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Speaker 1: Montreal, Bon soirs.

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Speaker 2: It is Josh and Chuck.

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Speaker 1: And we are coming to your french Ish town.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And not just Montreal, We're also coming to Ottawa,

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Speaker 3: the capital of Canada itself, and Toronto, one of our

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Speaker 3: favorite cities in the entire world.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We're gonna be in those cities on June

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Speaker 1: twenty fifth, twenty sixth, and twenty seventh, and there are

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Speaker 1: still plenty of great tickets available. We love going to

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Speaker 1: Canada and we can't wait to go to some of

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Speaker 1: these towns we've never been to. And you can get tickets. Well,

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Speaker 1: you can go to the websites of the venues. You

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Speaker 1: can go to stuff youshould Know dot com and click

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Speaker 1: on the on tour button and click on the tickets

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Speaker 1: link there. There are all kinds of ways to find

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Speaker 1: these tickets.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'll see you guys next week.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 3: Hanging. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck

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Speaker 3: and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff you Should Know,

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Speaker 3: part of our ongoing TV edition because we were raised

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Speaker 3: on TV, so it's familiar to us and we.

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Speaker 1: Love it well. One of us love this. You might

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Speaker 1: as well go ahead and get that out of the way.

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Speaker 1: What do you mean, Mash? Yeah, I love Mash. You

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Speaker 1: hated Mash.

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Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about. Come on, I

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Speaker 3: don't I don't hate Mash. It's mostly a put on

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Speaker 3: just to annoy you. I yeah, I don't hate it,

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Speaker 3: hate it, you know what I mean?

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Speaker 1: Well, tell me your history. Did you watch it at all?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? I watched it with my dad.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 3: My dad would laugh out loud, throw his head back

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Speaker 3: and clap sometimes. Yeah, And it was fun just to

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Speaker 3: see my dad do that. Of course, he had, you know,

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Speaker 3: consumed two old Milwaukee tall boys by this time, but sure,

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Speaker 3: you know, I would guess that he probably would have

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Speaker 3: laughed regardless. And that was it. I mean, that's how

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Speaker 3: I know Mash essentially, and I've seen probably a decent

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Speaker 3: amount of the episodes, but I don't know. It was

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Speaker 3: never like I love Mash, you know, like Head of

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Speaker 3: the Class. I never loved Mash like I loved Head

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Speaker 3: of the Class or Perfect Strangers.

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Speaker 1: Right, Well, this is when I remember that you are

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Speaker 1: younger than me, so it's not like you were like

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Speaker 1: me nine years old and loving a show about alcoholic

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Speaker 1: surgeons in the Korean War.

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Speaker 3: No, but I don't feel like a lot of it

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Speaker 3: was lost on me. I think I got a lot

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Speaker 3: of it. It's just I don't think I was old

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Speaker 3: enough for the comedy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well I have talked about it before, but it

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Speaker 1: was definitely weird that a nine year old was into

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Speaker 1: a comedy sometimes serious about alcoholic surgeons during the Korean War, right,

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Speaker 1: But I was into it. And you know, at one point,

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Speaker 1: Mash was on reruns in the evening and then late

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Speaker 1: night and while it was still airing so on Thursdays.

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Speaker 1: I believe it aired on Thursdays in primetime, at least

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Speaker 1: it did when I from my recollection. At one point

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Speaker 1: I was watching five episodes of Mash on Thursday and

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Speaker 1: four episodes of Mash every other day of the week.

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Speaker 3: Wow, there's not that many shows you can do that with.

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Speaker 1: No, it's like five and five thirty and then something

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Speaker 1: like ten then ten thirty or something like that.

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Speaker 3: I can do that with Law and Order. I can

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Speaker 3: just watch Law and Order indefinitely, the original series.

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Speaker 1: But it was I was into it. It was a

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Speaker 1: formative show for me. It was you know, it was

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Speaker 1: a top five show as a kid, So.

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Speaker 3: Wow, And is it still one of your top shows?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's not when I go back to

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Speaker 1: and it certainly has a place in my heart. But

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Speaker 1: it's hard to definitively rank today's TV against TV back then.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's different, very definitely different. There are no

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Speaker 1: short shows about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War.

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Speaker 3: Now there are no short shows. They're all six or

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Speaker 3: eight hours long at least.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the thirty minutes sitcom is on its legs. It

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Speaker 1: feels like, huh, are there any out there?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, there's a few.

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Speaker 1: I mean main you know, the main network still have

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Speaker 1: their shows. I just don't watch any of them.

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Speaker 3: The last mainstream network show that I saw that I

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Speaker 3: really liked was a ted dancing show called Mister Mayor

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Speaker 3: and it's it was funny. I don't know why I

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Speaker 3: got canceled. A great cast. It wasn't dumb, it was

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Speaker 3: as smart, but it was also hilarious, had a real

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Speaker 3: kind of like a slightly different thirty rock vibe to

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Speaker 3: like the writing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, man, I'd have to really dig

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Speaker 1: to see what the last major network half hour sitcom was.

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Speaker 1: I watched because I feel like it was like arrested development.

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Speaker 1: But maybe there's been one since then.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would say probably before, mister Mayor. That's

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Speaker 3: as far as it would go back for me too.

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Speaker 1: And you watched The Good Place too, didn't you?

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Speaker 3: I did. I didn't watch it. I watched it big

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Speaker 3: wise on I guess Netflix or whatever. I never watched

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Speaker 3: it when it was on.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So obviously all this is barreling us toward MASH,

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Speaker 3: which is an acronym. Did you know that, mister Smarty?

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Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, Well, why don't you since this is

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Speaker 1: your favorite show, why don't you tell everybody what it

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Speaker 1: stands for?

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Speaker 3: It stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. And as everyone,

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Speaker 3: even Jerry knows that there's an asterisk in between the letters.

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Speaker 3: Three asterisks. Our friend Dave helped us with this, and he.

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Speaker 1: He also hates MASH.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. He looked high and low and was like, there's

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Speaker 3: no reason for the asterisks. He thinks that it was

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Speaker 3: just a design thing, and I couldn't find anything that

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Speaker 3: contradicted that.

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Speaker 1: Well, my feeling is that I think it clearly was

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Speaker 1: meant to show that it is an acronym, even though

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Speaker 1: that's not how the military necessarily distinguished it because people

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Speaker 1: would just say, what in the world is MASH mean?

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Speaker 1: But oh wait, it must stand for something, would be

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Speaker 1: my guess.

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Speaker 3: Right, But they didn't use periods after each letter like

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Speaker 3: the military would of.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, I get you. I'm yeah. An acronym

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Speaker 1: is typically a period, right, oh gotcha? Yeah yeah. But

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Speaker 1: it looks good though, You're.

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Speaker 3: Right, it does.

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Speaker 1: It looks fantastic, very signature.

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Speaker 3: So mobile Army Surgical Hospital and obviously, if you've ever

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Speaker 3: seen MASH, it's where the whole thing is set, set

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Speaker 3: during the Korean War in a mobile surgical hospital, hence

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Speaker 3: the name, and those were actually a real thing. Did

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Speaker 3: you know that, mister smart guy who loves MASH so much?

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Speaker 1: Oh boy, this is what we're in for. I did

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Speaker 1: know that, because you know, at some point the show

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Speaker 1: spells that out, So yeah, I knew that was the thing.

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Speaker 1: What I was curious, And you know, my Mash recollection

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Speaker 1: this is from a long time ago. I don't remember

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Speaker 1: them ever moving at all, so I feel like they

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Speaker 1: kind of stayed there, unless that was an episode that

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Speaker 1: I missed where they were like, yeah, we're gonna move

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Speaker 1: to this other part of Malibu, which which is where

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Speaker 1: it was filmed, the Fox Ranch which is now Malibu

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Speaker 1: Creek State Park, which is why and all the scenes

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Speaker 1: of helicopters flying around Korea. Who knows if that's what

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Speaker 1: Korea looks like, but it looks like the mountains of

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Speaker 1: southern California.

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Speaker 3: You don't know, that's where the Manson family lived for

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Speaker 3: a while.

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Speaker 1: Oh really, no, No, they lived on Spawn Ring, right, Okay.

