Run Till You Fall

A little while ago, I heard about a TV movie from 1988 called Run Till You Fall, starring Jamie Farr. By itself that's not that remarkable--there were a billion TV movies in the 70s and 80s--until you learn that it was directed by none other than Mike Farrell, making this a mini-M*A*S*H reunion!

RTYF is Farrell's sole non-M*A*S*H directing credit, and I haven't been able to learn anything about it other than a one-sentence plot summary ("A small town private eye tries to win back his estranged wife and their young disabled son"). Unlike a lot of TV movies from the time, it's not available on YouTube, though you can watch a fifteen-minute chunk of it there.

Along with Farr, the cast includes Fred Savage, Shelley Fabares (Mrs. Mike Farrell), CCH Pounder, and Clyde Kusatsu, who appeared in four episodes of M*A*S*H--including the classic "The Joker is Wild", where he played an old Army buddy of...B.J. Hunnicutt!

If anyone can help me track down this movie, it would be greatly appreciated!

M*A*S*H at 45

To celebrate M*A*S*H's 45th anniversary, I welcomed film critic Zaki Hasan onto an episode of our FW Presents podcast to talk about our love of the show. Give it a listen!

The Struggle is Real

And yet another reason why M*A*S*H needs to be on streaming!

USS Enterprise NCC-4077

In 1991, David Ogden Stiers made a guest appearance on "Half A Life", a season 4 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I watched TNG when it originally aired, and I remembered being delighted to see Maj. Winchester again!

What I didn't know was that there was an Easter egg buried in the show, as a nod to Mr. Stiers' former TV gig. Look closely on one of the control panels in Engineering, and you'll see a familiar set of numbers:

I never knew about this gag until it was mentioned on the great Mission Log podcast, an episode-by-episode look at Star Trek in all its forms. Nice job, ST: TNG art department!

Rolling Stone Top 100 TV Shows of All Time

M*A*S*H came in at #16 on Rolling Stone's Top 100 Shows of All-Time list, which is pretty respectable since it's been off the air for so long and isn't a staple of streaming services at the moment. But, of course, I'd still place it much higher!

MASHED: A Korean War RPG

Attention all personnel! Here's a Kickstarter campaign for an RPG called MASHED, which its creators describe this way: "Experience the Korean War with the men and women of the 8099th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) in this unique historical RPG." 

The campaign still has 28 days to go, and it's already met its goal. As someone who has run several Kickstarter campaigns, I can't tell you how impressive that is. There doesn't seem to be any connection to the show (for copyright reasons, I would think), but that doesn't mean it's not an interesting endeavor. Not being a gamer myself, this project doesn't attract me as something I'd want to participate in, but it still looks pretty cool, well researched, and attractively designed. Check it out, MASH fans!

(h/t: Newest Swamp Rat Andy Kapellusch)

Col. Henry Blake on "Cher"

The long lost footage of McLean Stevenson as Col. Henry Blake has finally surfaced, thanks to the fine folks over at www.mash4077tv.com. Maybe part of the reason this clip--which supposedly aired just days after "Abyssinia, Henry"--was so hard to find was that it was always credited to The Carol Burnett Show (it even says so on IMDB).

But as you can see from the video above, this weird cameo was on a Cher-hosted show, mostly likely the 1975-1976 variety series simply known as Cher. IMDB lists Season 1, Episode 7 as having aired on March 23, 1975, just five days after the legendary M*A*S*H Season 3 closer. There's no mention of the appearance of course, but I feel like this is a safe bet.

A tip of the martini glass to Swamp Rat Daniel Hopmans for letting me know about this. As Hawkeye Pierce once said, I hate a mystery!

Josh Radnor - Entertainment Weekly

The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins

This might just be the strangest thing I have ever posted on the AfterM*A*S*H blog.

The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins was a 1984 TV movie starring Gary Coleman as a precocious kid who imagines himself in all sorts of fantastical situations seen in TV and movies. Improbably, one of the places he sees himself in is...a MASH unit in 1950s Korea!

I'm not even sure where to start with this, it's so unfathomably strange. All I can do is thank Swamp Rat Steve Spatucci for sending it to me, I was completely unaware of the movie's existence. I was happier then.

