Episode 4 - Chief Surgeon Who?

Season 1, Episode 4: Chief Surgeon Who?
Original Air Date: 10/8/72
Written by: Larry Gelbart
Directed by: E.W. Swackhamer

This episode opens with the viewer getting a chance to see what daily life is like inside the O.R.--even though Frank Burns is ranking surgeon, he's clearly out of his depth. He's snappish and rude to the others, and, even worse, he's behind in his medical information. Everyone on the medical staff seems to turn to Hawkeye for help and advice.

After a particularly nasty blow-up between Hawkeye and Frank, Henry realizes the 4077th can't keep going like this, so he has to appoint a chief surgeon.

Henry calls Frank and Hawkeye to his office. Contrary to army protocol, he skips over Frank and names Pierce as Chief Surgeon. Frank is enraged and forces Henry to admit that, "when the heat's on", Hawkeye is the best surgeon in camp.

Frank and Hot Lips decide to go to General Barker, and complain about this breach of the rules.

When Barker arrives at the 4077th, Frank and Hot Lips tell him that there's a wounded man waiting to be operated on. He storms off to go find "Chief Surgeon Pierce."

He finds Hawkweye, Trapper, Capt. Kaplan (Jack Riley), and Ugly John playing cards! He demands Hawkeye operate--now.

Hawkeye refuses the order, saying medically its not the best idea while the patient is still in shock. He's having a nurse give the patient some blood and get him better ready for surgery, and expects to operate around 3am.

Barker doesn't like that answer, so he storms off to find Henry, only to find that the whole camp seems to be jumping, even this late at night--Radar is reading comics while drinking Henry's brandy, Spearchucker (Timothy Brown) and Nurse Ginger Baliss (Odessa Cleveland) are playing Strip Dominoes, and the camp's night sentry, Cpl. Klinger (Jamie Farr) is wandering around the camp in a WAC uniform!

Once Barker finds Henry, they meet Hawkeye and Trapper in the O.R., now that the patient is ready for surgery. Barker is impressed by Hawkeye's surgical skill, and grudgingly admits he was wrong, and Hawkeye was right.

Barker tells Henry to ignore Frank from here on in, and marvels at how anything gets done in this madhouse. He is not reassured when Klinger reappears, naked, still on duty. Hawkeye, Trapper, and Henry take it all in stride.
Fun Facts: This episode has two big moments--Hawkeye is appointed Chief Surgeon, and the debut of Klinger.

In the previous two episodes, McLean Stevenson's Henry Blake was a lovable doofus, but didn't seem that great a commander. But he has a great moment with Frank, when he ignores tradition and appoints Hawkeye Chief Surgeon. It showed that, when medicine was concerned, Henry had a steel spine--at one point Henry and Frank are eye to eye, yelling at each other, and its a genuine moment of tension. Frank is about as threatening as he ever was on the show.
Favorite Line: As Barker storms out of the card game in The Swamp, he threatens Hawkeye:

Gen. Barker: "You haven't heard the last of this."

Hawkeye, in a perfect, deadpan Groucho tone: "I wasn't listening to the first of it."

Episode 3 - Requiem For A Lightweight

Season 1, Episode 3: Requiem For A Lightweight
Original Air Date: 10/1/72
Written by: Robert Klane
Directed by: Hy Averback

Hawkeye and Trapper are delighted to meet a new nurse, the beautiful Margie Cutler (Marcia Strassman, Mrs. Kotter from Welcome Back, Kotter). But that quickly goes sour with Hot Lips has her transferred, because she is such a distraction for the doctors. The doctors don't argue with that conclusion, but they welcome a distraction like Nurse Cutler!

Henry agrees to have Cutler reassigned back to the 4077th if one of them will volunteer to fight in the inter-camp boxing tournament, sponsored by General Barker (Sorrell Booke, Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard). After some cajoling, Hawkeye talks Trapper--who did some boxing in school--into it.

Trapper goes intro training, using Frank's duffel as a punching bag.

Once they meet Barker's boxer, though, they realize they are way out of their league--Trapper's opponent is a giant, monosyllabic tower of a man, who once punched out a jeep. So, of course, they decide to cheat.

