M*a*s*h*

[Mozart1220]

Since MASH is now on Netflix, we have been watching just to see the "uncut" episodes for the first time since the 70's.

The main thing we have noticed is that this show would NEVER be allowed on the air nowdays. Too much "sexism" and glorification of drinking for the PC crowd. Plus many of the jokes are too "deep" for the "Big Bang" audience.

And yet it is still considered one of the best shows ever on TV. (at least the first three years, after that it got too preachy and the dialogue between Klinger and Potter got too silly IMO)

I'm thinking "All in the Family" would never be allowed today either.

 

[keithpgdrb]

such a huge fan of Mash. ever since I was a kid, I just loved it. started collecting the box sets when they came out. now that its on the flix, I'll have to start at the beginning and work my way again. love it.

 

[Mozart1220]

such a huge fan of Mash. ever since I was a kid, I just loved it. started collecting the box sets when they came out. now that its on the flix, I'll have to start at the beginning and work my way again. love it.

I noticed that one one pass of reruns they cut out certain things, then the NEXT time most of those cuts woud be back and they would cut different things.

It's been fun to see things we never saw before on the Netflix versions. I admit some of it was better left out, but still.

 

[grateful]

TV is far more edgy today than it ever has been. Mash is tame compared to shows like Homeland, Shameless, House of cards etc.

 

[Mozart1220]

TV is far more edgy today than it ever has been. Mash is tame compared to shows like Shameless, House of cards etc.

Are those on Network TV? House of cards is Starz and Shameless is Showtime. Very different rules than network.

Let CBS try and run one of those shows.


For what it's worth, I watched the forst few episodes of House of Cards and thought it was great. I have to get back and catch up. I was (and AM) a HUGE fan of "The West Wing" and HOC takes that to the next level. If only Sorkin was writing it! "The Newsroom " was pretty good too, and was GREAT the last season. I wish it had lasted longer.

 

[Brett a]

TV is far more edgy today than it ever has been. Mash is tame compared to shows like Homeland, Shameless, House of cards etc.

Two Broke Girls would have been a rated R movie when I was a kid in the 70's. Not at all a show with a sociopolitical message, but very edgy more carnal ways.

 

[grateful]

Actually House of Cards is a Netflix original series. When Mash was on, there was very little cable and certainly no streaming. Virtually all TV watchers now use this media, so I believe the comparison is fair. Mash certainly was a ground breaking and well written show.

 

[icenine]

Sounds like the OP must have missed the Norman Lear era of 70s tv. The 1970s was not the dark ages as far as content in media went. It was a more liberal era in content (using that term to denote the idea of wide-ranging, or a lot, not in the political sense) and not as politically correct. MASH sexist? I do not know about that. I have been watching the third season. MASH is pretty much on a par with the other shows of the time in attitudes and mores, and is obviously anti-Vietnam War and progressive in outlook.
Good writing is good writing, whether in the 1970s or the 1800s.

 

[Mozart1220]

Sounds like the OP must have missed the Norman Lear era of 70s tv. The 1970s was not the dark ages as far as content in media went. It was a more liberal era in content (using that term to denote the idea of wide-ranging, or a lot, not in the political sense) and not as politically correct. MASH sexist? I do not know about that. I have been watching the third season. MASH is pretty much on a par with the other shows of the time in attitudes and mores, and is obviously ant-Vietnam and progressive in outlook.
Good writing is good writing, whether in the 1970s or the 1800s.

Like I said, I don't see All in the Family or even Sanford and Son making it to NETWORK TV today.

And I don't think MASH is sexist at all, but the way they talk to and treat the nurses would be considered by MANY today as "sexist". Being anti War would be a "politically liberal" position, but it wasn't overt enough to ruffle too many feathers.

 

[grateful]

I don't think any progressive or liberal would call Mash sexist. It certainly wouldn't be banned.

 

[mhardy6647]

Mrs H and I were discussing essentially this topic one day last week -- even in the guise of skewering bigotry, one simply cannot imagine a "for profit" TV program today, in any format, using some of the racist or inflammatory language that Archie Bunker (or others on the show) used on All in the Family. Dig up and watch the episode with Sammy Davis Jr. sometime and watch it.

There is a fairly recent (2013) book called Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr that notes the constant evolution of the acceptable (and the unacceptable) words in English. In Victorian England, the words "leg" and "breast" couldn't be used in good company for human body parts. In Archie Bunker's (and Hawkeye Pierce's) time on TV, we had the Seven Words You Couldn't Say on Television. Those seven are more or less acceptable today, but racial, ethnic, and other cultural slurs are completely verboten.

... and thus language, and culture, continually evolve.

 

[transmaster]

Watch the original. Battle Circus (1953) with Humphrey Bogart and June Allyson, costaring Keenan Wynn and Robert Keith. June Allyson is not playing her typical roll of the long suffering spouse. They didn't call the movie MASH because they thought people would not associate it with an Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit. This was the only movie that Humphrey Bogart made with MGM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT0d5Q-h_Kg

 

[dosmalo]

I like MASH. Its laugh track not so much, it gets in the way sometimes.