Nehi Magnet

Newest Swamp Rat Christina Stith found this magnet on sale at a JoAnn Fabrics in Maryland and, of course, immediately thought of M*A*S*H. How could you not, especially with those 4077th-esque colors?

Thanks Christina!

M*A*S*Home Buyers

I saw this sign while waiting at a stoplight, and I couldn't believe it. Even having been off the air for more than thirty years, M*A*S*H is still famous enough for someone to think it was a good hook when attracting customers. Frank Burns would be so proud!

Um, WHAT?

Seen on Comcast today.

M*A*S*H: Marching On

Some intrepid M*A*S*H fan grabbed one second from every episode the show and made the ultimate M*A*S*H Super Cut!

My only complaint is that they totally grabbed the wrong second from "The Joker Is Wild."

 

Diagnosis: Murder - Drill For Death

As any M*A*S*H fan knows, various members of the cast have appeared together in subsequent projects, whether they be IBM commercials or in episodes of TV series, like this one, "Drill For Death."

"Drill" was the fifteenth episode of the fifth season of Diagnosis: Murder, the long-running medical mystery series starring the seemingly and hopefully immortal Dick Van Dyke. The plot of the episode centers on a real murder that took place during an emergency preparedness drill at the hospital that was the show's setting, and the producers found room to make it a real M*A*S*H-o-rama: MASH movie stars Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman guest star, as well as three old pals:

 

 

Now, there are pluses and minuses to this piece of stunt casting: actors Loretta Swit, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher each get to play a bit against type, with Christopher being particularly fun in his role as an schizophrenic artist. But the minus--and it's a big one--is that these three actors never share a scene together!

Maybe it was simply too logistically difficult to get them all together, but why go to the effort of casting three cast members of M*A*S*H and not let them be on the screen at the same time, even once? I kept watching the episode (which, with all due respect to the great Mr. Van Dyke, was not easy) waiting for Swit and Farr to eventually walk into Christopher's hospital room. But when the artist goes belly up (SPOILER ALERT), I realized it wasn't gonna happen. What is this, The Story of Mankind?

Still, "Drill For Death" is a fun little nod to M*A*S*H and, considering that almost all the cast is still with us, it's neat to realize some enterprising TV producer who likes meta humor could do something like this today. Paging Dr. Harmon!

Hawkeye Pierce: I Will Not Carry A Gun

I saw this graphic floating around on Facebook today, and it occurred to me how surprising it is that Hawkeye's rant about guns hasn't been turned into a meme before now. Especially when you consider how the topic of guns and gun rights has been in the news so heavily the last couple of years.

For those of you who don't remember, this little speech is from the Season Three episode, "Officer of the Day."

iM*A*S*H

Swamp Rat Richard Bensam caught this out-of-left-drift reference to M*A*S*H. Apparently Siri, the voice of the iPhone, will respond to certain user inquiries with famous quotes, including one from Hawkeye Pierce! Nice catch, RAB!


Bonus Points: Can anyone name which episode this quote is from?

 

"Rickles" - 1975

Why am I posting the opening musical number ("I'm A Nice Guy") from the 1975 TV special Rickles? Well, play the clip and pay close attention at around the 2:55 mark. Truly surreal.

M*A*S*H Men

Okay, I had this goofy idea months ago and I kept telling myself it was too silly to bother to post about. And yet, here we are...

I got to thinking that if Hollywood ever wanted to remake M*A*S*H--and I'm not for one second saying they should--that you could cast almost all of the show's characters with the actors from Mad Men, another one of my favorite shows.

I first got this notion when I mentally cast one of 4077th with a Mad Men regular, and then as my mind wandered I realized there was (IMO) an astonishing number of good fits to be found all one this one show. Maybe it's Mad Men's just-out-of-the-1950's setting, or its diversity of age, sex, and types in its cast (still fairly unusual for TV), but as I started forming this crazy notion I realized that if 20th Century Fox hired Matt Weiner to redo M*A*S*H, he wouldn't have to look very far to cast it:

Hawkeye Pierce played by Jon Hamm. As we all know, Hamm is Leading Man handsome and can handle drama, but as his appearances on SNL and 30 Rock have shown, he can handle comedy too. And as much as I enjoy him as Don Draper, I'd love to see him tackle someone a little more heroic in Benjamin Franklin Pierce. We know he'd have the martini gulping down pat!