With the help of anesthetist Ugly John (John Orchard), they plan on smothering Trapper's glove with ether, which will hopefully knockout the goon before he can land a punch. They share the plan with Henry, who is for it. Frank expresses his displeasure with the idea of cheating.

The fight begins, with Henry and Barker betting a tidy sum of money on the outcome. After a few moments of Trapper running around the ring trying to avoid getting decked, they discover mid-fight that Frank and Hot Lips have switched the ether out and replaced it with water. Trapper is in real trouble!

Hawkeye runs off to grab the ether, while Trapper fights for his life. After Trapper gets decked at least once and sent to the mat, Hawkeye manages to get the correct stuff on the glove. In the next round, Trapper sticks it in the goon's face.

The plan works, sending the giant plummeting over the side of the ring, right on to Frank and Hot Lips!
Henry lives up to his part of the bargain, and delivers Nurse Cutler. Both doctors make their move, but Hawkeye--in a rare moment--is pushed aside once she learns that Trapper actually fought for her.


Fun Facts: William Christopher makes his debut as Father Mulcahy. Christopher is listed as a guest-actor on the end credits, but of course would soon become a vital part of the show.

Despite this episode's conclusion, Nurse Cutler eventually becomes Hawkeye's regular girlfriend. She would appear off and on through the entire first season.

General Hammond (as played by G.Wood, who also appeared in the movie) is replaced by General Barker, who would reappear once more, before being replaced by yet another general character, General Hammond.

Favorite Line: After Henry brings Nurse Cutler back to the 4077th, he leaves her in The Swamp with Hawkeye and Trapper. His one piece of advice to her?

Henry: "Keep moving or you're dead."

Episode 2 - To Market, To Market

Season 1, Episode 2: To Market, To Market
Original Air Date: 9/24/72
Written by: Burt Styler
Directed by: Michael O'Herilhy

Hawkeye and Trapper are incensed when they learn--mid-operation--that they are out of Hydrocortisone. When the supply truck arrives with more, and they are even more mad when they see its all been stolen by the Black Market!

They try to turn to Henry for help, but he seems more involved in his brand new, antique oak desk. Amid his babbling about how nice the desk is, Hawkeye and Trapper get Henry to call General Hammond, asking him to send more Hydrocortisone, but Hammond refuses, indifferent to the doctor's plight--the 4077th is on its own until next month's regular shipment.

Hawkeye and Trapper figure maybe they can try and talk to the Black Market directly, so they take a trip into Seoul to visit their friend Sam, who is a top-level Black Marketeer. Sam (played by the wonderfully low-key actor Jack Soo) offers to sell them the drugs--cost!

But Hawkeye and Trapper can't afford that, so they try appeal to Sam's vanity, by offering him something he doesn't have--class. Class in the way of...a beautiful, antique oak desk.
Hawkeye, Trapper, and Sam (dressed as a cartoonish, English-mauling Korean general) come back to the camp, so he can get a first-hand look at the desk. Henry is all too willing to brag about his desk, and after Sam and the doctors leave, he agrees to the deal.

In the middle of the night, Hawkeye and Trapper (with an assist from Radar) sneak into Henry's office to make off with the desk, but are locked in when busybodies Frank and Hot Lips hear a noise and investigate. They don't discover Hawkeye and Trapper, but they do lock Henry's office doors, inadvertently trapping the erstwhile desknappers inside!

As the truck arrives to pick up the desk, Hawkeye and Trapper are desperately trying to figure way to get out. With the clock ticking, they then think outside the box--using some surgical tools in the office, they saw the entire back wall off of the office, and carry the desk out that way.

Frank, having discovered the truck and its driver (who is in a heated discussion with Radar) orders the truck off camp, with no desk.

Henry and Frank enter his office, and are stunned to see the missing wall. They wander outside, where they see the desk being carted off by helicopter, leaving a flabbergasted Henry and Frank to wonder just what the heck has happened.

Hawkeye and Trapper wander by, and Hawkeye tries to reassure Henry, insisting that the desk "Is going to a far, far better place."


Fun Facts: I always found it funny and weird that Henry has to ask General Hammond specifically for more medical supplies--talk about micro-managing! And to make matters worse, Hammond turns them down!

Some TV shows establish a format where the characters only exist within the confines of the episodes presented. Obviously, M*A*S*H went the other way--Hawkeye and Trapper are having lots of adventures besides the ones we see. Otherwise, how are two new-to-Korea doctors already buddies with a black marketeer?

