M*A*S*H Season 6 (1 Viewer)

[Coressel]

As Larry Linville himself once said, "What do you want Frank Burns to be? Alan Alda?"

 

[Sam Davatchi]

And Trapper also was one dimensional. So in short, I’m glad all 3 left the show.

 

[Chris:L]

No one grew within the first three seasons. No one.

 

[Bill Williams]

To answer Rob's question from earlier, it was in the sixth season that they began to use the freeze frame for the additional production credits at the end of each episode.

While I admit that having Frank Burns around as an inept comic foil for Hawkeye, Trapper, and B.J. to kick around -

FRANK: "I know I'm a real asset to this camp."

HAWKEYE: "You're only off by two letters."

- Winchester was a far more superior foil for Hawkeye and B.J. because he was their surgical equal, if not superior, in the operating room. Add to that his snobbish rich upbringing and his ability to carry his dignity no matter what happens through the rest of the series, not to mention the brilliant portrayal from David Ogden Stiers, and you've got a solid original character. And his continuing war of words with not only Hawkeye and B.J. but also Colonel Potter helped add to the richness of the series.

WINCHESTER: "You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can incarcerate me with two moronic cellmates. You can enforce upon me your thrice-daily swill, but you cannot break the spirit of a Winchester. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness, and I shall be delivered from this unfettered and unfestering sewer!"

POTTER: "I think he's getting the hang of this place."

Now if someone would just figure out how to condense 10-11 years of a TV series into a three-year war timeline...

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

The thing is that Frank actually regressed as a character. In the first season, Henry referred to him as "a good surgeon" and he occasionally showed a glimmer of humanity (like in "Sticky Wicket"). As the show went on he became more and more of a one-dimensional moron with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And as to what else could have been done with him, well, other sitcoms have done great things with the character of the jerky guy nobody likes: Ted on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Louie on Taxi, Herb on WKRP to name only three. They just got lazy with the character. Winchester was exactly what the show needed: a better foil for Hawkeye, an antagonist who wasn't a cartoon, a conservative who wasn't a buffoon. I don't like most of the later M*A*S*H episodes but Winchester was the best thing about them.

My problem with the later years of M*A*S*H is that I think the quality of the comedy writing became generally shoddy, and I say that as someone who's not a big Larry Gelbart fan. (My favorite writer on the show was Larry Marks, who returned in season 6 to write the last Colonel Flagg episode -- one of the best of that season.)

 

[Chris:L]

Thoughts of Larry Linville:

"Frank was a study of subjective and objective reality simultaneously, and a lot of what you saw on the screen was surrealism.

Playing Frank Burns was the hardest part in M*A*S*H but I think the most rewarding. It was dangerous. With Frank, you were on thin ice. I could have drowned at any minute, but I got to the other side. Without an element of danger, life gets dull very quickly. Frank Burns could have been a total cartoon—you had to know that he could feel pain like anyone else...maybe more than anyone else. He had his guises to protect himself, that’s what made him ridiculous and provided the fun. I could have played him as insensitive, which would have been as easy as throwing me on the floor and having a tantrum. Any baby can do that. The reverse was much more difficult.

You could see all the elements in him at the same time. There was nothing hidden, and you didn’t have to go through years of therapy to get some kind of reaction out of him. It was all simultaneous. It was a bloody dangerous role. Burns was displaying his genuine kind of insanity as if it was conscious and objective behavior, and people reacted to that as if he were a conscious, objective, functioning human being.

If you look at Burns not as a cartoon, I think you’ll find some frightening and dark elements there. There’s a mind that stripped its gears, obviously. And yet he is functioning with a knife in his hands on other human beings. You’re not playing with cartoons there. Those are nasty and dangerous things. You can’t have the reality of M*A*S*H, which is people and bodies and blood and pain and agony, and have a maniac running around the operating room working on them and then come up and say that’s a cliché."

Thank God for Charles...

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Jaime, I'd have to agree with your post pretty much down the line.

 

[Paul_Scott]

loved the Chirstmas show where Winchester secretely gives gifts/candy to the orphans and then is shocked and angry that they sell them off, until he realizes why.

that kind of show/ character study was never even attempted for Frank.
i feel sorry for Linville.
they gave Stiers so much more to work with.

i'm looking forward to this- wish it was going to be released sooner.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Paul, that is one of my favorite episodes also, and the following episode where they take a look back on the previous year, 1951 all in 1 episode is pretty cool. It presents a whole lot of problems continuity wise, but I like the episode.

