressing News) I wouldn’t mind this installment being removed from the Name That Episode game (just being reminded of its existence is a sad experience for me) Oh well, I suppose we need to take the good with the bad.
Why do you detest this one so much? It’s definitely not up to par with just about anything from the first 7 seasons, but it’s about par for the course with everything else from seasons 8+
Is it about the whole Radar’s farm failing thing? If so, I agree that was stupid and unnecessary, and a huge waste of a “letter from someone who left” idea, of which they never did again, but the episode itself isn’t really that bad IMO.
Your comment is well reasoned. I admit that I am not impartial in this episode’s case, so please feel free to accuse me of being unfair.
My problem with this episode is twofold:
1 – The characterizations of the entire cast (with the exception of Winchester) are so far off what we have been shown in previous episodes. There’s virtually nothing of the sarcasm that permeates most other stories. I pin this squarely on the writers. The cast did the best they could, but, to paraphrase an old adage, A cook is only as good as his ingredients.
2 – The acting on the part of the lead guest star is so abysmally bad that it takes me out of any enjoyment of the episode. This person makes me think that the original guest star dropped dead and they got the first human with a pulse to take his place. I see better acting from the cabbage his character provided than from the actor. It looks painfully obvious that he is probably reading from cue-cards that were written by an arthritic second grader and his performance is completely ruined because of it. This, in particular, is what puts this episode beneath Depressing News. I truly find it astonishing that a show of M*A*S*H’s quality would get an actor of such inferior quality.
Fair enough. I definitely agree on the Park Sung’s acting. I always just assumed he was trying WAY too hard to act like he couldn’t speak English well, but it does come across pretty wooden.
I never noticed the characterizations of the cast but will have to watch again and see if I notice it this time. The episode was written by Dennis Koenig, who wrote a fair amount of episodes, albeit none until season 8, so he’s clearly one of the new guys that came in after Alda’s staff shakeup.
Now of course I have to ask what you hate about “Depressing News”? I can probably guess it has something to do with the clear ultra sanctimonious display from Hawkeye and the complete travesty of a storyline for Klinger though.
You nailed it.
In my opinion, Depressing News marks the downward spiral of Klinger’s character arc. He went from a good-natured Section-8 jockey to a money-grubbing conniver who would sell his own mother if it meant getting a buck. I’m not saying that he should have kept the psycho-discharge character traits throughout the show, but his change of character should have shown an attempt at a realistic arc.
Instead, we got an overbearing, duplicitous character who needs to add “Eh! Eh!” to the end of every sentence to indicate that he’s on to some great idea.
Klinger was always one of my favorite characters and certainly the one to garner the most hearty belly-laughs (with the exception of Trapper & Hawkeye in gorilla suits) To see him descend to this abject nadir is unforgivable.
AfterMASH did something similar with him. He started out with a solid character arc of a family man trying to survive in suburbia to a caricature of himself that regressed his character to the worst of the later seasons of M*A*S*H.
Blame the writers and the director. Rummel Mor was the actor who played Park Sung. This was an episode during MASH’s sanctimonious, “Hawkeye and co. saving the Koreans” era.
This was basically a bad idea cooked up by writers who were trying to create dramatic episodes for a show that was being kept on the air by CBS executives to extend. Look at the previous episode: Blood Brothers. Another totally mediocre patronizing episode.
Park Sung is just Korean Radar. Geeky, awkward, glasses etc. Then they tie in the glasses to Margaret’s b-story about age and attraction. That’s just as bad, because it’s basically filler to prop up the horrible main story.