M*A*S*H: The Story of the 4077th

Guaranteed Human. Montreal, Balswa, it is Josh and Chuck, and we are coming to your French-ish town. Yeah, and not just Montreal, we're also coming to Ottawa, the capital of Canada itself, and Toronto.

One of our favorite cities in the entire world. That's right, we're going to be in those cities on June 25th, 26th, and 27th, and there are still plenty of great tickets available. We love going to Canada, and we can't wait to go to some of these towns

we've never been to, and you can get tickets.

Well, you can go to the websites of the venues. You can go to stuffyshino.com, click on the "On Tour" button, and click on the tickets link there. There are all kinds of ways to find these tickets. Yeah, and we'll see you guys next week.

“Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of "I Heart Radio."”

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, part of our ongoing TV edition, because we are raised on TV. So it's for now you too, and we love it.

Well, one of us love this. You might as well go ahead and get that out of the way. What do you mean? Mashed? Yeah, I love Mashed, you hated Mashed.

I don't know what you're talking about. Come on. I don't hate Mashed. It's mostly a put on just to annoy you. Yeah, I don't hate it, hate it.

You know what I mean? Well, tell me your history. Did you watch it at all? Yeah, I watched it with my dad. Okay.

My dad would laugh out loud throws, head back, and clap sometimes. Right. And it was fun just to see my dad do that. Of course, he had consumed two old Milwaukee tall boys by this time, but sure, I would guess that he probably would have laughed regardless.

And that was it. I mean, that's how I know Mashed, essentially. And I've seen probably decent amount of the episodes, but I don't know.

It was never like, I love Mashed.

You know, like, head of the class. I never loved Mashed, like I loved head of the class or perfect strangers.

“Right, well, this is when I remember that you are younger than me.”

So it's not like you were like me nine years old in loving a show about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War. No, but I don't feel like a lot of it was lost on me. I think I got a lot of it. It just, I don't think I was old enough for the comedy.

Yeah, well, I have talked about it before, but it was definitely weird that a nine year old was into a comedy. Sometimes serious about alcoholic surgeons during the Korean War. Right. But I was into it. And, you know, at one point, Mashed was on reruns in the evening

and then late night and while it was still airing. So on Thursdays, I believe it aired on Thursdays in Primetime, at least it did when I, for my recollection. Okay. At one point I was watching five episodes of Mashed on Thursday and four episodes of Mashed every other day of the week.

Wow, there's not that many shows you can do that with. No, it was like five and five thirty and then something like 10, then 10, 30 or something like that. I can do that with law and order.

“I can just watch law and order indefinitely, the original series.”

But it was, I was into it. It was a formative show for me. It was, you know, it was a top five show as a kid, too. Wow. And it's still one of your top shows. Yeah, I mean, it's not when I go back to and it certainly has a place in my heart, but it's hard to definitively rank today's TV against TV back then, you know.

It's different. Very different. There are no short shows about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War now. There are no short shows. There are all six or eight hours long at least. Yeah, the thirty minutes it comes is on, it's last legs. It feels like, are there any out there?

Oh, there are. I guess there's a few. I mean, it means, you know, the main networks still have their shows. I just don't watch any of them. The last main stream network show that I saw that I really liked was a TED dance and show called Mr. Mayor. And it's, it was funny. I don't know why I got canceled.

It had a great cast. It wasn't dumb. It was smart, but it was also hilarious. Had a real, I kind of, like a slightly different thirty rock vibe to like the writing. Yeah, you know what, man? I'd have to really dig to see what the last major network half hour sitcom was I watched because I feel like it was like a rest of development, but maybe there's been one since then. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say probably before Mr. Mayor that's as far as it would go back for me, too. And you watched the good place, too, didn't you? I did. I didn't watch it. I watched it, uh,

some of the lies on, I guess, Netflix or whatever. I never watched it when it was on.

Which is an acronym, did you know that? Mr. Smart guy? I did. Yeah. Well, why don't

“you, and since this is your favorite show, why don't you tell everybody what it stands for?”

It stands for mobile army surgical hospital. And as everyone, even Jerry, knows that there's an asterisk in between the letters, three asterisks, our friend Dave helped us with this. And he, you also hates mash. But yeah, he looked high and low and was like, um, there's no, there's no reason for the asterisk. He thinks that it was just a design thing. And I couldn't find anything that contradicted that.

Well, my feeling is that it, I think it clearly was meant to show that it is an acronym, uh, even though that's not how the military necessarily distinguished it, uh, because people would just say what in the world is mash mean, but, oh, wait, it must stand for something, would be my guess. Right. But they didn't use like periods after each letter, like the military would have. Oh, you assure. I get you.

I'm talking about the asterisk in particular. Yeah, an acronym is typically a period right. All right. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. But it looks good, though. You're right. It does. It looks fantastic. Very signature. So mobile army surgical hospital, um, and obviously, if you've ever seen mash, it's where the whole thing is set, set during the Korean War in a mobile surgical hospital, hence the name. And those were actually a real thing. Did you know that, Mr. Smarka,

who loves mash so much? Oh, boy. This is what we're informed. I did know that because, you know, at some point the show spells that out. Um, so yeah, I knew, I knew that was the thing. What I was curious, and, you know, my mash recollection, this is from a long time ago, I don't remember them ever moving at all. Uh, so I feel like they kind of stayed there. Yeah. Unless it was an episode that I missed where they were like, yeah, we're gonna move to this other part of Malavu, um,

which, which is where it was filmed, the Fox Ranch, which is now Malavu Creek State Park, which is why, and all the scenes of helicopters flying around, uh, Korea, who knows if that's what Korea looks like, but it looks like the mountains of Southern California. You don't know. That's where the Manson family live for a while. Uh, oh, really? No, they've done, spawnery. Right. Okay. Anytime I hear a ranch in California, I just immediately think of the

Manson family. Yeah. And I know it told the story about shooting out there, but it was a big treat for me as a PA to shoot a commercial and see like a rusted out army. Oh, yeah. Ambulance,

“and I think, I mean, who knows what's there now, but there were still a few remnants back then.”