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Speaker 3: Anytime I hear ranch in California, I just immediately think

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Speaker 3: of the Manson family.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know I've told the story about shooting

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Speaker 1: out there, but it was a big treat for me

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Speaker 1: as a PA to shoot a commercial and see like

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Speaker 1: a rusted out army oh yeah, ambulance, and I think,

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Speaker 1: I mean, who knows what's there now, but there were

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Speaker 1: still a few remnants back then, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember my mind being blown when I found

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Speaker 3: out that that was like California in the back.

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Speaker 1: He didn't go to Korea.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's kind of when I started to

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Speaker 3: get that people cut corners for money.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 2: So.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so a mash thing. A mash was actually a thing,

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Speaker 3: and I think it was actually first try it out

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Speaker 3: in the Korean War, which I think was a three

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Speaker 3: year war. But something interesting that I noticed about Mashes

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Speaker 3: that it ran for eleven seasons, so it was almost

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Speaker 3: four times longer than the actual war that was the

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Speaker 3: setting for this TV show. But in reality, like I

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Speaker 3: was saying, a MASH hospital was tried out in the

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Speaker 3: Korean War in real life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And the idea is that they put

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Speaker 1: the surgeons close to the front lines so they could

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Speaker 1: save more lives. And it was, you know, they're all

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Speaker 1: kind of temporary, like they slept on you know, cot

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Speaker 1: like beds, and they lived in tents, and it was

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Speaker 1: on the TV show there's a lot to talk about

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Speaker 1: the front and how close they were, but the real

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Speaker 1: life MASH units apparently had a ninety seven percent survival rate.

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Speaker 1: If you got there, your chances are you lived.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was a really good idea that panned out. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: And in the show, you can hear bombs going off

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Speaker 3: sometimes occasionally the overhead lights will flicker and sway because

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Speaker 3: they are so close to the front. And I was

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Speaker 3: thinking about the same thing that you mentioned too, that

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Speaker 3: they never seemed to change or move their unit. And

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Speaker 3: if it's supposed to be four to five miles behind

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Speaker 3: front lines. Then that would have to be a completely

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Speaker 3: static front line for all those years to never move.

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Speaker 3: But it made me wonder about like the real life

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Speaker 3: mash surgeons, like how often did you have to break

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Speaker 3: down your mash unit and then move it, you know,

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Speaker 3: and set it up again, which apparently you could do

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Speaker 3: very quickly. Supposedly you could set one up in twenty

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Speaker 3: four hours. But that also just kind of goes to

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Speaker 3: explain like these were not like state of the art

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Speaker 3: surgical wards. They were like blood and guts, get your

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Speaker 3: hands dirty, you're lucky if you have more than one scalpel,

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Speaker 3: kind of like surgical outfit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And that was conveyed very well in

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Speaker 1: the show. The doctors on the show, you know, just

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Speaker 1: like in real life, the doctors were generally civilians that

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Speaker 1: were drafted into the war to be army surgeons. After

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Speaker 1: I think World War Two, they had a tougher time

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Speaker 1: getting surgeons going, and when Korea came around, they passed

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Speaker 1: the Doctor's Draft Act. If you had already served in

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Speaker 1: World War two as a doctor or surgeon or nurse

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Speaker 1: or whatever, you didn't, you could get waived. You could

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Speaker 1: still serve if you wanted to. But the long and

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Speaker 1: short of that is the recruits were younger, they didn't

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Speaker 1: have as much experience. They definitely were not looking to

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Speaker 1: join the army. Which was a big, big part of

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Speaker 1: that show is that none of you know, none of them,

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Speaker 1: but the main characters that we're going to talk about,

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Speaker 1: like the protagonist, not the foils. The Foils kind of

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Speaker 1: liked the army, but the other guys generally did not

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Speaker 1: like being there or being in the army culture. And

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Speaker 1: Alan Alda was thirty six when they started making this.

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Speaker 1: It was kind of curious about his starting age. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: thirty six.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's almost one of the cornerstones

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Speaker 3: of this show is that these are civilian doctors who

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Speaker 3: were drafted in the Middle Military, and they're kind of

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Speaker 3: bristling against this the regimentedness that's required of them just

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Speaker 3: from being in the military. They're like, just get out

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Speaker 3: of our hair. We're here to save lives, you know.

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Speaker 3: Take that whole like revelly stuff and shove it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It was actually a book and this

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Speaker 1: smart guy I did not know no.

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Speaker 3: Way I was going to ask you that facetiously and

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Speaker 3: I didn't.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I did not know this. Of course I

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Speaker 1: knew it was a movie, and we'll talk about then

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Speaker 1: a second. But the movie was optioned from a book

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Speaker 1: written in nineteen sixty eight called Mash Colon, a novel

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Speaker 1: about three army doctors by a Mash veteran doctor named

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Speaker 1: doctor Richard H. Hornberger under a pseudonym Richard Hooker. I

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Speaker 1: think he added a co writer named W. C. Hines

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Speaker 1: when it came pretty clear that his book was a

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Speaker 1: bit of a mess, because it sounds like it was

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Speaker 1: just sort of a group of stories about his experience

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Speaker 1: in the eight oh five to five. The eighty fifty

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Speaker 1: fifth Mash Unit was the real life unit that it

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Speaker 1: was based on, and it sounds like it was, you know,

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Speaker 1: like what we see on TV and in the movies,

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Speaker 1: Like they partied a lot, they drank a lot, did

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Speaker 1: a lot of pranks, and on the side did some surgery.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, like you said, it was kind of loosely

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Speaker 3: put together, like each chapter started with hey, get this right,

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Speaker 3: and they were basically like yeah, they were anecdotes, and

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Speaker 3: then apparently he also peppered in some like gory stuff

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Speaker 3: just to basically get across the Horrors of War and

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Speaker 3: he was actually a surgeon in Maine and when he

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Speaker 3: put this whole book together, and they brought in W. C. Hines,

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Speaker 3: a sportswriter, to kind of help him with it. If

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Speaker 3: you've seen the TV show and you've never read the book,

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Speaker 3: maybe even haven't seen the movie, you have a totally

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Speaker 3: different conception of Mash than what Hornberger created and what

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Speaker 3: the movie kind of portrayed, which is like, this wasn't

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Speaker 3: a he didn't have any liberal agenda. In fact, he

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Speaker 3: was kind of conservative, and he didn't really like the

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Speaker 3: tone of the TV show, but it was still it

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Speaker 3: still had like a kind of anti war bent through it,

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Speaker 3: or at least just questioning that the morality of war,

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Speaker 3: just how stupid and wasteful it is. But it wasn't

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Speaker 3: you know, it was not a liberal book or written

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Speaker 3: by a liberal person.

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Speaker 1: But you know it's Hollywood gets a whold of something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're going to liberalize it. And that's basically, you know,

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Speaker 1: like you said, what the movie and TV show ended

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Speaker 1: up being. It's like a statement, like an anti war statement.

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Speaker 1: Hornberger after not after Mash, because we'll talk about that later.

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Speaker 1: The weird spinoff, but Postmash, he wrote more mash books.

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Speaker 1: After you Know the movie was a hit. He wrote

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Speaker 1: fourteen mash novels. The first one was called Mash and Maine,

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Speaker 1: which published the same year the TV show ended up premiering.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, fourteen novels, a movie and a TV show off

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Speaker 3: of a book that he had to bring a sports

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Speaker 3: writer into help, you know, whip into shape.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, can you cash in exactly?

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Speaker 3: So? Yeah, And he was just basically trying to get

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Speaker 3: his anecdotes across, which were mostly like drunken prank stuff

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Speaker 3: like you said, like you see on the TV show,

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Speaker 3: like that was based on this guy's book. So, like

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Speaker 3: I said, it was turned into a movie. I think

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Speaker 3: it was option maybe even the year it was published

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Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight, because the movie came out in

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Speaker 3: nineteen seventy and I imagine it took a little while

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Speaker 3: to make because it's a mess and it was directed

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Speaker 3: by Robert Altman.

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Speaker 1: So you didn't like the movie.

