And just went downhill from there.

It bought them a few more seasons. It was smart that they would cast against the type that the person was replacing. Blake was a bit of a bumbling doofus that somehow managed to run a MASH unit whereas they brought in Potter to be more of a paternal type towards those at the unit. Trapper John was an extrovert who wasn't very faithful to his wife; whereas, BJ was much more sly about his humor and was very faithful to his wife.

If anything I think Potter's interactions with Klinger were much better than the one's that Blake had.

But IMHO the show became increasingly "preachy" and I came to dislike Hawkeye and BJ more and more.

....

For 5 years Frank Burns was the antogonist of the show and usually the butt of all the jokes that Hawkeye & Trapper (and later BJ) would do. Burns was made to be this wretched surgeon (Burns even admitted to flunking out of medical school a few times) who wanted to be some gungho GI soldier.

When Burns left they decided to go the exact opposite of him - bringing in this elitist doctor who was a very talented surgeon. Sure there was pranking between Winchester vs. Hawkeye/BJ but it wasn't the same and eventually there was a spirit of friendship between the 3 even if many times they didn't see eye-to-eye.

The key to success for many shows is that you have your 'Good Guys' - the people you tune in each week to watch as they do great things and make you laugh. Then you have your 'bad guys' - the people you want to get their commuppence each week because they're written to be assholes whether because they mean harm to our good guys or being the butt of the joke, as the case with Frank Burns.

After Frank Burns left, MASH didn't really have a true 'Bad Guy'. Winchester never filled that role because intellectually he was superior to Hawkeye/BJ and many times could return the practical joke back to the pair. Having a show that based 5 years of it's writing based on something being the bad guy, the real replacement for Larry Linville's Frank Burns was essentially the war. That's why the show started becoming so preachy in the later years.

Frank was a symbol of everything that was wrong with the war and a perfect example of incompetent chicken-hawkery. Charles clearly wasn't and was as unhappy about being there as BJ and Hawkeye. Tormenting a spudhead like Frank was tormenting the establishment and the Army higher-ups by proxy. Charles had far too much innate dignity and (deep down) decency to ever serve that function and a lot of zip went out of the show. It remained pretty watchable, though, if not what it once was.

For 5 years it was represented in human form as Frank Burns. The war was clueless, the war was bumbling and the war tried to exert authority over people who really didn't want to be there in the first place (since just about everyone who was serving was drafted. I think Houlihan and Potter were the only 2 I know that signed up for the war. Blake, from what I read, was National Guard).

Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ, Blake, Potter & rest of 4077 - they all showed their disrespect for the war by making Frank Burns the butt of all their jokes. In the beginning that also included Margaret Houlihan who was Frank's mistress, ironic since Houlihan was made out to be an army brat who was career military.

After Burns was gone and clearly Winchester was not the replacement figurhead for war then the war itself became that antogist with the people of MASH preaching out against it.

Great point!

Margaret and Potter were Regular Army lifers and everyone else was a draftee.

ETA picutre:



Indeed, the original ensemble cast was just great.

I'm thinking of my favorite all time shows, Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke shows.

They never replaced characters.

They just got better and better.

the show seemed to lose so much of the humor that made the melodrama watchable.

But since they were still getting great ratings they kept the show running. If M*A*S*H were to run today it would have been cancelled after 6 or 7 seasons tops.

And taking a look at the network schedules for 1980-1981 (Seaosn 9) it was still better than a lot of the shows on the network schedules. (A TV series adaptation of Freebie and the Bean? The Enos spinoff of Dukes of Hazzard?)

The show got preachier and more Hawkeye-centric, often to its detriment, but also had some good creative shows during those seasons, like the Dreams episode or the episode where a soldier was in need of immediate surgery and everything was shot in real time. And a few good practical jokes episodes in those years as well. And the episode where Klinger and B.J. get upset in Radar's absence--Klinger b/c everyone is mad at him for not doing things like Radar did and BJ because Radar's flight home stopped in San Francisco, where he got to see Peg and where Erin called Radar "Daddy"--is one that I found memorable.

For the record, Burghoff actually left in Season 8, but it was early in the year (only four episodes in). I agree with you that they didn't adjust to his departure as well as they did the earlier departures.

but still it wasn't that great

I have always hated anything military or war related.

I thought we were going to have to have "the talk".

We dodged the bullet here.

talk would that be...

The "We need to talk about our relationship" one?

or the "Birds and Bees" one?

Puts the fear of god into me.

Except near the end of his time, Radar was basically a couple of standing jokes.

Max was at first but after he gave up on the dresses, he matured.

But was an add-on for the TV show and even then he started off as a 1-2 show extra.

After that, it went downhill.

A big part of the problem: The movie (and the show, initially) were about the insanity of the army. War was part of that insanity, to be sure. After Burns leaves, the show becomes about the insanity of the war and their situation -- which is a lot less funny.

it doesn't compare with the movie, nor the book.

shittiest review that I have ever read. Of course, since the eaglets have never won a Super Bowl, I can understand your underlying anger.