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M*a*s*h*

mhardy6647 said:
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.
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The deal however is you knew where Lear and Carol O'Connor were coming from....

I think we do not see how far TV has come because of Lear and other shows because we are used to it now. Look at Breaking Bad...a serial killing Meth dealer is a hero. AMC might not be network TV but is not a pay channel either
(not counting cable tv tiers ok).
 
Agreed on Col. Flagg, also loved Maj. Sidney Freedman.

Colonel Flagg: Doctor Freedman
Dr. Sidney Freedman: Yes?
Colonel Flagg: I'm Colonel Flagg, we played poker together once.
Dr. Sidney Freedman: Ah yes, with Intelligence right?
Colonel Flagg: I have nothing to do with intelligence.

Dr. Sidney Freedman: I'd like to go on talking to you, Flagg, but with your schizophrenia, I'd have to charge you double time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've already kept Jesus waiting five minutes.
 
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Hawkeye: Okay, moving right along now, dealer's choice, five card stud. Sidney, what's the psychiatric basis for gambling?
Dr. Sidney Freedman: Sex.
Hawkeye: Why?
Dr. Sidney Freedman: I don't know. They told me to say it. Sex is why we gamble, sex is why we drink, sex is why we give birth.
Hawkeye: Thank you, doctor.
Dr. Sidney Freedman: I'm taking a five-dollar chip. That was a house call.
 
Dr. Sidney Freedman was played by Allan Arbus, who may have been almost as well known as the one-time photographer/husband of photographer Diane Arbus.
 
icenine said:
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?
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Yes it is and yes I am. I was 10 when it first came on. Sorry, I never meant this to be a debate. Not that important. It's all subjective anyway.

But come on...a character named "Spearchucker Jones"? Can you imagine that on network TV in an age where we are demanding that the Washington Redskins change the name? (not debating that either, just saying)

On the other hand, there was a scene that must have been cut from the reruns. Spearchucker has a Korean girl touch his face and he says "See? We are the same". That would have been AMAZING TV in the 70's. No one would bat an eye now. So it goes both ways I guess.

We are enjoying watching the old shows uncut though. I love Netflix.
 
The early scripts were unparalleled by anything that had been aired on network TV up to that point. They contained some of the best rapidfire joke deliveries on television.


Henry: You were ordered to stand down!

Hawkeye: I did, but I fell up again.

***
Hawkeye: The instrument has yet to be devised that can measure my indifference to that remark.

***

Trapper: Henry's not here.

Hawkeye: Are you sure? Sometimes when he's here I get that feeling.

***

Frank: As Adjutant and Assistant Chief Surgeon, I'd like to volunteer for that operation.

Margaret: How splendid, Major!

Henry: Very good, Frank.

Trapper: Lovely.

Hawkeye: Then it's settled -- we'll do a hysterectomy on Major Burns.

***

Henry: Boy I wish I knew what was going on.

Radar: I'll tell you later, sir.

Henry: You always say that, Radar, but you never do ...
 
Mozart1220 said:
Yes it is and yes I am. I was 10 when it first came on. Sorry, I never meant this to be a debate. Not that important. It's all subjective anyway.

But come on...a character named "Spearchucker Jones"? Can you imagine that on network TV in an age where we are demanding that the Washington Redskins change the name? (not debating that either, just saying)

On the other hand, there was a scene that must have been cut from the reruns. Spearchucker has a Korean girl touch his face and he says "See? We are the same". That would have been AMAZING TV in the 70's. No one would bat an eye now. So it goes both ways I guess.

We are enjoying watching the old shows uncut though. I love Netflix.
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Spearchucker Jones was a character from both the novel and the movie so perhaps the series was trying to stay somewhat true to both. In the movie, he says they call him spearchucker because he likes to throw the javelin. Of course the racial and sexual innenuendo is not lost. I always thought it was more out of irony than anything, but irony gets lost every easily. So yea, we would probably have a mass freak out.

He was not there for long as they found there were no AA doctors in Korea.
 
noogies said:
The early scripts were unparalleled by anything that had been aired on network TV up to that point. They contained some of the best rapidfire joke deliveries on television.
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I'd argue that "Get Smart" was pretty close in the rapid-fire comedy department, but M*A*S*H is a true classic as well, and one of my all-time favorite series.
 