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Speaker 3: I've only seen it once. I'm not entirely certain I

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Speaker 3: saw the whole thing. I don't remember if I saw

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Speaker 3: the whole thing. I was reading about people debating on

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Speaker 3: whether the movie is any good or not, And it

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Speaker 3: seemed like the consensus was that somebody say it's a

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Speaker 3: masterpiece of twentieth century comedy. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: See, that's where I veer off, Like I love, love,

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Speaker 1: love the TV show. I liked the movie okay, like

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Speaker 1: I'm a big Robert Almond guy. It critically did very

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Speaker 1: I mean, it was a big hit. It won the

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Speaker 1: Golden Palm at the Cans Film Festival in nineteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: nominated for Best Picture and four other oscars. I think

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Speaker 1: it won Best Screenplay. So it was a huge hit.

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Speaker 1: But it's like, I think maybe I was too young

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Speaker 1: the first time I saw it, and I loved the

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Speaker 1: TV show so much, I was like, I gotta go

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Speaker 1: see the movie version, and the movie version's a lot different,

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Speaker 1: and it just didn't. I don't know. I don't think

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Speaker 1: it's among Altman's best work, but certainly a lot of

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Speaker 1: people disagree with me.

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Speaker 3: Sure a lot of people like it, but it's almost

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Speaker 3: one of those things you get the impression that people

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Speaker 3: like it because it's, you know, supposedly this amazing thing,

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Speaker 3: not because they'd like it like it, you know what

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Speaker 3: I mean. Maybe maybe that's just kind of the tone

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Speaker 3: that I got But anyway, the movie was a little

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Speaker 3: closer to the book, and in that it's like it

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Speaker 3: portrays everything that the younger generations did, like about the

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Speaker 3: oldest generation right now explain sexism, racism, Oh sure, she's

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Speaker 3: just completely completely ignoring like the consequences of harming other people.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, like essentially everything, Like those are the

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Speaker 3: main themes throughout this movie, right although again the subtext

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Speaker 3: is that this is an anti war movie at the

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Speaker 3: very least again questioning the morality of war. And it

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Speaker 3: was released right at you know, the peak of when

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Speaker 3: anti war sentiment was really aroused in America because of

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Speaker 3: the Vietnam War.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I didn't know where you're going,

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Speaker 1: but you totally nailed it. Like in this movie, it's

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Speaker 1: like it's supposed to be funny that hot lips Hula Han,

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Speaker 1: the head nurse is the shower curtain has ripped open

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Speaker 1: and she has fully frontally exposed naked to the rest

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Speaker 1: of the camp. Yeah, like this played for laugh So

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Speaker 1: obviously it's a movie of its time. It was by

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Speaker 1: Ring Lardner junior, obviously son of a great short story writer,

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Speaker 1: Ring Lardner, and he I think they called him. Pinky

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Speaker 1: Ring was his nickname.

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Speaker 3: No, oh, you got me. That's a good one.

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Speaker 1: Oh. Thanks, that'd be a pretty good nickname for a

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Speaker 1: Ring Junior. Yeah, or maybe toe ring. No pinky pinky ring.

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Speaker 3: Okay.

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Speaker 1: Uh so Altman, you know, does his Altman thing, which

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Speaker 1: is a lot of improvisation, a lot of overlapping dialogue.

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Speaker 1: It's his hallmark as a filmmaker. Ring Lardner Junior did

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Speaker 1: not care for that, evidently, and said, like, you ruined

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Speaker 1: what I wrote. And I don't know if he took

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Speaker 1: that back after he won the Oscar for screenplay or not,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, it's kind of interesting.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I saw he tried to get his name taken

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Speaker 3: off of it and then he won the Oscar. Wow,

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Speaker 3: I guess I'll stick with this.

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Speaker 1: That's really funny.

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Speaker 3: One other thing about ring Lardner Junior I saw is

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Speaker 3: that he was one of the Hollywood ten who was

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Speaker 3: blacklisted by the McCarthy hearings.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so sure.

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Speaker 3: It was like almost a slightly sub of act in

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Speaker 3: and of itself to hire him in the late sixties

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Speaker 3: after you know, they were bringing him back.

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Speaker 1: I guess, well, Altmund's he was an old pothead. He

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Speaker 1: was a medium age pothead at that point.

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Speaker 3: So let's talk about the theme song, which I'm sure

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Speaker 3: a lot of people know the title of it, but

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Speaker 3: many people might not actually because they played it. If

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Speaker 3: you're a fan of the TV show, it was always instrumental.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they changed it from the movie. In the movie,

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Speaker 1: it had words. The name of the song is suicide

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Speaker 1: is Painless, and the story behind it I did not know.

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Speaker 1: In the mash movie there was a character I did

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Speaker 1: know this stuff, Captain Walt Waldowski, who says he wants

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Speaker 1: to take his own life because he's gay and he's

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Speaker 1: in the army and he can't bear it. And so

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Speaker 1: they do a fake sort of a fake funeral, a

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Speaker 1: living funeral, and give him a placebo pill, telling him

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Speaker 1: it's a big sedative that's gonna, you know, take his life, right.

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Speaker 1: And so Altman's like, I need a song that he

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Speaker 1: pitched it as I needed to be the stupidest song ever.

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Speaker 1: So we hired a guy, a real musician named Johnny Mandel.

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Speaker 1: Any relation to the Men that's Mandrill, Sorry.

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Speaker 3: Close, he's a distant, distant relation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. He dropped the arm and he was like,

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Speaker 1: we need a song for this funeral, I want to

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Speaker 1: be the dumbest song ever. And Altman tried to write

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Speaker 1: it but couldn't come up with anything that he liked. So,

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Speaker 1: as the story goes, he hired his fifteen year old

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Speaker 1: son Michael to co write this thing with this pro musician,

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Speaker 1: and that's what they came up with.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and like that explains like it was a purposefully

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Speaker 3: stupid song, which explains just the only lyrics I know,

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Speaker 3: which is suicide is painless. It brings on many changes,

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Speaker 3: and I've always been like that seems a little tongue

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Speaker 3: in cheek, like what's the right?

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Speaker 1: Like I don't get that.

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Speaker 3: No, I do maybe want to go back and read

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Speaker 3: the rest of the lyrics because I'm sure they're hilario.

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Speaker 1: I actually meant to do that too, and I did not.

400
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Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I know Emily worked with two

401
00:20:06,800 --> 00:20:09,399
Speaker 1: all with Roger and two of his sons on The

402
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:13,560
Speaker 1: gingerbread Man in Savannah, and I asked her if Michael

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Speaker 1: was one of them, and she said no, it was

404
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Speaker 1: two of the others or maybe the other two.

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Speaker 3: Was it gingerbread Man? Is that a Grisham thriller? I

406
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Speaker 3: think so, or at least in that vein.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was a Grisham thriller.

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Speaker 3: Hey, speaking of movies, I saw something just last night

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Speaker 3: that I want to recommend.

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Speaker 1: Let's hear it.

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Speaker 3: It's an old Oswald or ozgood sorry Oz Ozgod Perkins movie.

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Speaker 3: You love that guy, Gretel and Hansel, and I think.

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Speaker 1: It's feel like you have it backwards.

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Speaker 3: To No, no, that's the way, that's the time. I'm

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Speaker 3: just kidding because Gretel's older in this one and it's

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Speaker 3: from like twenty twelve, thirteen. It's great.

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Speaker 1: You should start a podcast on Oz Perkins.

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Speaker 3: I wonder if I could get him to come on.

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Speaker 1: It, like, you know, like Finding Oz or the Wizard

420
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Speaker 1: of Oz or something like that.

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00:21:05,040 --> 00:21:08,040
Speaker 3: Sure, or behind the Curtain, Yeah.

422
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, find the the green behind the green Door. That's

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Speaker 1: something different behind the green curtain.

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Speaker 3: Behind the green door.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, I feel like you should take

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Speaker 1: a break. We told the song story and we'll be

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Speaker 1: right back to finally get to the TV show after.

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Speaker 2: This loop with Joe shoe on cho.

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Speaker 3: Stuff.