Col. Henry Blake played by John Slattery. Hamm and Slattery make a great team, and I always really enjoyed the scenes of their two characters being pals. The characters have sort of aged past that, but I can totally see that dynamic recreated at the 4077th, with Slattery as the slightly-older-but-still-one-of-the-gang Henry.

Major Frank Burns played by Vincent Kartheiser. Kartheiser is fantastic as the oily, insecure, yet pompous Pete Campbell, and to me he is a natural fit as Frank Burns. He'd be a bit a younger version of the character (compared to Hamm's Hawkeye), but I think that might be a nice change-up.

 

Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan played by Christina Hendricks. Hendricks, with her absurdly pulchritudinous physique and soft-spoken sense of authority, would be perfect as the new Hot Lips. Her character on Mad Men, officer manager Joan, is used to being undervalued simply because she's a woman, a battle that Major Houlihan fought against during many years on M*A*S*H.

 

Father Mulcahy played by Aaron Staton. While certainly no angel, Staton's character on Mad Men seems the most idealistic, the least venal, the most stable of everyone at the firm. Staton's youthful look of idealism would fit just perfectly as the perpetually-optimistic Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy.

 

Radar O'Reilly played by Elizabeth Moss . Okay, this is where the new version of M*A*S*H would really forge it's own path. Moss' character on Mad Men, the hardworking, uber-competent Peggy Olson, is a more streetwise version of Radar O'Reilly. While not being a doctor, Radar always held his own with the doctors, just as Peggy struggles to do with the men of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. I think Moss would bring a similar energy to the new Radar.

 

General Hammond/Barker/Clayton/Mitchell played by Robert Morse. Robert Morse's squirrely, somewhat-vacant Bert Cooper would be a perfect prototype for any one of the many absent-minded Generals the 4077th had to deal with from time to time. Many members of Sterling Cooper give their eccentric boss a wide berth, simply because he is their boss, even though they think he's nuts--sound familiar?

 

Col. Flagg played by Mark Moses. Mark Moses' creepily confident "Duck" Phillips reminds me a bit of Col. Flagg, with that condescending squint he uses while sizing his opponents up. I think Moses even kinda looks like the late Edward Winter, who was so crazily brilliant as Scourge of Communism Col. Flagg. "Duck" shows up on Mad Men every so often, mostly to just make everyone else's life miserable. Again, sound familiar?




So that's my list! Try as I might, I couldn't really find anyone on the Mad Men cast list that fit Trapper John, Klinger, or Sidney Freedman, but that probably would have been asking too much--I'm a little shocked I found this many suitable replacements at all!


So like I said--Hollywood, don't get any ideas. M*A*S*H probably could not be replicated in any decent way, so when you're looking for the next old brand name to "re-imagine", just keep moving and forget about the 4077th entirely. But if you have to...

So, what do you M*A*S*H fans think? Am I crazy?

M*A*S*H at The Pop Century Hotel

Swamp Rat Shawn Myers sent me this photo from Walt Disney World's Pop Century Hotel. Here's Shawn's explanation as to what this is:

"On my most recent trip to Walt Disney World I stayed at the Pop Century hotel. One early morning I decided to take a walk around Hourglass Lake where they have a pathway called 'Memory Lane'. Different pop cultural historical events of note are represented by signs along the way. When I saw THIS one I thought of you straightaway and knew I had to send you a picture. I hope that you're able to use this on the blog, and if not, I'm sure you'll just enjoy knowing that the sign is there."

Right on both counts, Shawn, and thanks!

I love that this single episode-record M*A*S*H set will almost assuredly never be broken, and that fact keeps the show in people's consciousness, even three decades after it aired.

Checked by Radar!

This little bit of M*A*S*H-related graffiti is from a series of images labeled Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses To Completely Well-Meaning Signs. Someone spent a little bit of time on this one!


This was sent in by Swamp Rat Shawn Myers, thanks Shawn!