Right. Yeah. I remember my mind being blown when I found out that that was, like, California in the bathroom. Like, he didn't go to Korea. Yeah. I think that's kind of when I started to get that people cut corners for money. Yeah. Totally. Um, so yeah. So a mash thing, a mash was

actually a thing, and I think it was actually first, um, tried out in the Korean war. Yeah.

Um, which I think was a three-year war, but something interesting that I noticed about mash is that it ran for 11 seasons. So it was almost four times longer than the actual war that was the setting for this TV show. But in reality, like I was saying a mash hospital was tried out in the Korean war in real life. Yeah. For sure. And the idea is that they put the surgeons close to the front lines so they could save more lives. Uh, and it was, you know,

they're all kind of temporary. Like, they slept on, you know, caught like beds, and they lived in tents. And there was on the TV show. There's a lot of talk about the front and how close they were. Yeah. Uh, but the real-life mash unit, apparently, had a 97% survival rate. If you got there, you chances are you lived. Yeah. So it was a really good idea that paned out. Yeah. And in the show, you can hear bombs going off sometimes occasionally that overhead lights will flicker and sway

because they are so close to the front. And I was thinking about the same thing that you mentioned,

too, that they never seem to change or move their their unit. Um, and if it's supposed to be

four to five miles behind front lines, then that would have to be a completely static front line for all those years to never move. But it may be wondering about like the real-life mash

“surgeons, like how often did you have to break down your, your mash unit and then move it,”

you know, and set it up again, which apparently you could do very quickly. Supposedly, you could set one up in 24 hours. But that also just kind of goes to explain like, these were not like state-of-the-art surgical wards. They were like blood and guts. Get your hands dirty. You're lucky if you have more than one scalpel kind of like surgical outfit. Yeah, for sure. And that was conveyed very well in the show. Um, the doctors on the show, you know, just like in real life, uh, the doctors

were generally civilians that were drafted into the war to be Army surgeons after I think World War II.

doctors draft acting. Uh, if you had already served in World War II as a, as a, as a doctor or surgeon or nurse or whatever, uh, you didn't have, you could, you could get wave. You could still serve if you wanted to. Um, but the long and short of that is the recruits were younger. Uh, they didn't have as much experience. They definitely were not looking to join the Army, uh, which is a big big part of that show is that none of, you know, none of them. But, uh, the main characters that we're

going to talk about like the protagonist, not the foils, the foils kind of like the Army, but the other guys generally did not like being there or being in the Army culture. Uh, and Alan Alder was 36 when they started making this. It was kind of curious about his starting age. Oh, yeah.

“Yeah. 36. Uh, so yeah, the, I think that's almost one of the cornerstones of this show is that”

these are civilian doctors who were drafted in the military and they're kind of bristling against this, the regimentedness that's required of them just from being in the military. They're like, just get out of our hair. We're here to save lives, you know, take that whole, like, revely stuff and shove it. Yeah. That's right. Uh, it was actually book in this smart guy. I did not know. No way. I was going to ask you that facetiously, and I didn't. I'm sorry. I did

not know this. I, of course, I knew it was a movie and we'll talk about them in a second, but the

movie was option from a book written in 1968 called Mash Colin, a novel about three Army doctors by a Mash veteran doctor named Dr. Richard A. Hornberger under a pseudonym Richard Hooker. I think he added a co-writer named WC Heinz when it came pretty clear that his book was a bit of a mess.

“Because it sounds like it was just sort of a group of stories about his experience in the 8055,”

the 8055th machine. It was the real-life unit that it was based on. And it sounds like it was, you know, like what we see on TV and in the movies, like they party a lot, they drank a lot, did a lot of pranks, and on the side did some surgery. Yeah. But like you said, it was kind of loosely put together. Like each chapter started with, hey, get this. Right. And they were basically like, yeah, they were anecdotes, and then apparently he also peppered in some, like, gory stuff,

just to basically get across the horrors of war. And he was actually a surgeon and main, and when he put this whole book together and they brought in WC Heinz, a sports writer to kind of

help him with it, if you've seen the TV show and you've never read the book, maybe even haven't

seen the movie, you have a totally different conception of mash than what Hornberger created and what the movie kind of portrayed, which is like this wasn't a, he didn't have any liberal agenda. In fact, he was kind of conservative, and he didn't really like the tone of the TV show, but it was still, it still had like a kind of anti-war bent through it, or at least just questioning that the morality of war just how stupid and wasteful it is. But it wasn't, you know,

it was not a liberal book or written by a liberal person. But you know, it's Hollywood, it gets a hold of something. Yeah. They're going to liberalize it, and that's basically, you know, like you said, what the movie and TV show ended up being, it's like a statement, like an anti-war statement. Hornberger after, not after mash, because we'll talk about that later, the weird spin-off, but post-mash, he wrote more mash books after, you know, the movie was a, was a hit,

he wrote 14 mash novels. The first one was called Mash and Main, which published the same year,

the TV show ended up premiering. Yeah. 14 novels that movie and a TV show off of a book that

“he had to bring a sports writer in to help, you know, whip into shape. Yeah. Can you say cash in?”

