Thanks to Hallmark Channel and my dad, i have seen the complete run of M*A*S*H more than i have seen my favorite movie. and I have noticed something. There's a double standard. Alcohol is a dominant element of the show. Take a quick look at this list: 1. Hawkeye's still 2. Colonel Blake/Potter's liquor cabinet in the office 3. Officer's Club 4. Winchester scheming for Napoleon Brandy or rare wine 5. Potter's ceremonial bottle of wine from WWI 6. Rosie's Bar 7. Just the amount the characters drink. Now, with all that, i have found it amusing as hell that in at least 3 episodes (off the top of my head) the show has tackled alcohol abuse. of those three, only one involved a main cast member- when Hawkeye chose to quit for a week- and the others took a moral high road. what i don't get, is that it was okay to show the main crew drinking the world under the table and yet a nurse empties a bottle in a storage room, she has a problem called alcoholism. am i the only one that thought it strange the show could present things that way? any thoughts on this?
Don't see the problem, personally. You seem to be suggesting that people who drink can't be opposed to alcoholism. Besides, the TV show is kinda... poor. Yeah, I know it's heresy, but it's a watered-down, over-emotional version of the book and movie.
Even in the beginning, it was a poor knockoff. Hawkeye being single so as not to offend public sensibilities when he chased women, Hawk's dad having been a doctor instead of a fisherman (I have trouble believing a doctor had only ever read one book), Trapper John being pretty much neutered so Alan Alda could take the spotlight, half the characters being totally absent, Radar being Flanderised, Hawkeye being a spokesman for liberal America, etc.
Meh, I never really liked the book or the movie (mostly because the movie peters out into the overlong football game), but the TV series is one of my all-time favorites. The Trapper/Blake seasons are my favorites, but I like the remaining seasons as well. As for the double-standard with booze, yeah, I always noticed that but it didn't make the show any less entertaining. I think there was an episode where someone actually points out that double-standard, isn't there?
i believe there is. An aged, veteran war surgeon gets drunk because he can't stand to go back into the ER and Hawkeye chides him for it. But the old timer says, you're hot now, but in a few years and wars, you'll be like me. i am not saying the show is good or bad, just that it bugged me that for people that drank far beyond normal or what would be deemed alcoholic, (and offered the excuses that made it seem so- drink to forget, to get numb, to mourn) They came down hard on others who did so. isn't it like Dexter? he chases serial killers, but he himself is one? Hey, you there, you can't kill people, but it's okay, I am Dexter. the serial killer-killer.
It's just a reflection of the times that the show was made in. There was a double standard, so why shouldn't it be an aspect of the show. You just as well should rant about the stereotypical portrayals of black people in Amos and Andy. This is the way people thought about then, nothing more nothing less. Basicly, you can't expect a show made thirty years ago to have the same standards/values/ethics as a show made today.
I see nothing wrong with it. Hell, if I was a surgeon in Vietnam that close to enemy lines, I bet I would be drinking also.
I love MASH. Didnt really have exposure to the book or the movie, but my dad watched the show every night and I have come to love it. Great show.
It takes place in Korea not Vietnam, I like the show better than the movie, and ironicly The Korean war lasted 2 years where as the TV series lasted 11 years and its final episode still holds the record for most watch singal episode of a tv show with 106 million people watching, a record it has held for 26 years (1983-2009) even the super bowl in which the Giants upset the up to that point undefeated Patriots could not top it !
The Korean lasted three years. As to said double standard, you would drink a hell of a lot too if you had to stand ankle deep in blood and work twelve to eighteen hour shifts daily with the wonderfull possibility of being killed or (god forbid) becoming a p.o.w. As I recall in the episode right after "Good-bye Radar" Hawkeye comments to BJ about the futility of drinking to forget and how it won't work for long. I alway got the feeling that once they got back to cilvilian life there drinking would go back to what it used to be before Korea.
okay i stand corrected but my point is still valid the series lasted far longer than the war, and i agree it probably would have
I remember the show used to be one of my dad favorites. He watched it every Saturday night on CBS back in the early 1970's.