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Speaker 2: You shit.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Chuck, So you said we'd get to the TV show,

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Speaker 3: but you lied, lied, lied, Because there's a little more

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Speaker 3: about the movie. We have to talk about. Oh okay,

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Speaker 3: chiefly that it was nominated for five Oscars, like you said,

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Speaker 3: Ring Lardner Junior, and for the Best Screenplay. But most

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Speaker 3: importantly is that Robert Altman hated the TV show.

437
00:22:06,840 --> 00:22:08,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good point.

438
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:11,840
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that Robert Altman never even saw the TV show.

439
00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:14,920
Speaker 3: I'll bet that he heard it, heard that they were

440
00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:17,240
Speaker 3: making it on CBS and that they were turning into

441
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:21,720
Speaker 3: a thirty minute comedy and was like, this is the

442
00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:23,960
Speaker 3: It's the worst thing I've ever seen, even though I've

443
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 3: never seen it. That would be my guess.

444
00:22:26,200 --> 00:22:30,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, And you know, to be fair at the time,

445
00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:33,080
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll see Alan Alda's reaction to being

446
00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 1: pitched this idea and him not wanting to try to

447
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:39,720
Speaker 1: audition it first is that the history of TV and

448
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:43,679
Speaker 1: war shows and army and Navy shows and stuff like

449
00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:46,919
Speaker 1: Hogan's Heroes and Michale's Navy, and that's the kind of

450
00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:50,520
Speaker 1: thing that somebody like Robert Altman and Alan Alda wouldn't

451
00:22:50,560 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 1: have liked. And it was only after Alan Alda read

452
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:56,160
Speaker 1: the pilot and he said, this is the best TV

453
00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:58,399
Speaker 1: pillot I've ever read. I'm totally going to audition for

454
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: this that he decided to do it, But I could

455
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:03,679
Speaker 1: see Altman just not going there, you know.

456
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's a really risky thing that's actually,

457
00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 3: in retrospect, quite surprising. It's retrospect, by the way, that's

458
00:23:12,080 --> 00:23:17,280
Speaker 3: the German pronunciation. It's really surprising that anybody was able

459
00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:19,720
Speaker 3: to pull it off, because if you know the book

460
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:23,040
Speaker 3: or the movie, the idea of adapting those into a

461
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 3: TV show, a family friendly TV show in the late

462
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:28,760
Speaker 3: sixties early seventies is like, wait, what are you going

463
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 3: to do? The only way you could possibly do that

464
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:34,680
Speaker 3: is to make it like screwball high jinks, like Michale's Navy,

465
00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 3: where the war just happens to be the setting. It

466
00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 3: could also be an office comedy essentially, and that's not

467
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:43,400
Speaker 3: at all what they did. Thanks to a producer named

468
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:47,240
Speaker 3: Jene Reynolds and a writer named Larry Gelbert. I don't

469
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 3: know how those two came together, but it was a

470
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 3: match made in CBS Heaven.

471
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:58,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Gelbert was an experienced writer. He wrote,

472
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 1: or at least co wrote, the musical of Funny Thing

473
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,480
Speaker 1: Happened on the Way to the Forum. Later on, after

474
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:08,359
Speaker 1: post smash, he wrote the movie TUTSI, which is great

475
00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 1: in the movie Oh God with George Burns and John Denver,

476
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 1: which to me is great, and I guess to you

477
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:15,879
Speaker 1: two not so much Oh God Book two, but that

478
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: first Oh God was awesome.

479
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 3: I saw both. I don't remember the book two, but

480
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 3: the first one was so great.

481
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, But they you know, they didn't want they

482
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: wanted to walk that fine line between having laughs and

483
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:33,440
Speaker 1: it being a quote unquote comedy and an anti war

484
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: movie and a movie about the horrors of combat, and

485
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting. They walk a really tough fine line,

486
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: and as we'll see, you know, they ended up doing

487
00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: some really groundbreaking episodes, you know, in later seasons. The

488
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:54,880
Speaker 1: first few seasons were definitely leaned way more into the

489
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,159
Speaker 1: sort of high jinks of it all, and then I

490
00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: think they realized, like, hey, we have a real chance

491
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:02,119
Speaker 1: here to have some incredible character arcs and really do

492
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: something a little bit more like All in the Family

493
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 1: was doing.

494
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they actually put it behind All in the

495
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 3: Family at some point, which helped bring it out of

496
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 3: TV purgatory, I guess. But one of the ways that

497
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 3: the producers were able to kind of navigate that narrow

498
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:30,159
Speaker 3: margin between just idiocy and over over melodramatic stuff was

499
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 3: that the studio the network was like, obviously, we're going

500
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 3: to have a laugh track. Thirty minutes comedy have to

501
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,640
Speaker 3: have a laugh track, and the producers kept pushing back

502
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 3: and pushing back, and they finally reached a compromise where

503
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:45,199
Speaker 3: the oar scenes could not have a laugh track, And

504
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 3: then there were other sometimes other episodes or scenes where

505
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 3: they were real downers where they didn't have the laugh

506
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 3: track either. But if you watch Mash today, it's easy

507
00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 3: to kind of miss the laugh track until they get

508
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:03,680
Speaker 3: into the oar and then it's glaringly missing, Yeah, which

509
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 3: I think is actually kind of useful in contrasting you

510
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 3: know how these surgeons are these not just the surgeons,

511
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 3: but everybody at the mass unit is having to get

512
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 3: jerked around by reality, like just messing around, getting drunk

513
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 3: on homemade gin and then all of a sudden you

514
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 3: have like both of your hands in a eighteen year

515
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 3: old soldier's chest, Like that's what they are trying to

516
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 3: portray in the kind of smart use of a laugh

517
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 3: track actually helped with that.

518
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:33,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, as a kid and

519
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: just as an American in general at the time, like

520
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:38,080
Speaker 1: the laugh track was so ubiquitous that you didn't really

521
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: think about it much as being like weird. It was

522
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:43,959
Speaker 1: usually like a studio audience thing, and this was not

523
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: a studio audience show, but you just sort of accepted it,

524
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: Like apparently the BBC never used the laugh track at all.

525
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: And then I'm also reminded of like I think years back,

526
00:26:56,800 --> 00:27:01,439
Speaker 1: someone did some Friends episode without the laugh track and

527
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: divided him up into clips, and it's just jarring to

528
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:07,640
Speaker 1: hear that kind of a show without a laugh track.

529
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: So Match was a was sort of a weird case.

530
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 3: We've talked about that because not only is a jarring,

531
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 3: it's like this isn't funny at all.

532
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: It really cues you, and you don't even the laugh

533
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: track sounds like such a dumb thing, like one hundred

534
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:23,679
Speaker 1: years from now people say, like they really did that

535
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: on shows, but you it was such an institution and

536
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: like a certain kind of comedy that yeah, like you said,

537
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: without it, you don't know him to laugh almost.

538
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:37,680
Speaker 3: Do you remember in the I Guess the two thousand Oughts.

539
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 3: It must have been right before Cartoon Network came around,

540
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 3: or Adult Swim, right before adults swim somebody put out

541
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 3: like old episodes a Birdman and Space Ghosts like the

542
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 3: original sixties episodes. But then they peppered him with laugh tracks,

543
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 3: often inappropriately placed where nothing even remotely funny is going on,

544
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 3: but the audience this hand laughter just kind of comes

545
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 3: in and it made it so bizarrely funny. Have you

546
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:06,440
Speaker 3: not seen those?

547
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: Was that space Ghost Coast to Coast?

548
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:10,680
Speaker 3: This is before space Coast Coast to Coast?

549
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: Oh okay, because yeah, Dave.

550
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 3: Willis, Yeah, Dave Willis was on Space Coast Coast to

551
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:19,120
Speaker 3: coast or he co founded it. I guess he might

552
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:21,199
Speaker 3: have had something to do with this because it was

553
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 3: clearly attached to space Coast Coast to coast, because that happened,

554
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 3: you know, right before it. But if you watch those,

555
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:33,120
Speaker 3: they're just it's such an easy, basic idea, but it's

556
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:34,679
Speaker 3: so funny to watch them.

557
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:37,399
Speaker 1: Oh man, those early years of Cartoon Network were just

558
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 1: the best. Yeah, and Comedy Central, like it used to

559
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: be so much better, you know, oh yeah, everything.