Exactly. So yeah, and he was just basically trying to get his anecdotes across, which were mostly like drunken prank stuff. Like you said, like you see on the TV show, like that was based on this guy's book. So like I said, it was turning to a movie. I think it was option, maybe even the year it was published in 1968, because the movie came out in 1970. And I imagine it took a little while the make, because it's a mess, and it was directed by Robert Altman. See you didn't like the movie.

I've only seen it once. I'm not entirely certain. I saw the whole thing. I didn't, I don't remember. If I saw the whole thing, I was reading about people debating on whether the movie is any good or not. And it seemed like the consensus was it. So somebody say it's a master piece of 20th century comedy. Yeah. See, that's where I veer off. Like I loved, loved the TV show. I liked the movie. Okay. Like I'm a big Robert Altman guy. It critically did very, I mean, it was a big hit.

It won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970, nominated for Best Picture

yeah, I think maybe I was too young the first time I saw it. And I loved the TV show so much.

“I was like, oh, I gotta go see the movie version. Right. And the movie version's a lot different.”

And I don't know. I don't think it's among Altman's best work, but certainly a lot of people disagree with me. Sure. A lot of people like it. But it's almost one of those things. You get the

impression that people like it because it's supposedly this amazing thing, not because they like it

like it. You know what I mean? Maybe. Maybe. That's just kind of the tone that I got. But anyway, the movie was a little closer to the book. And in that it's like, it portrays everything that the younger generations dislike about the oldest generation right now. Explain. Sexism, racism, oh, sure. Just completely, um, completely ignoring like the consequences of harming other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like essentially everything. Like those are the main themes throughout this

movie, right? Although, again, the subtext is that this is an anti-war movie at the very least, again, questioning the morality of war. And it was released right at, you know, the peak of when anti-war sentiment was really aroused in America because of the Vietnam War. Yeah, for sure. And I didn't know where you're going, but you totally nailed it. Like in this movie, it's like it's supposed to be funny that hot lips who will hand the head nurse is the shower curtain is ripped

open and she has full fully frontally exposed naked to the rest of the camp. Yeah, like this played for laughs. So obviously it's a movie of its time. It was written by Ring Lardner Jr.

“um, obviously son of a great story writer, Ring Lardner. Yeah. And he, I think they called him Pinky”

Ring was his nickname. No. Oh, you got me. That's a good one. Oh, thanks. That'd be a pretty good nickname for Ring Jr. Yeah. Or maybe toe ring. Now Pinky. Pinky ring. Okay. Uh, so Altman, you know, does his Altman thing, which is a lot of improvisation, a lot of overlapping dialogue. It's his hallmark as a filmmaker. Ring Lardner Jr. did not care for that evidently and said like you ruined what I wrote. Uh, and I don't know if he took that back after he went the Oscar for screenplay or not,

but uh, yeah, it's kind of interesting. Yeah. So I tried to get his name taken off of it and then he won the Oscar. Oh, wow. Like, uh, I guess I'll stick with this. That's really funny. One other thing about Ring Lardner Jr. I saw is that he was one of the Hollywood 10. He was blacklisted by the McCarthy hearings. Oh, yeah. So it was like, it almost a slightly subversive act in and of itself to hire him in the late 60s after you know, he was they were bringing him back, I guess. Well,

Altman's, he was an old pothead. He was a medium-aged pothead at that point. So let's talk about the theme song, which I'm sure a lot of people know the title of it, but um, many people might not actually

because they played it. If you're a fan of the TV show, it was always instrumental.

Yeah. They, they changed it from the movie in the movie. It had words, uh, the name of the song is Suicide Is Painless. And the story behind it, I did not know. Um, in the Mash movie, there was a character. Uh, I did not know the stuff Captain Walt Waltowski who says he wants to take his own life because he's gay and he's in the army and he can't bear it. And so they do a fake sort of a fake funeral, a living funeral and give him a placebo pill telling him it's a big sedative that's going to,

you know, take his life. Right. And so Altman's like, I need a song that's he pitched it as I need it to be the stupidest song ever. So we hired a guy, a real musician named Johnny Mandel. Any relation to the men? No, this man drill. Sorry. Close. He's a distant distant relation. Yeah, that's right. He dropped the yarn. Uh, and he, he was like, we need a song for this funeral. I want to be the dumbest song ever and Altman tried to write it, but couldn't come up with anything

that he liked. So as the story goes, he hired his 15-year-old son Michael to co-write this thing

“with this pro musician and that's what they came up with. Yeah. And like that explains, like it was”

a purposefully stupid song, which explains it's just the only lyrics I know, which is suicide

is painless. It brings on many changes. And I've always been like, that seems a little

tongue and cheek. Like, what's the right thing? Like, I don't get that. No, I do. Yes. I, maybe want to go back and read the rest of the lyrics because I'm sure they're hilarious. I actually meant to do that, too, and I did not. I thought, you know, I know Emily worked with to Alt with Roger and two of his sons on the gingerbread man in Savannah. And I asked her if

Was it gingerbread man's that aggression thriller? I think so. Or at least in that vein.