That Christmas episode is also the 1 where Hawkeye and BJ try to keep the guy alive until Dec. 26. I'm really fond of that episode.

 

[Bill Williams]

That, therein, lies the kettle of fish: how to justify the 10-11 years of this TV series into the three-year time frame of the Korean War.

Of course, as you pointed out, Casey, the episode of 1951 condensed into 24 minutes is extremely problematic. It would be easy to write that one off and say that it actually occurred in 1952, which would make it more justifiable with the placement of the different Christmas episodes in the time frame of the war. But then again, there's the end of the premiere episode from the fourth season, which stated that Colonel Potter arrived in September 1952, which makes things about as bad. So how can the whole continuity issue be rectified? For that matter, can it?

I guess it's all due to subjective interpretation. Here's how I view things:

The first three seasons take place in 1950-1951 and ends somewhere in the late summer of 1951. This would justify Hawkeye's statement to Frank in the fourth season premiere: "I lived with (Trapper John) for over a year. He kept me from killing you." Exit Trapper John McIntyre, enter B.J. Hunnicutt. He mentions in his first segment that his daughter Erin is already born.

Colonel Potter arrives in late summer 1951 to take command of the 4077th, and the fourth and fifth seasons span a few months. Exit Frank Burns, enter Charles Winchester, begin the sixth season in late 1951.

Progress through the series to 1952, have the year-in-one-episode segment occur throughout 1952 instead of 1951, then go into the final couple of seasons which would span the first half of 1953 until the end of the war. This justifies that Erin Hunnicutt is two years old by this time, as mentioned in the finale "GF&A", thereby supporting my earlier supposition that B.J.'s intro occurs in the late summer of 1951.

Of course, this is extremely problematic, but for me it sort of resolves the continuity issues. But as I noted earlier, it's entirely subjective and open to interpretation.

 

[Chris:L]

There were at least three Christmas episodes in Season 1.

 

[Rob P S]

Excellent show - one of the best of the later seasons.

 

[Coressel]

There was only one Xmas show in the 1st season.

The whole "problem" of squeezing 11 seasons of M*A*S*H into 3 years isn't that big of a problem, considering that if you put all 250 or so episodes back to back, you can watch them all in about a year and a half!

Also, the Korean War in M*A*S*H is a metaphor for all wars, not a documentary about that particular conflict.

 

[Chris:L]

Corressel, as much as I agree with you, I must disagree as well. M*A*S*H took most of it's stories from the Korean War.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

This is actually a good point, and while Chris:L is correct in saying that some of the stories came from the Korean War, they weren't documenting the war, and a number of the problems they had to deal with can reasonably be asumed were problems in more than just the Korean war. The 3 year vs. 11 year time frame never worried me all that much, I mean it didn't prevent me from enjoying the show.

 

[Bill Williams]

I have to agree with you there, Casey. While the original film was a thinly-veiled anti-war commentary on Vietnam, if you take away the Korea tag it could easily be about any war at any time.

There was one comment about the series finale that made it really interesting to consider. IIRC, the reviewer asked, "What if the 4077th company finds out that it's really 1962 and time to re-up for Vietnam?" Eerily true is Klinger's comment in the finale, "Vietnam? Where's that?"

 

[Sam Davatchi]

I just got season 6 today and watched the first episode tonight. Loved it, it’s a lot of fun to have Winchester.

The first information from the set is that Season 7 is for December 2004. I also have the impression that the picture quality is a lot better than the previous season.

 

[Sam Davatchi]

I’m half away through season 6 and had quite forgotten about it. I had forgotten how they had tried to a degree to involve Margaret and Charles romantically but it never worked! Especially in the episode “The Grim Reaper”.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

I'm looking forward to this a lot, can't wait until tomorrow.

 

[Steven Wesley]

Has anyone else noticed how the chapter stops are way off on Season 6. For example, most of the time hitting next chapter after the show starts skips the intro and jumps into the show, but for Season 6 it jumps way too far. Sorta annoying.