560
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 3: I think Comedy Central's just old South Park reruns in

561
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 3: the Daily Show once in a while.

562
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a real shame. As far as Mash

563
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 1: and their storylines go though. Apparently Gilbert and Reynolds interviewed

564
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 1: a lot of veterans from the Korean War, got a

565
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 1: lot of stuff from that, and worked into episodes like

566
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: the episode where a wounded North Korean soldier is in

567
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: the er there and he pulls a pin out of

568
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: a hand grenade that he was hi hiding on the

569
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: operating table. Like that apparently really happened, as did a

570
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff.

571
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I was like, did it really happen? And

572
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 3: I went and found reference to the actual name of

573
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 3: the surgeon who told that story in these interviews. Oh yeah,

574
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 3: so like it definitely happened. So I think I said

575
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:33,600
Speaker 3: that Mash was on for eleven years, and it premiered

576
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 3: in September seventy two and ran all the way to

577
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 3: February nineteen eighty three. That is a long run for

578
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 3: a show.

579
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean for pretty good back then.

580
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 3: Now, like eleven years is a really long time. But

581
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 3: at first it was not very well received the very

582
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 3: at least people didn't know about it because it was

583
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:53,959
Speaker 3: put up against the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday

584
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 3: nights and it was not doing very well there.

585
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, wonderful Disney was a juggernaut of a

586
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: show for mainstream America. So Alan Alda apparently used to

587
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: joke that MASH was one of the top seventy eight

588
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: shows on TV early on, and very Alan Alda kind

589
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: of thing to say, and they moved it like like

590
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: you've said earlier to after All in the Family, which

591
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 1: was a huge hit, and that made gave MASH a

592
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: lot more visibility, obviously, and all of a sudden, MASH

593
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: was the number two show on TV and that was it.

594
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: And Day found a great quote from Newsweek as far

595
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 1: as a critical acclaim that I think kind of sums

596
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 1: it up, and it is this, without ever moralizing, Mash

597
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: is the most moral entertainment on commercial television. It proposes

598
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: craft against butchery, humor against despair, wit as a defense

599
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: mechanism against the senseless enormity of the situation. Pretty good stuff.

600
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the Newsweek people really got it.

601
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the characters, Yeah.

602
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 3: Let's because we've made reference to some, but I feel

603
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 3: like we should get a little more in depth with them.

604
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Hay, we've mentioned a few times. He's I

605
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: guess you would just call the main character and that

606
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 1: was Alanalda, by the way, the great Alan Alda, Like,

607
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: he's one of my heroes in entertainment really and by

608
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: all accounts, just one of the best dudes ever. And

609
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 1: he is ninety years old now, and which is great.

610
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: He's still around, and he is one of the great

611
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 1: writers and great directors and great actors and great human

612
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: beings in the history of the TV and movie business.

613
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 3: I think did he write a lot of those movies

614
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 3: he was in in the early eighties.

615
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: I think he co wrote he directed almost all of them.

616
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: He co wrote thirteen Mash episodes, directed thirty one, and

617
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: he played you know, Hawkey Pierce. This is a little

618
00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: known fact. Did you get that mental article I sent over? Yeah,

619
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 1: with the top or whatever? Twelve things seventeen So a

620
00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: few of these guys actually served in the at least

621
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: in the reserves. Alan Alda was serch six months in

622
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: the Army reserves in Korea. Pretty crazy.

623
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 3: So did Jamie Farr, who played Corporal Clinger, who is

624
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 3: essentially far and away the most famous person until Katie

625
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 3: Holmes came along to have come from Toledo.

626
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: I thought, you did this a Toledo thing. He was

627
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 1: always if you did never watch the show. Clinger often

628
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 1: referenced to Toledo mud Hens.

629
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 3: Toledo mud Hens, and Tony Pacos, which is a real

630
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 3: place in to I.

631
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: Mean, that's your place. I didn't know he talked about

632
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: that on the show.

633
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he talked about Tony Pacos all the time.

634
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 1: Oh see, I didn't know what it was back then.

635
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: I was like, who the hell is Tony Paco.

636
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 3: No, Tony Pacos is like a hot dog place, a

637
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 3: Hungarian hot dog place. And every time he would mention

638
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 3: the mud Hens or the Tony Pacos, I would look

639
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 3: over at my dad and there'd just be like a

640
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 3: single tear going down his cheek. He's so filled with

641
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 3: pride because you know, he got some on his face.

642
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:57,479
Speaker 1: All right, So Hawkey's the main guy. He Allan all

643
00:32:57,520 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: did for what It's Worth is the first person to

644
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: win an Emmy for acting, writing and directing on the

645
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: same show.

646
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 3: Wow.

647
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: Then we have his buddy, Trapper John played by Wayne Rodgers,

648
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: who was in real life in the Navy, and he

649
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 1: is the you know, the tent mate and confidant. Apparently

650
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: Robert Klein, the Great comedian turned down that role and

651
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: regretted it.

652
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 3: I could see that, although Wayne Rodgers, the guy who

653
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 3: played Trapper, John was like, you know, this guy's not

654
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 3: fully fleshed out. I'm basically Hawkeye's sidekick, right, I'm in

655
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 3: the sidecar. I'm laughing along with him. We're doing like

656
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 3: pranks together, but there's no me. Who is me? And

657
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 3: the director was like, I think it's who is I?

658
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 3: And they got into a really long disagreement about whether

659
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 3: it was I or me, and Wayne Rogers eventually left

660
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 3: after the third season.

661
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

662
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 3: The reason he was able to was because he never

663
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 3: signed a contract with the producers. I guess there was

664
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 3: like a morality clause. He's like, I'm not signing this,

665
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 3: and they forgot to go back and get him to

666
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 3: sign something. So he after the third season, which apparently

667
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 3: he seemed fine with.

668
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, Mash is one of those shows, like Cheers,

669
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: that was able to withstand some pretty drastic cast changes.

670
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 1: It's hard to pull off as a TV show. Cheers

671
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 1: did it very well, and Mash did it very well

672
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: because three of the main characters ended up being replaced.

673
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 1: Trapper was replaced by Honeycut BJ Honeycut played by Mike Farrell,

674
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:29,320
Speaker 1: or maybe it's Pharrell. He was actually a US Marine

675
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:34,800
Speaker 1: in real life. He was great. I love Toneycut. You know. Again,

676
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: those later seasons after like Trapper left and as we'll see,

677
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,760
Speaker 1: some of the other characters left, there were some tonal changes,

678
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: but I was along for the whole ride. I was

679
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:44,719
Speaker 1: in for all of it.

680
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially in the beginning, Hawkeye and Trapper John were

681
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 3: like prankster drunk womanizers. They would harass the nurses and

682
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:53,759
Speaker 3: try to get him to sleep with them and all

683
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 3: sorts of stuff. And then bj Honeycut was a lot different.

684
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 3: He was a breath of fresh air because he was

685
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 3: very true to his wife back home.

686
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.

687
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:03,879
Speaker 3: And he had a mustache.

688
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:08,120
Speaker 1: That's right. Did we have Radar of course, Corporal Radar

689
00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:13,760
Speaker 1: O'Reilly played by Gary Bergoff. He was named Radar because

690
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,879
Speaker 1: he was very much a recurring thing on the show.

691
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 1: Like every single episode he would either kind of finish

692
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: somebody's sentences, usually Colonel Blake's sentence, or know what somebody needed,

693
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,759
Speaker 1: like before they needed it and kind of just hand

694
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 1: it to him, or he would and this is a

695
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:31,400
Speaker 1: lot of times at the end of an episode. He

696
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: would always since the helicopters coming in with wounded before

697
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: you could hear the helicopters, and usually, like, if it

698
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 1: was a pretty light episode to be a lot of

699
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 1: high jinks that would be kind of halted at the

700
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: end of the episode when he heard the helicopters coming.

701
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:49,280
Speaker 3: Right there was Colonel Blake. He was one of my favorites,

702
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 3: played by McLean Stevenson and great. He was an actual

703
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 3: doctor who was put in charge of this mash unit

704
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 3: and he's like, I have no idea how to run

705
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 3: any kind of army outfit. So he was always kind

706
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:03,880
Speaker 3: of in over his depth, but he tried really hard

707
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 3: and he would get perturbed, which was kind of funny

708
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 3: sometimes because he never got mad. He just got right

709
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 3: perturbed and befuddled.

