M*A*S*H: Major Fred C. Dobbs

M*A*S*H: Major Fred C. Dobbs
CBS
March 11, 1973
Dramedy
DVD
C

Frank is rude to Ginger (Odessa Cleveland) in the operating room, not for the first time, but he goes too far, calling her an incompetent bumbler.  She cries quietly.  Hawkeye and Trapper try to comfort her with humor, and then later they decide to get revenge on Burns.  Then they go too far and he wants to transfer out.  They go even further, tape-recording and then broadcasting (over the PA) his farewell to Hot Lips.  Now she wants a transfer.  When Blake says she feels publicly humiliated, Hawkeye jokes that he's offered to privately humiliate her.  With Burns and Houlihan both leaving, H & T are overburdened with work, so now they have to scheme to get Frank and Margaret to stay, and since Radar claims there's gold in them thar hills-- Trapper thinks Radar has the IQ of a house plant-- H & T trick Frank into gold fever.  Once his transfer is rescinded, they reveal their scheme, including painting a jeep and other items gold.  Then at the end, they apologize and Hawkeye shakes Frank's hand, but this turns into him kissing Frank against Frank's will!

I've gone into detail on this because the episode is such a mixture of cool moments and offensive ones.  Yes, I know the broadcast rendezvous is toned down from the movie, but I never liked how Hot Lips was treated in the movie.  And why the gratuitous insult of Radar's intelligence, when O'Reilly is arguably one of the smarter people in the camp?  (He's not well educated and he can be naive at times, but he's only what, 19?)  So anyway, that's why this gets a C, not recommended but not strongly unrecommended.

Harvey J. Goldenberg was on That Girl a couple times, Bob Newhart Show once, and here makes his first of two appearances as Kaplan.  The title is a reference to The Treasure of Sierra Madre (as was the Brady Bunch title "The Treasure of Sierra Avenue").