Favorite Line: Not a line, but a moment--while trapped inside Henry's office, Hawkeye and Trapper are forced to overhear Frank and Hot Lips make romantic talk with each other.

When Frank says his favorite part of Hot Lips are "her lobes", a sickened Hawkeye turns to Trapper, who silently drops his head in hysterical disgust. Its a great moment, easily missed unless you're watching the screen at that exact moment.

Episode 1 - M*A*S*H The Pilot

Season 1, Episode 1: M*A*S*H The Pilot
Original Air Date: 9/17/72
Written by: Larry Gelbart
Directed by: Gene Reynolds

The first episode of M*A*S*H opens in a way no other episode ever would--with a "cold open", where you go from commercial right to the show, without opening credits.

We see Hawkeye (Alan Alda), Trapper (Wayne Rogers), and Ho-John (Patrick Adiarte) playing golf, Col. Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) and a nurse opening a bottle of booze, Frank Burns (Larry Linville) and Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) messing around, and other wacky hi-jinx around the 4077th.

Then we see Radar O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff) playing football. He catches a pass, pauses, and turns--he hears them. We then pan over his shoulder, and see the now familiar helicopters as they arrive with wounded.

Over an extended credit sequence, we see the formula for the show instantly laid out--while the staff of the 4077th might be crazy in their off hours, once wounded arrive, they snap into action like a well-oiled machine.

The episode is narrated by Hawkeye, as he writes a letter to his Dad. Like with the opening credits, we instantly get a sense this is not your typical TV doctor when we hear him ask Major Houlihan to move out of his way, otherwise he'll "have to cut around your B-cups." This is not Marcus Welby, or Dr. Kildare, or any of the god-like healers we've seen on TV before.


The plot concerns Hawkeye and Trapper's effort to hold a raffle to raise enough money to send Ho-John to college back in the states. They figure they best way to raise cash is for the prize to be a nurse--in this case, Nurse Dish (Karen Phillip), considered to be the most desirable woman in camp.

After Hawkeye and Trapper run-in with Frank (who smashes their still in a moment of anger, and suffers humiliating consequences), Henry cancels the party, but then takes a trip to Seoul to meet up with General Hammond (G.Wood, one of the few actors to reprise their role from the movie). Of course, that means the party is on!

After drugging Frank to get him out of the way, the party commences, and it seems like almost the entire camp is crammed into the Mess Tent. Except for Hot Lips, who goes on a frantic search to find Frank.

Col. Blake and Gen. Hammond make a surprise return to the 4077th, just in time to see Hawkeye announce the winner of the prize--Father John P. Mulcahy (George Morgan)!

Hot Lips, having discovered the drugged Frank, drags him into the Mess Tent, pointing a finger at Hawkeye and Trapper, exclaiming "Those two! They're ruining this war--for all of us!"

Gen. Hammond is about to put both the doctors under arrest, when wounded arrive. Hawkeye and Trapper's superb surgical skills impress Hammond, who decides not to have them arrested. He tells Henry to "make sure not to lose them...even to me."
Hawkeye and Trapper are disappointed, and have even handcuffed themselves, hoping this would be their ticket out. Henry informs them "Forget it...he was too impressed to have you arrested."

Fun Facts: As I mentioned above, this is the only episode not to open with the standard credit sequence. I had never seen this sequence until I bought the DVDs, since the syndicated version always just dropped in the regular credits.

Its interesting to see, early on, how much Nurse Dish was part of the show--she gets a lot of screen time, and she doesn't even seem afraid of Maj. Houlihan when confronted.

Nurse Dish pops up over Hawkeye's shoulder in the famous shot of him looking down at a patient in the credit sequence, further establishing her importance to the show. This same clip was used long after Nurse Dish was removed from the show--and, if you look fast, you can still see just the top of her head coming into the frame before it cuts away.

This pilot has another unusual detail, in that Father Mulcahy isn't played by William Christopher; here he's played by George Morgan, who only had one more credit after this, making him the Pete Best of M*A*S*H I guess.