710
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: Kind of yeah, exasperated.

711
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,799
Speaker 3: But he wasn't an idiot like it was. It would

712
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,359
Speaker 3: have been really easy for any actor to portray him

713
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 3: as kind of a dummy, but McClean stevenson managed to

714
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:23,280
Speaker 3: keep him from going down that route.

715
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, he was a man. I love that character.

716
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:28,719
Speaker 1: We should mention too that Gary Bergoff's radar was the

717
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 1: only one who bridged the movie as far as you know,

718
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 1: being in both Colonel Blake was then replaced by Colonel

719
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 1: Sherman G. Potter. Yeah, played by Harry Morgan, And he

720
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 1: was a very different character than Blake, and that he

721
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: was an old school soldier, but he also kind of

722
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 1: he wasn't as by the book as you would think

723
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:52,480
Speaker 1: for an old school soldier and sort of indulged the

724
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:53,879
Speaker 1: antics for the most part.

725
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, Andy used the term horse feathers a lot to Mars. Yes,

726
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 3: there was another great character too who you just love

727
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 3: to hate. He was so good. Frank Burns, who was

728
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 3: played by Larry Lineville. He was He had what you

729
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 3: would term today is justice sensitivity. He liked to follow

730
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 3: the rules. He was fine with the military and the

731
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 3: requirements for its conformity, and anyone who didn't conform to

732
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 3: it was it just drove him up the wall, and

733
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 3: he tried to get them in trouble. So he was

734
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 3: like a tried and true fascist essentially.

735
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:33,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a bureaucrat. He was completely the foil

736
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 1: of Hawkeye and Trapper. He was played by Robert Duvall

737
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: in the film. But Larry Lynnville, as Ferret Face as

738
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,359
Speaker 1: they called him, was just I mean always felt bad

739
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: for the guy in real life because he was able

740
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: to play one of the more unlikable characters in TV history,

741
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 1: and he just did it so well as really good actor.

742
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should say also, Frank Burns was not a

743
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,360
Speaker 3: good surgeon, and at the end of the day in

744
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:04,359
Speaker 3: this mash unit, that's what that's what mattered, right, That's

745
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 3: why Hawkeye and Trapper John got away with all of

746
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 3: their antics, was because they were really good surgeons and

747
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 3: when it came to it, they were going to save

748
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 3: people's lives. Frank Burns what made him even worse is

749
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 3: that he wasn't even a good surgeon, Like you could

750
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 3: die on his operating table because he wasn't that good.

751
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:23,840
Speaker 3: And yet he would still go tell on you for

752
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 3: you know, drinking gin that you made in your get

753
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 3: you know, and it so much worse.

754
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were tentmates, the three of them, Yeah, the

755
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 1: two guys and then Burns lived together, and then he

756
00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: was replaced after the fifth season in season six by

757
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:45,279
Speaker 1: David Ogden's Steers as Charles Emerson Winchester, the third who

758
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 1: was a major I always thought he was kind of British,

759
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 1: but he just sort of did that mid Atlantic thing

760
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:53,800
Speaker 1: because he was came from a wealthy family in Boston

761
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:57,239
Speaker 1: family of doctors apparently, and he was a little less

762
00:38:57,280 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: of a foil but still a bit of a foil.

763
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, and blended and with him because he was so snobby.

764
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 3: They just had nothing in common essentially from their backgrounds.

765
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: Yeah.

766
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 3: Then there's Margaret hot Lips Hula Han played by Loretta Switt,

767
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,800
Speaker 3: who I've seen just from reading up on mash. The

768
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 3: TV show is roundly credited as taking like a pretty

769
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 3: one dimensional victim, angry character and turning her into something

770
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:30,680
Speaker 3: like really respectable and three dimensional over the course of

771
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 3: the eleven seasons, and that she actually got better, like

772
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:38,879
Speaker 3: the character got more involved in impressive and interesting over

773
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 3: the years thanks to this actor.

774
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, Loretta Sweat, she was great. Rest in peace. I

775
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 1: think we lost her last year or the year before,

776
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:50,920
Speaker 1: like fairly recently. She on the show hot Lips was

777
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: having an affair with Frank Burns, and they were always

778
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:56,919
Speaker 1: sort of coupled together against the you know, the other guys,

779
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 1: and they were bureaucrats. But like you said, she had

780
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:02,240
Speaker 1: a great character arc ded up really developing into something

781
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 1: special and then rounding it out. I guess we already

782
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:09,320
Speaker 1: talked about Clinger. We have father M'kayhe played by William Christopher,

783
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: who is the chaplain, and that's about all we need

784
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 1: to say about him. He was just sort of there.

785
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:19,280
Speaker 3: Did we talk about clingers wearing women's clothing?

786
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: Oh no, that was a big part of it, Yeah, hugely.

787
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 3: Apparently he was written as a one off character initially,

788
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 3: and he was written as a gay character who wore

789
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 3: women's clothes, like full on frilly dresses and sun hats

790
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 3: like Sunday like going to church kind of stuff. And

791
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 3: Jamie Farr was like, look, I think I can do

792
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 3: this a little differently, Like, imagine if this is a

793
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 3: straight guy dressing like this because he wants to get

794
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:46,480
Speaker 3: out of the army for some psych thing. And he

795
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 3: did such a good job in this one off episode

796
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 3: that they brought him back as a character, not just

797
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:54,320
Speaker 3: a recurring character. He became one of the characters.

798
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And he yeah, he was one of

799
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 1: the great characters. He tried to eat it ep in

800
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:04,799
Speaker 1: one episode to further prove his mental unfitness to serve

801
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: and that was one of the funny episodes. I guess

802
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:09,759
Speaker 1: before we take a break, we should rattle off some

803
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:13,759
Speaker 1: of these guest stars. Yeah, because Mash had quite a

804
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: list of people who came on for one episode, including

805
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:21,240
Speaker 1: but not limited to, Ron Howard, Sure, Leslie Nielsen, Patrick Swayzee,

806
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: Laurence Fishburne, the Great George went Terry Garr. Who else

807
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: you got?

808
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:33,839
Speaker 3: Andrew Dice Clay, Yeah, the Dice manh Yeah, just one thing.

809
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 3: This is apparently where Leslie Nielsen made the transition to comedy. Oh,

810
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:41,479
Speaker 3: on his appearance on MASH.

811
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. Yeah, Rita Wilson, Oh, oh, we're still going.

812
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't forget Bagley Junior.

813
00:41:48,719 --> 00:41:52,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, John Ritter, Shelley Long, Pat Marita. Of course, Pat

814
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: Marita's in there. He was into two Hollywood in the seventies.

815
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: They're like, we don't care what part of Asia you're from, exactly,

816
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 1: just sign them up exactly.

817
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,800
Speaker 3: We feel pretty progressive that we're actually casting an agent

818
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 3: to play an Asian.

819
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, for sure. All right, shall we take

820
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 1: that second break? Yeah, yes, all right, we'll be right back.

821
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 2: Birds of Up with Joe shoe Cho stuff you shoot,

822
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 2: all right.

823
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 1: So earlier we talked about some what you would call

824
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:43,279
Speaker 1: very special episodes. This was a thing that back then

825
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 1: on a lot of shows, like you know when Arnold

826
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 1: and Willis find drugs in different strokes, like when a

827
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:52,759
Speaker 1: comedy takes a more serious tone. Mash added quite a few,

828
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: and we can go through these kind of quickly. I'm

829
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 1: gonna pick Sometimes You Hear a Bullet from season one,

830
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,919
Speaker 1: because that is an episode in which Hawkeye's childhood friend

831
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: comes over as a journalist to write a book about

832
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,280
Speaker 1: the war and he ends up dying on Hawkeye's operating table.

833
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: And that was the first episode that was really very heavy,

834
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 1: where like Hawkeye cries and it gets kind of serious

835
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: about the horrors of war.