 

[Guest123]

It's too bad that Donald Sutherland didn't continue his Hawkeye role from the film to the TV series, though. Alan Alda's "Groucho-channeling" schtick always rubbed me the wrong way. Sutherland was the epitome of late '60s, early '70s cool.

 

[Brett a]

It's true that you'd never see an anti-war sitcom like MASH lampooning a current war as it did toward Vietnam at the time. (It was a barely veiled secret that MASH represented the Vietnam war. )

Imagine if a network tried to produce a sitcom like that today? One that addressed the current wars in the middle east?

I like MASH. Its laugh track not so much, it gets in the way sometimes.

I just checked and saw that Netflix is playing it with the laugh track. Which makes it almost unwatchable for me. The DVD's have the option to play every episode without it which makes the show even more powerful.

~

 

[Duane]

It's true that you'd never see an anti-war sitcom like MASH lampooning a current war as it did toward Vietnam at the time. (It was a barely veiled secret that MASH represented the Vietnam war. )


~

Absolutely. Most of us who were in Vietnam always commented that it was more current than past.

 

[BillyBatts]

Loved that show. In college, we used to watch reruns from 4:00 PM to 6:00 until the local news came on, and then watch the prime time shows that were still running when I was in College. Monday nights? I can't remember when they were on.

My favorite line from the show ever;

Hawkeye is badgering Frank Burns about his quack doctor skills. Loved it when they would pick on Frank about this.

Burns says to Hawkeye, "I'm a pretty good Doctor, bub, just ask any of my patients."

Hawkeye says, "We can't dig people up just for that."

Priceless.


I remember watching a MASH special and Loretta Switt was talking about Larry Linville's time on MASH and how one day he told her he could not bear to even watch the Dailies any longer because he hated seeing himself play the fool. Evidently he was a classically trained Shakespearean Actor and hated the role he played on MASH. Just goes to show you how talented he was.

I personally preferred the original TV cast with Trapper John and Henry Blake and Major Burnes, but all actors were very good at whom they portrayed.

 

[Andyman]

My favorite line from the show ever;

Hawkeye is badgering Frank Burns about his quack doctor skills. Loved it when they would pick on Frank about this.

Burns says to Hawkeye, "I'm a pretty good Doctor, bub, just ask any of my patients."

Hawkeye says, "We can't dig people up just for that."

Priceless.


I remember watching a MASH special and Loretta Switt was talking about Larry Linville's time on MASH and how one day he told her he could not bear to even watch the Dailies any longer because he hated seeing himself play the fool. Evidently he was a classically trained Shakespearean Actor and hated the role he played on MASH. Just goes to show you how talented he was.

We used to have a member here who in some function used to work with Larry Linville and praised him as an actor and person very highly. Apparently he was about as far from that ninny Frank Burns in real life as one could be.

I recall him saying he missed Larry every day since he had passed. That really stuck with me.

Pretty impressive.

BTW, I loved the show too. I found the finale preachy, but there were plenty of good episodes there.

 

[icenine]

Like I said, I don't see All in the Family or even Sanford and Son making it to NETWORK TV today.

And I don't think MASH is sexist at all, but the way they talk to and treat the nurses would be considered by MANY today as "sexist". Being anti War would be a "politically liberal" position, but it wasn't overt enough to ruffle too many feathers.

Fifty or sixty years ago trauma surgeons probably talked to real nurses much worse than than on MASH in real life. You have to remember the characters are set in 1950s with all that entails. Attitudes about nursing and toward nurses was different back then.

I see Hawkeye and Trapper snapping at nurses during surgery....that still goes on today. I work in the OR sometimes. They call them honey. That does not happen today.

MASH would not be written today like that because it is 2015. If anything the super liberal Hawkeye portrayed by Alan Alda sort of suggests later attitudes.
The original Hawkeye as portrayed in the novel was not like Alda. The author,
Richard Hooker, did not like the Alan Alda Hawkeye because he was too liberal and anti-war.

I just think your original post is sort of simplistic. Are you old enough to remember when it first aired in prime-time?

 

[BillyBatts]

We used to have a member here who in some function used to work with Larry Linville and praised him as an actor and person very highly. Apparently he was about as far from that ninny Frank Burns in real life as one could be.

I recall him saying he missed Larry every day since he had passed. That really stuck with me.

Pretty impressive.

BTW, I loved the show too. I found the finale preachy, but there were plenty of good episodes there.

Interesting. Thanks for posting that.

I don't know much about Linville as an actor or person, except for what I saw in the MASH special, and the comments by Loretta Switt. He was my favorite standard character in the show.

My favorite featured character was hands-down Colonel Flagg played by Edward Winter. The guy was a hoot and I thought it was brilliant acting by Winter.

I loved it when he was "supposedly" in disguise as "Ling Chow" the Chinese Double Agent. Colonel Potter says, "Funny, You don't look Chinese".

Flagg says, "Neither would Ling Chow if he were dressed like this."

Or his double-agent double-talk, "I'm with the CIA, but I tell people I'm with the CIC, so they think I'm with the CID"