Hawkeye is a lot cruder than the character he would eventually become, and the influence of the movie is clearly felt. But Alda and Rogers have an instant, easy chemistry, right from the get-go. All the basic relationships are set up, and the main dynamic: Hawkeye and Trappper vs. Frank and Hot Lips, with Henry in the middle and Radar as a backroom facilitator--are established.

Also, the idea of things are not what they might seem like on the surface is here, too--sure, Hawkeye and Trapper are raffling off a nurse like two pimps, but they're doing it to send the dirt poor Ho-John to the states to go to a school, certainly a noble cause.

In addition, Hot Lips and Frank look down on Hawkeye (who they spy getting romantic with Dish) for being an immoral animal, yet its Frank who is breaking the seventh commandment with impunity. This idea, of people who protest the most can sometimes be the ones with the most to hide, would really resonate with as a I grew up.

Favorite Line: Hawkeye and Trapper, when trying to determine what they can raffle off that would raise the most money for Ho-John:

Hawkeye: "What do they really want?"
Trapper: "Sex...except for those Baseball perverts."

Blogging is Painless

I have never not loved M*A*S*H.

M*A*S*H debuted on CBS on September 17, 1972, a little more than a year after I was born. Growing up, I remember the show being on regularly, and by the time I was old enough to understand what I was watching, Hawkeye, B.J., and the rest were as familiar to me as Batman, Scooby-Doo, and Captain Kirk--other TV stars from my formative years.

I remember watching the final episode the night it aired (26 years ago today)--I was allowed to stay up late to see the whole thing--and like most of the country, it felt like I was losing friends.

Not too long after the (still!)record-breaking final episode aired, one of my local TV stations, WTAF (Channel 29 as I called it), started airing reruns of the show twice a night, from 7-8pm. It was here that I completely fell for the show, and caught up on all the ones I had missed.

I was entranced by the show's characters, its humor, its compassion, and its setting--to a kid growing up in the 80s, the Korean War of the 1950s might as well have been Ancient Egypt. But it began a fascination with the era of the 1940s and 50s that continues to this day.


Since Channel 29 went through two episodes a day, I could watch the entire show's run in about a half a year. Over time, after seeing the episodes over and over (and over) again, I began to know the dialog by heart, to the point where some of the show's best moments sound like music when I hear them.

After we got a VCR, I started recording the shows, so I could watch them at my convenience, and not be held to Channel 29's infuriating out-of-order sequencing. In not too long a time, I had almost all the shows squeezed onto about a dozen cassettes.

I took every chance I had to work my love of the show into what I was doing--when I had to spend time in the school library to work on papers, I would devote a little time to digging through old magazines, looking for articles in the show, and making copies of them on the school's Xerox machine on the sly:

I had these pinned to the bulletin board in my room for years. I still have them today.

M*A*S*H was also an artistic inspiration as, well. I spent most of 1988 preparing portfolio-grade material to try and get into art school, and even though I cringe at this piece when I look at it now:

...I still smile at sheer level of effort I put into it. Like the articles, this piece has managed to always stay with me, tucked away in a folder somewhere, all the time.

I got accepted, then went away to art school. No local station was airing the show, and I began to really miss seeing it. So during trips home, I decided to take on a massively obsessive task--using 2 VCRs, I would re-tape all the shows, this time in broadcast order!

Using author Suzy Kalter's appropriately-titled The Complete Book of M*A*S*H, I was able to organize all the episodes into seasons, and then the specific order within each season. I was also able to find out which episodes I didn't yet have taped, so I haunted our local TV listings to be aware of when they aired.

Many people would suggest this was an odd way to spend my time--don't most nineteen-year-olds want to be out drinking and carousing, instead of staying indoors staying up late hunched over two VCRs and making lists like this?:

...what can I say? I was an odd kid, and since once I got back to art school I knew I would be spending a lot of time at the drawing board. And I wanted to spend that time with the gang from the 4077th.


After art school, I knocked around for a while trying to score work. To pay the bills I took a job at a video store, and it was there I met someone who would become a dear friend and who loved the show as much as me. We loved it so much that on Sundays, instead of running the standard movies over the store's closed-circuit TVs, we ran my M*A*S*H tapes.

For a few years afterward, I moved around a lot (mostly up and down the Garden State) and I lost touch with the show. It was no longer airing on any local syndicates, and I became enamored with other shows that filled my normal TV viewing hours. My tapes sat, dusty and worn, in an old box somewhere at my parents' house.

