I think I will stop having thoughts about M*A*S*H when I die. And even then I’ll still annoy whoever comes to collect me with my ever swirling brain matter about my emotional support dramedy.

I’ve waxed poetic about why M*A*S*H means so much to me before (which you can find here) and the best summary I have as to why is that M*A*S*H is a show about hope in a pill my cynical self can swallow, that systemic change is slow and the need to yell and complain about it is valid but you can’t let the bastards win because you need to see the system change for the better. Though I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Pitch: M*A*S*H is a sitcom about an army medical unit in Korea fairly close to the frontlines (how far varies from mention to mention. It’s usually within the range of two to eight. Occasionally right on top of it for specific episodes) and how its staff cope and survive their current predicament. It’s one of those cultural touchstone shows, at least in retrospect. At the time… well it had to crawl its way to an audience but it had less competition. You had three channels, and that’s it.

Getting anyone into a television show is hard. More so now with streaming. There’s six million things to watch, the subscription services are expensive and repetitive, and that’s before you’ve gotten to the constant cancellations (but that’s a topic for a different essay). Originally your options were a) someone owned it on DVD or B) you caught it in rerun. There is of course the secret third option: both. 

See, my parents basically had the entire run of M*A*S*H on DVD and before my dad bought it on iTunes and we had an AppleTV, every so often he’d go on a kick and we’d watch a string of episodes. I didn’t get it as a kid, at least not most of it. But something in there must’ve hardwired my brain because all the sudden I’m a twenty something in 2023 who can quote several scenes verbatim. There’s just… something that grips me at my core. Maybe it’s the constant wisecracks and the anti-authority, anti-government energy.

“It’s not your job to question the government.”

“Why not, I find some of their actions highly questionable.”

So this show has a bit of a connection to home and comfort. I christened my second year dorm room with an episode of it because I needed to figure out if my new monitor worked and I needed something I could count for a control. (It was Chief Surgeon, Who? An episode I can fully quote). When I didn’t have internet when I moved into my apartment, I only had episodes of M*A*S*H downloaded (that, and Cowboy Bebop) but the point is is that since I’ve entered the world as a semi independent entity  and I need to just sort of coil into a ball and feel my feelings, M*A*S*H and it’s occasional wild tonal shifts is just the show I turn to.

Maybe it’s the occasionally contradictory character work where the details may change but the core is the same and watching these characters keep each other together. (This show famously didn’t have a show bible so frequently, especially in the early seasons, backstory details would change. For example: the fact that Hawkeye starts the series with a mother and sister and by the end has seemingly been an only child of a widower, Colonel Blake’s wife’s name, whether or not Margaret’s dad is dead.)

It was definitely a bit of the accidental queerness that might have played as punching down originally but now I can’t help but double over at simply because I’ve had friends make similar jokes.

Actually, let’s talk about Klinger. Max Klinger starts the series as a guy wearing a dress as to get out of the army on a section eight (the one about craziness, this show is set in the 50s after all, perceived queerness could be grounds for craziness), but none of the characters we’re supposed actually like punch down to him. They just sort of acknowledge it as another thing about living in this hellscape. Hell, they even compliment his outfits! It’s surprisingly nice for the 1970s! God I wish that other things aged this well! But wait, hang on, this had a point, reruns! 

Right, when I bring this show up to people of my age or younger (either because I’ve parroted a joke or because someone asked me about my favorite TV shows) their first answers is “oh yeah, I think my parents watched it” or “its my grandparents favorite show” and like… yeah I have to admit this is my Grandparent Hobby. If I can’t immediately get them to sit down and watch the first episode with me they’ll notice it when it pops up on reruns. By turning this fifty-one year old sitcom into one of my favorite shows I’m doing my part to help bring the show to the next generation. Through a combination of nostalgia for the comforts of home and by some combination of  decent writing and decent story telling.

If, for some reason, you haven’t gotten around to it, get on it. I promise I make more sense if you do.