Yeah, I think it was aggression thriller. Hey, speaking of movies, I saw something just last night that I want to recommend. Let's hear it. It's an old Oswald, or Osgood, sorry, Os, Osgood Perkins movie. Oh, you love that guy. Gretel and Hansel. And I think that's like you have it backwards. No, no, that's the way it's the title. I'm just kidding. Because Gretel's

“older in this one. And it's from like 2012, 13, it's great. You should start a podcast on Os Perkins.”

I wonder if I could get him to come on? Call it like, you know, like finding Os or the wizard of Os or something like that. Sure. You're behind the curtain. Yeah, yeah, find the the green, not the behind the green door. That's something different behind the green curtain behind the green door. Oh, man. All right. I feel like we should take a break. We told the song story and we'll be right

back to finally get to the TV show after this. Hey, I'm how to copy host of the podcast,

Joy 101 with Hoda Copy together. We're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand post-partner depression. I was not prepared for post-partner anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Copy on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. June is black music month and on the drink champs podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture like Swaley. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate it. I've seen it, but I'm like, master, I like so much more to do. Like Prince, he's got like 30 albums. We've got like five right now. That's the rate we've got to be going. Yeah. That's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers,

“like Fab5 Freddie. I directed when Naz is their early video. Which one?”

One love. Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensburg. His mom's been still up in that apartment. Naz was just beginning to take off. His pop shoes to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff. And he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, drink champs brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to drink champs from the black effect podcast network on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Michael Rappaport and my podcast, the iM Rappaport Stereo podcast is unlike anyone you've ever heard. We're variety show and if you're looking for strong opinions, funny opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kitchen for Jackson is as good as Romney Mallock as Freddie Mercury. And it's as good as Timothy Shamalay as Bob Dylan. And I say that

with love and respect for both of those actors and I don't know how many Oscar nominations that give out and it's five six for Best Actor. 150% this kid you far Jackson should absolutely positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to iM Rappaport on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay Chuck, so you said we get to the TV show, but you lied lied lied because there's a little more about the movie we have to talk about.

Okay, chiefly that it was nominated for five Oscars. Like you said a ring-laden or junior one for the Best Green play, but most importantly is that Robert Altman hated the TV show.

Yeah, good point. I'm guessing that Robert Altman never even saw the TV show.

I'll bet that he like heard it, heard that they were making it on CBS and that they were turning

“into 30-minute comedy. And it was like this is the worst thing I've ever seen even though I've”

never seen it. That would be my guess. Yeah, maybe. And you know to be fair at the time and you know we'll see Allen Alde's reaction to being pitch this idea and him not wanting to try to audition at first is that the history of TV and and war shows and army and Navy shows is stuff like

Altman and Allen Alde wouldn't have liked. And it was only after Allen Alde read the pilot and

he said this is the best TV pilot I've ever read. I'm totally gonna audition for this. That he decided to do it, but I could see Altman just not going there, you know. Yeah, I mean that's a really risky thing that's actually in retrospect quite surprising. It's retrospect, by the way. That's the German pronunciation. It's really surprising that anybody was able to pull it off because if you know the book or the movie, the idea of adapting

those into a TV show, a family friendly TV show in the late '60s, early '70s is like,

“what are you gonna do? The only way you could possibly do that is to make it like screwball”

hijinks like Mikhail's Navy where the war just happens to be the setting. It could also be an office comedy, essentially. And that's not at all what they did. Thanks to a producer named Gene Reynolds in a writer named Larry Gelbert. I don't know how those two came together, but it was a match made in CBS Heaven. Yeah, for sure. Gelbert was an experienced writer. He wrote "Release Co-wrote the Musical of Funny Thing" happened on the way to the forum. Later on after

post-mash, he wrote the movie "Tutti" which is great in the movie "Oh God with George Burns and John Denver." To me is great, man. I guess to you too. Not so much "Oh God Book 2" but that first "Oh God" was awesome. I saw both. I don't remember the book too. The first one was so great. Yeah, agreed. But they, you know, they didn't want, they wanted to walk that fine line between having laughs and it being a quote unquote comedy and an anti-war movie and

a movie about the horrors of combat. And it's, it's really interesting. They walk a really tough fine line and as we'll see, you know, they ended up doing some some really groundbreaking episodes, you know, in later seasons. The first few seasons were definitely leaned way more into

“the sort of hijinks of it all. And then I think they realized, like, hey, we have a real chance here”

to have some incredible character arcs and really do something a little bit more. Like,

all in the family was doing. Yeah, they actually put it behind all in the family at some point at which helped bring it out of TV purgatory, I guess. But one of the ways that the producers were able to kind of navigate that narrow margin between just idiocy and over melodramatic stuff was that the studio or the network was like, obviously, we're going to have a laugh trek 30 minutes. Comedy have to have a laugh trek. And the producers kept pushing back and pushing back and they

finally reached the compromise where the OR scenes could not have a laugh trek. And then there were other sometimes other episodes or scenes where they were real downers, where they didn't have the laugh trek either. But if you watch mash today, it's easy to kind of miss the laugh trek until they get into the OR. And then it's glaringly missing. Yeah. Which I think is actually kind of useful in kind of contrasting, you know, how these surgeons are these, not just the surgeons, but

everybody at the mash unit is having to get jerked around by reality, like just messing around, getting drunk on homemade gin. And then all of a sudden you have, like, both of your hands in a