Eventually, though, two random events occurred at nearly the same time--I became a full-time freelance artist, and DVDs were introduced. As soon as Fox released the first season on DVD, I snapped it up, wondering how the show would hold up. The answer, of course, was spectacularly.

But that wasn't all--not only was it great to see these shows with crystal clear picture and sound, but they were uncut. You see, local TV stations like Channel 29 had to cut material out of each show to make room for more commercials. And since that was how I was seeing most of the shows, the DVDs provided me with M*A*S*H moments I had never seen before.

It was like seeing the show for the first time all over again--2-3 "new" material per show x 251 shows is a lot of new stuff to digest! In some cases, the edits changed the tone of entire scenes, making me reevaluate moments I thought I knew by heart.


In 2003, I met my girlfriend, who on my blogs I have come to call Darlin' Tracy. Luckily, Tracy loved the show as much as I, so when Fox released their Martinis & Medicine boxed set, she bought it for me for my birthday.

Since I work from home, I burn through a lot of movies, TV, and music as I sit at my computer and/or art table. Since we purchased the set, M*A*S*H is pretty much on permanent rotation in our house. And while there are other shows we enjoy together (The Office, 30 Rock, Ugly Betty), we always want to have M*A*S*H on. It's on as I write this.


I started blogging in 2006, and really fell in love with the process. Since comic books have been and remain my #1 interest since I was a kid, my blogs to this date have been comic book based. When I started, I had no idea that I would come to love doing them so much, meet so many wonderful people, and get such marvelous support for my efforts.

A friend of mine, named Siskoid, runs a blog and part of its regular content is a chronological history of Star Trek, starting with the original series and moving forward from there. I was always impressed with the level of dedication that took, how much love you have to have for the show to want to take on that task.

And then one night, I realized, why couldn't I do that for M*A*S*H?

For a show so successful and long-running, M*A*S*H is woefully under-represented on the web. There is one site--Best Care Anywhere.Net--devoted the show, but that's about it. And that's just wrong!

So starting tomorrow, we're going to talk about every episode of M*A*S*H, in broadcast order, starting with "M*A*S*H The Pilot." Along the way, I hope to do right by the show, giving each episode the due diligence they deserve.

I also plan to talk about M*A*S*H's presence in the popular culture--magazine articles, parodies, even the very unusual line(s) of toys the show inspired.

And like I have for my other blogs, I hope to have a talk or two with some of the fine folks that actually made the show. Via the web, I've befriended some of the show's writers, which is a thrill in and of itself.


Hopefully, maybe, over time, word of my efforts here will grow, and we'll get to hear from other people who spent time at the 4077th, whether they be cast members, directors, producers, set decorators...we'll see.

And while discussing politics is a dicey proposition, it can't be ignored when talking about a show like M*A*S*H. Its a very different world than the one the show first appeared in, and I think it'll be illustrative to pay attention to that aspect.

I am convinced that, if M*A*S*H aired today, each week's episode would be vivisected by people like Bill O'Reilly (who is closer to a real-life Frank Burns than I could possibly have ever imagined there being) and Rush Limbaugh for being treasonous liberal dogma. And yet the show airs nightly on the family-centric TV Land network, and its final episode remains the single highest-rated TV show of all time.


One final note, regarding why this blog is titled the way it is--first, every obvious name for a M*A*S*H blog (The4077th.blogspot.com, TheSwamp.blogspot.com, etc.) was already taken, leaving me not a lot of alternatives.

Once I settled upon the name the blog has, I realized that there was an additional meaning to it, one that is very important to the point of view of the blog--many of M*A*S*H's episodes play very differently now than they did when they first aired, and its that perspective that I think will give me and anyone who stops by thios blog a new appreciation for the show.

I also hope that fans of the show will leave comments, and this blog can be a place for lively discussion about any element of the show people wish to discuss.

I have been very fortunate that over at my Aquaman Shrine blog, there's always a healthy amount of discussion going on over any given post, and quite a little community (bedecked in orange and green) has developed. Its one of--if not the--of my favorite elements of writing a blog about something I love--getting to talk to people who share the same passions I have.


So I hope you'll all join me tomorrow as we wind the clock back, to September 17, 1972, when America first got to visit the 4077th!