I was watching M.A.S.H. Memories, or something to that effect, or it could be M.A.S.H. Reunion Sunday night on TVLand. What got me to writing this post is how many gazillion times TVLand reran this series. The whole of last week they had a M.A.S.H. marathon and DB was sucked into the couch.
This particular M.A.S.H. Reunion episode was hosted by Shelley Long and contained interviews with Hawkeye, Radar, Lt. Col. Blake, Col. Potter, Klinger, Trapper, BJ, Frank Burns, Hot Lips and Charles plus all the other guest stars. I cannot remember their real names. This episode was produced much earlier because Col. Blake and Frank Burns passed away in late 1990s, if I remember right.
My favorite character is Corporal Klinger. I get a kick watching him trying to get out of the Army by dressing up as a woman or anything that is feminine, and all the stunts he attempted to get a Section 8 – a discharge from the military for insanity. I like all the other characters, too, and practical jokes Hawkeye, Trapper and BJ played on Frank Burns the ferret face, or what a bunch of Koreans chimed out ”Frank Burns eats worms” taught by the no one else but Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce.
Frank’s replacement was Charles Emerson Winchester III, the pompous, arrogant, wealthy doctor from Massachusets who loves classical music and still has some compassion in him.
The saddest of all the episodes was the one where Henry Blake gets to go home for good on a discharge, the farewell from his compadres, and then the sad news from Radar that “Lt. Col Henry Blake’s plane has been shot down over the Sea of Japan. There were no survivors.” The fun loving, goofy Henry Blake wiped out of the series. I wiped a few tears each time I watched this episode.
I have watched all of M.A.S.H. episodes since I came here and still watching the reruns almost every night. That’s DB’s dose of relaxation before bed, and before he shuts the TV off he will asked me what does M.A.S.H. stands for and I have no choice to remember it: Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. If I can’t remember it, I ought to be shot!
