Original Air Date: 2/2/74
Written by: Larry Gelbart & Laurence Marks
Directed by: Hy Averback
Without any wounded, the 4077th is bored, bored, bored!
Radar plays the same song over and over again in the O Club, Henry tries to get a tan, and Frank decides to organize and measure all the condiments on the Mess Tent tables.
Hawkeye and Trapper are of course also bored, and they play a practical joke on Frank, who finds himself waking up inside a giant crate, which causes him to not want to turn to the doctors when his hernia flares up.
Finally, Hot Lips convinces Frank to turn to them for the surgery, and neither of them are reassured when they find Hawkeye and Trapper playing cards in ape suits, which just came in the mail.
Hawkeye and Trapper do a medical consult, still in the ape suits, and agree to perform the surgery. But later, just as they're about to put Frank under, wounded arrive!
Frank is able to operate, until he strangulates his hernia causing him immense pain. None of the doctors have the time to work on Frank, so Hawkeye puts him in traction to help alleviate his pain.
Wounded keep coming, and bombs begin to fall all around the 4077th. As Radar tries to get the shelling moved, Frank's hernia gets worse, and Hawkeye does the operation.
The surgery goes fine, the shelling stops, and later in the O Club, Hawkeye is back in his ape suit, "putting the moves" on Henry.
Fun Facts: In the scene where Trapper and Hawkeye discuss whose going to work on Frank, Trapper says he isn't scrubbed, can Hawkeye do it?
Hawkeye agrees, and says: "Yeah, ok--George! Do you wanna, you wanna take over for me?", stuttering over the line.
This line always makes me laugh, because, A)Who the hell is George? Another surgeon we've never met? and B)Its the rare moment where it sounds like Alan Alda flubs a line.
My girlfriend (another huge M*A*S*H fan) and I always say its because, deep down, Alda knew it was a cheesy, deus ex machina line, and even the great Alan Alda couldn't quite sell it. We never get to see who this mysterious surgeon is, and he's never mentioned again.
Favorite Line: When Frank feels around and realizes he's been "crated", he exclaims: "I'm boxed in!" to which Trapper replies, avoiding the subject: "We all feel that way at times, Frank."
3 comments:
This is one of my favorite lines too :-)!
Seeing episodes out of order and not knowing about the off screen doctor they had I had thought Hawkeye was talking to one of the nurses. I thought previous to this line Hawkeye had said he was finished so the nurse would have to close.
My favorite line:
Why does it take people so long to go see their gorilla?
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