Yeah he was gone by season 2 and he was more central to the movie and the novel.
You have to remember MASH was just a reflection of America at the time; what the characters were saying was indicative for the most part of acceptible speech of 1970s television. We have moved on for the better in some ways, and perhaps not in others.

One has to take MASH the TV show in its totality across the 11 years it was on.
 
Thank you for posting. I had forgotten how much I loved that show and all the characters in it. More than one post in this thread made me...

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:
 
icenine said:
Yeah he was gone by season 2 and he was more central to the movie and the novel.
You have to remember MASH was just a reflection of America at the time; what the characters were saying was indicative for the most part of acceptible speech of 1970s television. We have moved on for the better in some ways, and perhaps not in others.

One has to take MASH the TV show in its totality across the 11 years it was on.
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To be fair, MASH took on the subject of racism many times and was not on the side of bigotry.
 
Sam Cogley said:
I'd argue that "Get Smart" was pretty close in the rapid-fire comedy department, but M*A*S*H is a true classic as well, and one of my all-time favorite series.
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I loved Get Smart when I was a kid. I still watch reruns now and again, and have been sad to discover that it's not as paralyzingly funny as I used to think it was. Still pretty good, though. Especially the one where KAOS dosed the Washington DC water supply with acid.
 
I despised MASH for it's oily self righteousness and 20-20 hindsight parading as virtue.

I despised All in the Family even more for it's hypocritical attitude that bigotry by race was bad but bigotry by class was funny and oh so clever. The show was downright reactionary.
 
Tom Brennan said:
I despised MASH for it's oily self righteousness and 20-20 hindsight parading as virtue.

I despised All in the Family even more for it's hypocritical attitude that bigotry by race was bad but bigotry by class was funny and oh so clever. The show was downright reactionary.
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Interesting. I majored in Political Science and one of my texts- written by a professor of left leaning tendencies- railed against the Archie Bunker. He said he was a stereotype that depicted working class men as loudmouth ignoramuses.:scratch2:
 
Bunker was satire; he was not being played "straight" by Lear. I mean this is how I always took him....plus he did sort of evolve as time went on. Archie was sort of a play on the working class lunch pail guy that was pro union but hated the anti-war protesters. It is common in 20th Century American history seminars to point to him as an example of the silent majority. Lear used him as a palatte to show us American weaknesses...or what he saw as weakenesses.
 
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icenine said:
Bunker was satire; he was not being played "straight" by Lear. I mean this is how I always took him....plus he did sort of evolve as time went on. Archie was sort of a play on the working class lunch pail guy that was pro union but hated the anti-war protesters. It is common in 20th Century American history seminars to point to him as an example of the silent majority. Lear used him as a palatte to show us American weaknesses...or what he saw as weakenesses.
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I don't disagree with your analysis though I certainly disagreed with Lear. Lear was an example of the bourgeoisie "social" liberals who by their disdain of working class economic liberals destroyed the New Deal Coalition and...well if I go farther I'll leave history and enter politics.
 
Tom Brennan said:
I don't disagree with your analysis though I certainly disagreed with Lear. Lear was an example of the bourgeoisie "social" liberals who by their disdain of working class economic liberals destroyed the New Deal Coalition and...well if I go farther I'll leave history and enter politics.
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I don't think Lear had a "disdain" for the working class. He did make Bunker a man who deeply loved his family. He was just an example of the "New York Irish barfly" that George Carlin often spoke of. WWII vet, blue collar, conservative. The show was meant to be a dialogue between that culture and the "anti war, hippie liberal generation" that followed.

Carroll O'Connor was himself quite Liberal and defended Bunker as "well meaning, but closed minded".

Another thing I've noticed watching MASH was (like many series) they changed their back stories a few times. In the early episodes, while writing to his Father, Hawkeye refers to "...you and MOM..." while later he states that his Mother died wen he was young. He also says his Dad lives in New Hampshire, but later he says he's from Maine. I think Henry refers to his wife "Mildred" and later it's a different name. (Elaine?) Potter's wife then gets the name "Mildred". I am not there yet, but I think the psychiatrist goes from "Milton" Friedman to "Sydney" Friedman.

I saw that after William Christopher replaces the original "Dago Red" Hawkeye calls him "Red" at least once and he's got red hair! A couple
episodes later it's blonde.
 
I loved the show....it is my fondest memory of my childhood tv watching. In retrospect Stevenson's understated portrayal of a weak willed CO with a mid-western sense of common decency is quite remarkable. I think that is the best character of the whole television series.
 
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