“18-year-old soldier's chest. Like, that's what they're trying to portray in the kind of”

smart use of a laugh trek actually helped with that. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, as a kid, and just as an American in general at the time, like the laugh trek was so ubiquitous that you didn't really think about it much, just being like weird. It was usually like a studio audience thing, and this was not a studio audience show. But you just sort of accepted it. Like, apparently the

BBC never used the laugh trek at all. And then I'm also reminded of like, I think the years back

someone did some friends episodes without the laugh trek and divided them up into clips. And it's just jarring to hear that kind of a show without a laugh trek. So mash was sort of a weird case. We've talked about that because not only is it jarring, it's like, this isn't funny at all. It really cues you, and you don't even, the laugh trek sounds like such a dumb thing, like a hundred years for now. People say like they really did that on shows, but it was such an institution

in like, the certain kind of comedy that, yeah, like you said without it, you don't know into laugh almost. Do you remember in the, I guess the, two thousand odds it must have been right before cartoon network came around, or adult swim, right before adult swim, somebody put out like

peppered them with laugh tracks, often inappropriately placed where then nothing even remotely

funny is going on. But the audience, this can't laughter just kind of comes in and it made it so bizarrely funny. Have you not seen those? Was that Space Ghost Coast Coast Coast? This is before Space Ghost Coast Coast Coast. Because, yeah, Dave, Dave Willis was on Space Ghost Coast to Coastery co-founded, I guess. He might have had something to do with this, because it was clearly attached to Space Ghost Coast because it happened right before it, but if you watch those, it's such as

an easy basic idea, but it's so funny to watch him. Man, those early years of cartoon network were just the best. And comedy central, like it used to be so much better, you know? Oh, yeah.

“Everything. I think comedy central is just old South Park reruns in the daily show once in a while.”

Yeah, yeah, that's a real shame. As far as the match and their story lines go, though, apparently Gilbert and Reynolds interviewed a lot of veterans from the Korean War and got a lot of stuff from that and worked into episodes like the episode where a wounded North Korean soldier is in the ER, there, and he pulls a pin out of a hang grenade that he was hiding on the operating table. Like that apparently really happened, as did a lot of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I was like,

did it really happen? And I went and found reference to the actual name of the surgeon who told that story in these interviews. Oh, yeah. So like it definitely happened. So I think I said that match was on for 11 years and it premiered in September '72 and ran all the way to February 1983. That is a long run for a show. Yeah. I mean, for everybody good back then, now like 11 years is a really long time. But at first it was not very well received. The very least people didn't

know about it because it was put up against the wonderful world of Disney on Sunday nights. And it was not doing very well there. Yeah. I mean, wonderful. Disney was a juggernaut of a show for mainstream America. So Alan Aldi apparently used to joke that match was one of the top 78 shows on TV early on and very Alan Aldi kind of thing to say. And he they moved it like like you've said earlier to after all in the family, which was a huge hit and that made

gave match a lot more visibility, obviously. And Aldi said in match was a number two show on TV.

And that was it. And Dave found a great quote from Newsweek as far as the critical acclaim

“that I think kind of sums it up. And it is this without ever moralizing,”

match is the most moral entertainment on commercial television. It proposes craft against butchery humor against despair, wit as a defense mechanism against the senseless enormity of the situation. Pretty good stuff. Yeah. I think the newsweek people really got it. Should we talk about the characters? Yeah. Let's because we've made reference to some, but I feel like we should get a little more in depth with them.

Yeah. So Hawkeye we've mentioned a few times. He's I guess you would just call the main character and that was Alan Aldi. By the way, the great Alan Aldi. He's one of my heroes in entertainment. And by all accounts, just one of the best dudes ever. And he is 90 years old down. And which is great. He's still around. And he is one of the great writers and great directors and great actors and

“great human beings in the history of the TV and movie business, I think. Did he write a lot of”

those movies he was in in the early 80s? I think he co-wrote. He directed almost all of them. Really. He co-wrote 13 mash-ups so it's directed 31. And he played Hawkeye peers. This is a little known fact. Did you get that mental floss article I sent over? Yeah. With the top or whatever 12 things. 17. 17. So a few of these guys actually served in the, at least in the reserves. Alan Aldi was served six months in the army reserves in Korea. Pretty crazy.

So to Jamie Far who played Corporal Klinger who was essentially far in a way the most famous person until Katie Holmes came along to have come from Toledo. I thought you did Toledo thing.

He was always, if you did never watch this show, Klinger often referenced to Toledo Mudhens.

Toledo Mudhens ain't Tony Paco's, which is a real place in Toledo. I mean, that's your place. I didn't know he talked about that on the show. Oh, yeah. He talked about Tony Paco's all the time. I don't see. I didn't know what it was back then. I was like through the hellest Tony Paco. No, Tony Paco's is like a hot dog place, a Hungarian hot dog place. And every time he would mention the Mudhens or the Tony Paco's, I would look over at my dad and there'd just be like a single

tear going down his cheek. He's so filled with pride because, you know, you know, that was an

Allen all did for what it's worth. It's the first person to win an Emmy for acting, writing and directing on the same show. Wow. Then we have his buddy, Trapper John, played by Wayne Rogers, who was in real life in the Navy. And he is the, you know, the tint mate and, and Comfy Dant, apparently Robert Klein, the great comedian turned down that role and regretted it. I could see that. Although Wayne Rogers, the guy who played Trapper John, was like, you know,

this guy is not fully fleshed out. I'm basically Hawkeye's sidekick, right? I'm in the sidecar.

“I'm laughing along with them. We're doing like pranks together. But there's no me. Who is me?”