836
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, all right, I'm going to pick Dreams from

837
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 3: season eight, which is apparently its most controversial episode because

838
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 3: it is very jarring, very disturbing, where it covers each

839
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 3: of the main characters is taking a rest from like

840
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:38,240
Speaker 3: a long day in ther where they saw two hundred

841
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 3: and eleven patients over thirty three hours, and it goes

842
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 3: through each one of their dreams and it's very surreal.

843
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 3: All sorts of weird, disturbing stuff happens. And I haven't

844
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 3: seen it, but I want to watch it because it

845
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 3: sounds just totally.

846
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 1: Nuts, but it's pretty weird.

847
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 3: It's completely contrary to any other episode. So I imagine

848
00:43:56,080 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 3: if you were tuning in on Saturday night on CBSC,

849
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 3: you know to kind of laugh and maybe cry, and

850
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 3: you saw this horrible weirdness, you might have had a

851
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 3: bad reaction to it.

852
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. There were two more episodes that were

853
00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: definitely weird as far as mainstream television goes, a documentary style,

854
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:17,839
Speaker 1: one called The Interview, where it was like a black

855
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 1: and white you know, like a Vietnam era black and

856
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:25,800
Speaker 1: white documentary about war. That one was kind of crazy

857
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:27,400
Speaker 1: to see on TV at the time. It won a

858
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: Humanitus Prize for a work that explores the human condition

859
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. And then the other one was

860
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:37,279
Speaker 1: called point of View, and the whole thing is shot

861
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,360
Speaker 1: from like the camera's point of view is from a

862
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: wounded soldier who can't talk, and so all the actors

863
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: are just coming up and addressing camera as the soldier,

864
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 1: and it's, you know, again, a very sort of groundbreaking

865
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 1: roll of the dice to do for mainstream TV in

866
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: the seventies for sure.

867
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:59,000
Speaker 3: And then we got to talk about Abyssinia. Henry.

868
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean this episode wrecked little Chuck, nine

869
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: year old Chuck.

870
00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:07,240
Speaker 3: I remember this one too, and I was like, where's

871
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:07,959
Speaker 3: the laugh track?

872
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:08,640
Speaker 1: Yeah?

873
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:14,320
Speaker 3: Oh. Colonel Blake, who we both love, played by McClean Stevenson.

874
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 3: This is the season three finale. He gets word that

875
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 3: he's going home, like his tour is over. He's out

876
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:24,800
Speaker 3: of the army now, and so he leaves and that's it,

877
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,320
Speaker 3: Like everybody's saying bye, everybody's happy for him. He's happy.

878
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 3: And then at the end of the episode, Radar comes

879
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 3: into the o R and he's holding a telegram and

880
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:36,760
Speaker 3: what does the telegram say, Chuck.

881
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 1: I can't even say it.

882
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 3: It says that Colonel Blake's plane went down with Colonel

883
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 3: Blake aboard and that there were no survivors. So on

884
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:48,360
Speaker 3: his way back home after his tour, after becoming beloved

885
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 3: by all viewers, Colonel Blake is dead. The writers killed

886
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 3: him after he was already off the show, and it

887
00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 3: just wrecked everybody.

888
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: Like you said, it was brutal. Alan Alda knew this

889
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: was going to happen. The story goes that they didn't

890
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: tell the rest of the cast until they got their

891
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 1: sides that morning, and because they wanted, you know, a

892
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:12,360
Speaker 1: real reaction, or maybe they didn't even have the sides

893
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:14,319
Speaker 1: maybe they. I think they just learned when radar walked

894
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 1: in in the scene and Gary Berghoff's acting in that

895
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: is incredible. And you know, there's no reaction, like, no

896
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: one's like, oh my god, No, it's just very quietly.

897
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: They keep operating and you just hear they're they're crying

898
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 1: and you just hear like scalpel, you know, suction, and

899
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 1: it's it's devastating.

900
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good stuff.

901
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very tough.

902
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 3: So, Chuck, I feel like the the episode we can

903
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:43,359
Speaker 3: just skip it, you know, the Mash finale.

904
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: I don't have to talk about that the big deal.

905
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,520
Speaker 3: I don't know if we said, but we surely we've

906
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 3: mentioned this before that the most watched television episode is

907
00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 3: the final episode of Mash, which is really saying something

908
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 3: because it was two and a half half hours long.

909
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's right, it was. I remember it

910
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: being long. I don't remember it being that long.

911
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 3: Two and a half hours man.

912
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course that includes commercials. A thirty second

913
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:14,279
Speaker 1: spot apparently was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which

914
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: would be one point three six million dollars today. It

915
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: was called Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, and it was you know,

916
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 1: the war ends. Basically it's the last episode, but it

917
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:27,320
Speaker 1: is very dramatic for a lot of it, and like

918
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:29,880
Speaker 1: the things the characters go through at the end are

919
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: all pretty you know, take pretty dramatic turns.

920
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, and very famously in this like kind of heartrending

921
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:39,720
Speaker 3: montage at the very end, it shows how every character

922
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 3: dies in the future.

923
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: You're talking about six feet hundred. Yeah, that is I

924
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in a while. I was like, did

925
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:47,839
Speaker 1: that really happen?

926
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 3: That is one of the greatest endings to any show ever.

927
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 1: Of course it was great also gut wrenching, Yeah it was.

928
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 3: But Goodbye, Farewell and Amen is fantastic too, for sure.

929
00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like you said, the the biggest rated TV

930
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,800
Speaker 1: show of all time, and that was like including sports

931
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 1: events up until Super Bowl twenty ten finally surpassed it,

932
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: but Mash is still as far as just a regular

933
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 1: TV show goes. The finale is the most watched. I

934
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: think seventy five percent of America tuned into that, which

935
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: is a staggering number. You know, you see Hawkeye in

936
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:25,839
Speaker 1: a mental hospital, father Mukay, he loses his faith in God,

937
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:29,240
Speaker 1: he loses his hearing and his faith in God. Clinger

938
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 1: ends up marrying a Korean woman and stays there.

939
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 3: Ironically, Yeah, because he was always trying to get out

940
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 3: of there, right.

941
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: He's trying to go home.

942
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 3: Yeah.

943
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: Did you see the urban possible urban legend about the

944
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,239
Speaker 1: plumbing in New York City? No, that was in the

945
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: Mental Plus thing. I don't know if this is true,

946
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 1: but I've always heard this that the plumbing in New

947
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: York City supposedly broke during the first commercial break because

948
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: everybody got up to pee at the same time in

949
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 1: New York.

950
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:54,760
Speaker 3: Awesome.

951
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 1: It totally sounds like it's probably not real. They all

952
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: flushed at once and it just broke everything.

953
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 3: All the alligators drowned.

954
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: But you know, that's funny. Uh. It's a good story though, regardless.

955
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:09,440
Speaker 1: For one hundred and twenty one million people tuned in

956
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 1: to that episode, and I was one of them. My

957
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:14,360
Speaker 1: whole family sat around and then we didn't do that

958
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 1: kind of thing much.

959
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 3: Oh, we watched it. My mom video taped it. We

960
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 3: watched it on videotape many times too.

961
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:20,239
Speaker 1: Yeah.

962
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:23,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, she'd be like, watch this, watch this part, watch

963
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:26,720
Speaker 3: it again. I have a cute little anecdote about watching

964
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 3: mash though all right, let's hear you me. So, her

965
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:33,919
Speaker 3: older brother Bobby, he has special needs, and one day

966
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 3: when they were much much younger, you mean, must have

967
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 3: probably done five or six or something, Bobby had to

968
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 3: go to the er. And her dad was a marine,

969
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 3: so they were living on a marine base at the time,

970
00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:46,560
Speaker 3: and her mom, like her dad, whisks Bobby off to

971
00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 3: the er and her mom tells her that Bobby's going

972
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 3: to the hospital. And so Yumi's only frame of reference

973
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 3: for military hospitals is a mass unit where there's always

974
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 3: bombs going off and everything is kind of nuts. So

975
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 3: she was really worried or other was going to a

976
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 3: mash unit, which I've just found endlessly cute.

977
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's adorable, it's funny. I'm going to bring that

978
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:09,600
Speaker 1: up next time I see you mean, that's hysterical.

