M*A*S*H: For the Good of the Outfit

M*A*S*H: For the Good of the Outfit
CBS
October 6, 1973
Dramedy
DVD
B

Jerry Mayer's second of two M*A*S*H scripts is for the most part funnier, more intelligent, and more subversive than anything anyone was submitting at this time and I was going to give it a B+ or even an A-, until one regrettable moment brought it down.  A South Korean village is destroyed by the Americans.  Hawkeye and Trapper want to get the truth out there, but The Stars and Stripes blames it on the Chinese.  That this aired at the time that Watergate was being increasingly revealed, and Nixon's presidency was increasingly unraveling, may not be coincidental, and the way it plays out feels more '70sish than '60sish.  The government feels that if they rebuild the village (including with soft-serve ice cream and indoor plumbing) than they don't need to admit that they caused the damage.  Hawk and Trap disagree, and then find out that if they have a record as trouble-makers, that will follow them stateside.  As with Klinger not wanting to be labelled a homosexual, they cave in.

However, Burns, misunderstanding the situation, has saved the evidence, so the truth will come out, maybe.  Hawkeye and Trapper are so happy that they want to kiss Burns and Houlihan.  And so Hawkeye chases Frank while Trapper has Hot Lips pinned to the desk!  Why did they have to go there?  Why is this show so screwed up about consent issues?  For all the liberalism/ progressiveness, the sex-pol might as well be stuck back in the early '50s.  Still, I get it, H & T are wacky iconoclasts and this passed for humor at the time.  It'll be interesting to see when (if ever) the writers realized that the path of humor about the government is a more admirable one.  For now, Season Two has a self-destructive tendency it can hardly contain.

Gwen Farrell plays the first of several characters, Nurse Butler.  Odessa Cleveland (Bayliss), Lesley Evans (previously Nurse Bryan, this time Nurse Mason), Jeff Maxwell (Straminsky), Kellye Nakahara (Yamato), and Herb Voland (Clayton) all return.  Note that the letter from Hawkeye's dad, which provides a nifty little plot twist of its own, is dated May 24, 1951, five months before Radar's report.