And the director was like, I think it's who is I. And they got into a really long disagreement about whether it was Iron Me and Wayne Rogers eventually left after the third season.

Yeah. The reason he was able to was because he never signed a contract with the producers.

I guess there was like a morality clause. He was like, I'm not signing this. And they forgot to go back and get him to sign something. So he left after the third season, which apparently he seemed fine with. Yeah. I mean, that Mash is one of those shows like cheers that was able to withstand some pretty drastic cast changes. It's hard to pull off as a TV show. Cheers to it very well. And Mash did it very well because three of the main characters ended up being replaced.

Trapper was replaced by Honeycutt. BJ Honeycutt played by Mike Ferrell or maybe it's Ferrell.

“He was actually a US Marine in real life. He was great. I love honeycutt. You know, again,”

those later seasons after like Trapper left. And as we'll see some of the other characters left, there were some tonal changes. But I was along for the whole ride. I was in for all of it. Yeah. Especially in the beginning, Hawkeye and Trapper John were like prankster, drunk, womanizers. They would harass the nurses and try to get him to sleep with them and all sorts of stuff. And then BJ Honeycutt was a lot different. He was a breath of fresh air because he was very

true to his wife back home. Yeah, for sure. And yet a mustache. That's right. Did we have radar? Of course, Corporal Radar O'Reilly played by Gary Burgoff. He was named radar because he was a very much of recurring thing on the show. Like every single episode, he would either kind of finish somebody's sentences. Usually Colonel Blake's sentence or know what somebody needed like before they

“needed it and kind of just hand it to him or he would. And there's a lot of times at the end of an”

episode, he would always since the helicopters coming in with wounded. Right. Before you could hear

the helicopters. And usually like if it was a pretty light episode to be a lot of high jinks that would be kind of halted at the end of the episode when he heard the helicopters coming. Right. And then there was Colonel Blake. He was one of my favorites, played by McLean Stevenson and great. He was an actual doctor who was put in charge of this mass unit and he's like I have no idea how to run any kind of army outfit. So he was always kind of in over his depth but he tried

really hard and he would get perturbed which was kind of funny sometimes because he never got mad. He just got perturbed in a fuddle kind of a little bit. Yeah, it was an idiot like it. It would have been really easy for any actor to portray him as kind of a dummy but McLean Stevenson managed to keep him from going down that route. Yeah, for sure. He was a band-a-lip that character. We should mention to that Gary Bergoff as radar was the only one who bridged the movie as far as, you know,

being in both. Colonel Blake was then replaced by Colonel Sherman, Jay Potter, played by Harry Morgan and he was a very different character than Blake and that he was an old school soldier. But he also kind of he wasn't as by the book as he would think for an old school soldier and sort of indulge the antics for the most part. Yeah, and he used the term horse feathers a lot. Yeah, to march mothers. Yes. There was another great character too who you just loved to hate.

He was so good. Frank Burns, who's played by Larry Limville. He was, he had what you would term today as justice sensitivity. He liked to follow the rules. He was fine with the military and the requirements for its conformity and anyone who didn't conform to it was, it just drove him up the wall and he tried to get them in trouble. So he was like a tried and true fascist essentially. Yeah, he was a bureaucrat. He was completely the foil of Hawkeye and and Trapper. He was

played by Robert Deball in the film, but the Larry Limville is as fairet face as they called him.

Was just, I mean, I always felt bad for the guy in real life because he was able to play one of

the more unlikable characters in like TV history and it just did it so well as really good actor.

in this mass unit. That's what, that's what mattered. Right. That's why Hawkeye and Trapper John

“got away with all their antics was because they were really good surgeons and when it came to it,”

they were going to save people's lives. Frank Burns, what made him even worse is that he wasn't even a good surgeon. Like you could die on his operating table because he wasn't that good and yet he would still go tell on you for, you know, drinking gin that you made in your, yeah, you know, and he didn't have much worse. Yeah, they were titmates, the three of them. Yeah, the two guys and then Burns lived together and then he was replaced after the fifth season in season six

by David Ogden's steers as Charles Emerson Winchester III, who was a major. I always thought he was

kind of British, but he just sort of did that mid-Atlantic thing. Right. Because he was a, came from a wealthy family in Boston, a family of doctors, apparently. And he was a little less of a foil, but still a bit of a foil. Yeah, he just implanted him with him because he was so snobby. Yeah. They just said, you know, nothing in common, essentially, from their backgrounds. Yeah. Then there's Margaret Hotlips, Hula Han, played by Loretta Swit, who I've seen just from

reading up on Mash, the TV show is roundly credited as taking like a pretty one-dimensional, victim-angry character, and turning her into something like really respectable and three-dimensional over the course of the 11 seasons and that she actually got better. Like the character got more involved and impressive and interesting over the years thanks to this actor. Yeah, Loretta Swit,

“she was great. Rest in peace. I think we lost her last year, the year before, like fairly recently.”

She on the show, Hotlips was having an affair with Frank Burns, and they were always sort of

coupled together against, you know, the other guys, and they were bureaucrats. But like you said, she had a great character arc ended up really developing into something special. And then rounding it out, I guess we already talked about Klinger. We have Father Mokahi, played by William Christopher, who is the chaplain, and that's about all we need to say about him. He was just sort of there. Did we talk about Klinger's wearing women's clothing? Oh, no, that was a big part of it. Yeah.