979
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 3: That's hilarious. Oh, by the way, Echo and the Bunny Man.

980
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 1: Is Saturday this Saturday in Atlanta at the Tabernacle.

981
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:20,919
Speaker 3: Remember I told you i'd remind you again.

982
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 1: I know, I'm looking to see if I can go.

983
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: We should probably do this off air.

984
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I just wanted to remind you.

985
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 1: Okay, You're like, I'm not going, but you should go, Oh, well,

986
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 1: I'm going we will quickly mention the Mash spinoffs. I

987
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:38,279
Speaker 1: teased After a Mashed a few times as saying Postmash,

988
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: but that was the name of one of the spinoffs

989
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: that didn't run long, about a season and a half,

990
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: and it was one of the ones that had the

991
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: most characters I guess from the show because the real

992
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:53,760
Speaker 1: Colonel Potter was there, Clinger was there, and father Okay,

993
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:56,440
Speaker 1: he was there, you know, obviously, all in a hospital

994
00:50:57,160 --> 00:50:58,720
Speaker 1: post war, a veteran's hospital.

995
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:00,879
Speaker 3: Did you watch it? I remember watching After Mash.

996
00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:04,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched it some, and I remember not loving it,

997
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: so I don't think I watched it all.

998
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,320
Speaker 3: There's also Trapper John MD, which was on for seven seasons,

999
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:11,919
Speaker 3: and it even was running concurrently at the same time

1000
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:14,399
Speaker 3: as Mash itself for a lot of that time.

1001
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:15,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of weird.

1002
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:19,240
Speaker 3: Ye what was his name, Shane Rogers.

1003
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they recast it, so it's just like, why

1004
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: not just call it something else?

1005
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess because everybody loved the character. But even

1006
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:29,279
Speaker 3: still his character like fifty years in the future or

1007
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:31,719
Speaker 3: something like that, you know, or or thirty years in

1008
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:33,359
Speaker 3: the future, so he's an old band so they had

1009
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 3: another actor, Pernell Roberts, so you probably know from the

1010
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:41,720
Speaker 3: sixties touring company of Camelot, but he played Trapper John

1011
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 3: as an older man.

1012
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:47,920
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so of course now I'm a dummy. Like

1013
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:49,600
Speaker 1: the reason they called it that was so they could

1014
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 1: bank on the successive.

1015
00:51:50,600 --> 00:51:51,839
Speaker 3: Mash That's what I would guess.

1016
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:53,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't think that through.

1017
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 3: It almost makes me wonder if they just retrofitted a

1018
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,839
Speaker 3: show that had already been green right to Trapper John.

1019
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, like The Pit was supposed to be an Er spinoff.

1020
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and there's I think there's still a

1021
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: lawsuit because apparently there's And of course I'm speaking completely

1022
00:52:11,719 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 1: as someone who doesn't know a lot about this, so

1023
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 1: look it up if you really want to know. But

1024
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 1: I think the Michael Crichton estate got involved and they're like,

1025
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you can't do an Er spin off

1026
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:25,640
Speaker 1: without like giving us some juice because he came up

1027
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 1: with the idea for r or whatever wrote the book

1028
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 1: that was based on or something. And I think there's

1029
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 1: like a like a paper trail of because The Pit

1030
00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:35,799
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, no, that wasn't the deal. It's

1031
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: just a new show. It's not supposed to be Noah

1032
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 1: Wiley's character. But I think there's an email trail where

1033
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, you want money, huh, let's just

1034
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:46,239
Speaker 1: call it something else and change the character's name.

1035
00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 3: Who is that dumb these days?

1036
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I don't know. I mean, I'm

1037
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: sure I'm getting some details wrong, but I know that

1038
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:53,960
Speaker 1: it is an ongoing issue.

1039
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 3: There was one more. It was Walter w A l

1040
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 3: t e. R. With the Ass Even. Yeah, that was

1041
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:05,160
Speaker 3: a nineteen eighty four pilot that didn't I think it

1042
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 3: aired one time and it was aired in the Eastern

1043
00:53:10,040 --> 00:53:12,400
Speaker 3: and Central time zones. It was apparently so bad they

1044
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:14,759
Speaker 3: didn't even air it in the West that same night.

1045
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 1: Didn't they do that for our show?

1046
00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:20,359
Speaker 3: Pretty much? They tried to cram it all into one

1047
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 3: night for sure.

1048
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:23,719
Speaker 1: Man, that's crazy. I didn't know that about the West

1049
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:25,279
Speaker 1: coast thing. That is a brutal move.

1050
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1051
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we can't even let the California I see

1052
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 1: the show?

1053
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:32,839
Speaker 3: Right? So it was about Radar O'Reilly in his life

1054
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:37,040
Speaker 3: after Korea, and it was played by Gary Berghoff, and

1055
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:39,799
Speaker 3: he was going to become a cop and his wife

1056
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:43,400
Speaker 3: had just left him and he was contemplating suicide and

1057
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:46,360
Speaker 3: this was a comedy a half hour comment from what

1058
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 3: I understand.

1059
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 1: So people, I bet you that's out there. I'm gonna

1060
00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:50,000
Speaker 1: have to watch that.

1061
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:52,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got anything else?

1062
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:54,839
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I appreciate you indulging this one.

1063
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 1: I know it's not your favorite show, but I thank you.

1064
00:53:57,560 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 3: Hey, I can always talk about Mash for fifty three

1065
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 3: straight minutes any time you want.

1066
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:04,120
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it again right now.

1067
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 3: Okay, if you want to know more about match, just

1068
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 3: go start watching it. I propose watching the episode Dreams first, maybe,

1069
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 3: just to get it out of the way.

1070
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:15,359
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1071
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:17,560
Speaker 3: And since Chuck said yeah, that means it's time for

1072
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 3: a listener mail.

1073
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, not so much a listener mail, even though it

1074
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: was one little inside baseball. But our email has been

1075
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: screwed up for a couple of months now, as far

1076
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:31,239
Speaker 1: as if you haven't heard back from us, by the way,

1077
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:33,280
Speaker 1: and you send an email lately, it's because our email

1078
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 1: is super screwed up.

1079
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:34,720
Speaker 3: My fault.

1080
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: The good news is we're now getting them again, but

1081
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 1: they are being forwarded, so you can't directly reply. Long

1082
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:43,960
Speaker 1: way of saying, this comes from Martha Black, and there's

1083
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: really no need in even reading the email, because all

1084
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:51,440
Speaker 1: it was was, Hey, Chuck, by the way, that Howard

1085
00:54:51,560 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 1: Hughes picture of him as an old guy in Vegas

1086
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: is actor rip torn. No. It even says so in

1087
00:54:59,239 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: the caption that she so, I definitely have an egg

1088
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:04,120
Speaker 1: on my face for that one, because now that I

1089
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: see it, I'm like, yeah, I guess, I guess that

1090
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:06,400
Speaker 1: is ripped? Is there?

1091
00:55:06,520 --> 00:55:07,040
Speaker 3: Right? Alreadie?

1092
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was younger, and he was you know,

1093
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: had tissue boxes on his feet. For God's sake.

1094
00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:14,839
Speaker 3: It fooled me to chuck.

1095
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:18,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, well, and of course that makes sense.

1096
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 1: There are no pictures of Howard Hughes in Vegas. He

1097
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:20,440
Speaker 1: didn't know all that.

1098
00:55:20,760 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 3: At least it wasn't ai.

1099
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:23,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.

1100
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 3: You know, at least they got ripped horn.

1101
00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:27,520
Speaker 1: To pose for it.

1102
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. So who is that from?

1103
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 1: Martha Black?

1104
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:35,000
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Martha Black. Sounds like an MTV VJ

1105
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 3: from back in the day.

1106
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 1: That's right.

1107
00:55:38,160 --> 00:55:40,319
Speaker 3: If you want to be like Martha Black and show

1108
00:55:40,400 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 3: off your name, you can email us too. Hopefully we'll

1109
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:46,719
Speaker 3: get it these days. Send it off to Stuff Podcast

1110
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:48,279
Speaker 3: at iHeartRadio dot com.

1111
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:54,320
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

1112
00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

1113
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:00,560
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.