Hugely, apparently he was written as a one-off character initially, and he was written as a gay character who wore women's clothes, like full-on, fairly dresses and sunhats, like Sunday, like going to church kind of stuff. And Jamie Far was like, "Look, I think I can do this a little

“differently." Like, imagine if this is a straight guy dressing like this because he wants to get”

out of the army for some psych thing. And he did such a good job in this one-off episode that they brought him back as a character, not just a recurring character, he became one of the characters. Yeah, for sure. And he, yeah, he was one of the great characters. He tried to eat a Jeep in one episode to further prove his mental unfitness to serve. And that was one of the funny episodes. I guess before we take a break, we should rattle off some of these guest stars. Yeah,

because Smash had a quite a list of people who came on for one episode, including, but not limited to Ron Howard. Sure. Leslie Nielsen, Patrick Swazie, Lawrence Fishburn, the great George Went, Terry Garre, who else you got? Andrew Dice Clay. Yeah, the Dice Man. Yeah, which is one thing. This is apparently where Leslie Nielsen made the transition to comedy. Oh, because on his appearance on Smash. Oh, that's great. Yeah, Rita Wilson. Oh, oh, we're still going. Yeah, don't forget

a bigly junior. Yeah, John Ritter Shelley Long. Pat Marita? Of course, Pat Rita's in there. He was in the two. It's Hollywood in the 70s. They're like, we don't care what part of Asia you're from. Exactly. Just sign him up. Exactly. We feel pretty progressive that we're actually casting an agent to play in Asia. Yeah. And yeah, for sure. All right. So we take that

second break. Yeah. Yes. All right. We'll be right back.

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All right. So earlier we talked about some what you would call very special episodes. This was a thing that back then on a lot of shows like you know when Arnold and Willis find drugs in different strokes. Like when a comedy takes a more serious tone. Mash had a quite a few and we can go through these kind of quickly. I'm going to pick sometimes you hear a bullet from season one because that is an episode in which Hawkeye's childhood friend comes over as a journalist to write a book

about the war and he ends up dying on Hawkeye's operating table. And that was the first episode

that was really very heavy where like Hawkeye cries and it gets kind of serious about the horrors of war. Yes. Okay. All right. I'm going to pick dreams from season eight which is apparently it's most controversial episode because it is very jarring, very disturbing where it covers the each of the main characters is taking a rest from like a long day in the OR. They saw 211 patients over 33 hours and it goes through each one of their dreams and it's very surreal all sorts of

weird disturbing stuff happens. And I haven't seen it but I want to watch it because it sounds just totally nuts but it's pretty weird. It's completely contrary to any other episode. So I imagine if you were tuning in on Saturday night on CBS expecting you know to kind of laugh and maybe cry and you saw this horrible weirdness you might have had a bad reaction to it. Yeah. For sure. There were two more episodes that were definitely weird as far as mainstream television

goes. A documentary style one called the interview where it was like a black and white you know like a Vietnam era black and white documentary about war. That one was kind of crazy to see on TV at the time at one eight humanitists prize for a work that explores the human condition and a meaningful way. And then the other one was called point of view and the whole thing is shot from like the camera's point of view is from a wounded soldier who can't talk and so all the actors are

just coming up in addressing camera as the soldier and it's you know again a very sort of groundbreaking role of the dice to do for mainstream TV in the seventies. For sure. And then we got to talk about

“Abbasinia Henry. Oh god. Yeah I mean this this episode wrecked little Chuck. Yeah I remember this one”

too and I was like where's the last track? Yeah. Oh Colonel Colonel Blake who we both love play by McLean Stephenson. This is the season three finale. He gets word that he's going home like his his tour is over. He's he's out of the army now and so he leaves and um that's it like everybody's saying bye everybody's happy for him he's happy and then at the end of the episode

say it. It says that Colonel Blake's plane went down with Colonel Blake aboard and that there were no survivors so on his way back home after his tour after becoming beloved by all viewers Colonel Blake is dead. The writers killed him after he was already off the show and it just wrecked everybody like you said. It was brutal. Alan Aldenew this is going to happen the story goes that they didn't tell the rest of the cast until they got their um sides that morning and uh because they want to

you know real reaction or maybe they didn't even have the sides maybe they think they just learned

when radar walked in in the scene and Gary Bergauf's acting in that is incredible and you know

there's no reaction like no one's like oh my god no it's just very quietly they keep operating and you just hear they're they're crying and you hear like scalpel you know suction and it's it's devastating yeah it's good stuff yeah very very tough um so Chuck I feel like the the episode we can just skip it you know the mash finale you out to talk about that no big deal um I don't know if we said but I surely we've mentioned this before that the most watched television episode

is the final episode of mash which is really saying something because it was two and a half hours long

“oh my god that's right it was I remember it being long I don't remember being that long”

two and a half hours man yeah and of course that includes commercials uh a 30 second spot apparently was $450,000 which would be $1.36 million today it was called goodbye fair well any men and it was you know the war ends basically is the last episode but it is very dramatic for a lot of it uh and like the things the characters go through at the end or all pretty you know take pretty dramatic turns yeah in a very famously uh in this like kind of heart-rending montage

at the very end it shows how every character dies in the future you're talking about $6,800 that is I haven't seen it in a while I was like did that really happen that is one of the greatest endings to any show ever of course it was great also get wrenching yeah it was but goodbye fair well and a men is fantastic too for sure yeah so like you said the biggest rated TV show of all time and that was like including sports events up until uh Super Bowl 2010 finally surpassed it

but mash is still as far as just a regular TV show goes the finale is the most watched

“I think 75% of America tuned into that which is a staggering number you know you see Hawkeye”

a mental hospital father-mok he loses his faith in God he loses his hearing and his faith in God

clinger ends up marrying a Korean woman and stays there ironically yeah because he was always trying

to get out of there right he's trying to go home yeah did you see the urban possible urban legend about the plumbing in New York City no that was in the mental flossing I don't know if this is true but I've always heard this that the plumbing in New York City supposedly broke during the first commercial break because everybody got up to pee at the same time in New York it's totally sounds like it's probably not real right they all flushed it once and it just broke everything all

the alligator's drowned but yeah that's funny it's a good story though regardless but 121 million people tuned in to that episode and I was one of them my whole family sat around and we didn't do that kind of thing much oh we watched it my mom video taped it we watched it on video tape many times too yeah yeah should be like watch this watch this part much it again um I have a cute little anecdote about washing mash though alright let's hear you me so her older brother Bobby he has special needs

and one day when they were much much younger you me must probably in five or six or something Bobby had to go to the ER and her dad was a marine so they were living on a marine base at the time her mom like her dad whisks Bobby off to the ER and her mom tells her that Bobby's going to the hospital and so you me's only frame of reference for military hospitals is a mess unit where there's

always going off and everything is kind of nuts so she was really worried her brother was going

to a mash unit which I've just found endlessly cute yeah that's adorable I like this funny I'm gonna bring that up next to me you mean that's a story is it's something that's hilarious oh by the

“way echo in the bunny man is Saturday the Saturday in Atlanta that's the tabernacle remember I told”

you I'd remind you again I know I'm I'm looking to see if I can go we should probably do this all fair okay I just want to remind you okay you're like I'm not going but you should go oh I'm going

but that was the name of one of the spin-offs it didn't run long about a season and a half

and it was one of the ones that had the most characters I guess from the show because the real kernel potter was there clinger was there and father mokai mokai he was there you know obviously all in a hospital post war a veteran hospital did you watch it I remember watching after mash yeah how watched it some and how to remember not loving it so I don't think I watched it all there's also trapper john md which was on for seven seasons and it even was running concurrently

at the same time as mash itself for a lot of that time yeah kind of weird yeah and I haven't what was his name Rogers yeah like they recast it so it's just like why don't just call it something

else yeah I guess because everybody loved the character but even still yeah character like 50

years in the future or something like that you know we're 30 or 30 years in the future so he's an old band so they had another actor pernell robber so you probably know from the 60s tour and company of camelot but he played trapper john as an older man okay so of course now I'm a dummy like the reason they called it that was so they could bank on the success of mash that's what I would guess yeah I would I didn't think that through it almost makes me wonder if they just

retrofitted a show that had already been green right to trapper john yeah like the pit was supposed

“to be an eara spin off oh yeah yeah and there's I think there's still a lawsuit because apparently”

there's and of course I'm speaking completely as someone who doesn't know a lot about this so look it up if you really want to know but I think the Michael Crichton estate got involved and they're like wait a minute you can't do an ear spin off without like given us some juice because he he came up with the idea for you are whatever wrote the book that it was based on or something and I think there's like a paper trail of because the pit was like no no that wasn't

a deal it's just a new show it's not supposed to be no a wiley's character but I think there's an e-mail trail where they were like oh you want money huh let's just call it something else and change the character's name how who is that dumb these days I don't know and I don't know if I mean I'm sure I'm getting some details wrong but I know that there it is an ongoing issue man there was one more it was Walter WALTR with the asterisk even yeah that was a 1984 pilot

“that didn't I I think it aired one time and it was aired in the eastern and central times on”

so it was apparently so bad they didn't even air in the west at the same night didn't they do that for our show pretty much they tried to cram it all into one night for sure man that's crazy I didn't know that about the west coast thing that is a brutal move yeah yeah so we we can't even let the California eyes see the show right so it was about radar O'Reilly in his life after after Korea and it was played by Gary Bergoff and he was going to become a cop

and his wife had just left him and he's contemplating suicide and this was a comedy a half-hour comment from what I understand so people that I bet to that's out there I'm going to have to watch that yeah you got anything else I got nothing else I appreciate you indulging this one I know it's

a night your favorite show but I thank you hey I can always talk about mash for 53 straight

“minutes anytime you want all right let's do it again right now okay if you want to know more about”

mash just go start watching it I propose watching the episode dreams first maybe just to get it out of the way yeah and since Chuck said yeah that means it's time for listener mail yeah not so much a listener mail even though it was one little inside baseball but our email has been screwed up for a couple of months now as far as if you haven't heard back from us by the way you send an email lately it's because our email is super screwed up my fault the good news is we're now getting them

again but they are being forwarded so you can't directly reply long way of saying this comes from Martha black and there's really no need in even reading the email um because all it was was hey Chuck by the way that Howard Hughes picture of him as an old guy in Vegas is actor Riptorn no anything says so in the caption that she found so I definitely have egg on my face for that one because now that I see it I'm like yeah I guess I guess that is Riptorn all right already yeah but he was

younger and he was you know had tissue boxes on his feet for God's sake it's it fooled me to Chuck yeah oh well it fooled me too and of course it makes sense there no pictures of Howard Hughes in Vegas he didn't allow that at least it was an AI yeah that's true you know at least they they got Riptorn to post for it yeah so who's that from uh Martha black thanks a lot Martha black

and show off your name you can email us too hopefully we'll get it these days send it off to

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