M*A*S*H: Radar's Report

M*A*S*H: Radar's Report
CBS
September 29, 1973
Dramedy
DVD
C

This story by Laurence Marks and Sheldon Keller may well be the most frustrating so far.  Every time there's a situation that has potential, it's screwed up.

• Hawkeye falls for a woman, Lt. Erica Johnson (Joan Van Ark, who'd reappear on a retrospective episode five years later).  After a very brief acquaintance, he decides that he must marry her, but unfortunately she appears to be married.  It turns out the ring is just to prevent "wrestling matches."  She doesn't believe in marriage though, and he just takes a moment to savor the irony and then gets over it very quickly.
• Trapper gets a plot, yay!  For the #2 guy, he hasn't done much other than react to and scheme with Hawkeye.  This time he loses a patient, but the music and direction suddenly seem to suggest we're veering into melodrama or even horror.  Will Trap kill the Chinese Communist he blames for the patient's death?
• Burns refuses to operate on the Commie, so Hawkeye makes a statement of tolerance, which is undercut by a "one hour later" joke.
• For some reason, Burns and Houlihan want Klinger to get a Section Eight, which is what he wants, too.  So psychiatrist Major Milton Freedman (Allan Arbus in his first of twelve M*A*S*H appearances although I would've guessed more) shows up and diagnoses Klinger as not only a transvestite but a homosexual and a weirdo.  Klinger is offended, and I am, too, since I remember Freedman as more sympathetic.  (Maybe he got nicer when he changed his first name to Sidney.)
• The framing device is OK, and I like that we finally get specific dates (Oct. 17th to 22nd, 1951), but as with Hawkeye's letters to his dad, there's no way anyone (even near omniscient Radar) could know absolutely everything going on in camp, and a lot of what happens doesn't end up in the report, so what's the point of it?
• Kellye Nakahara (Yamato) returns and there's one scene where she's just silently standing there, waiting to help Trapper put on his surgical gown.  I realize that this is what nurses did, but it's poorly directed and only underlines the sexism of the early years.  The female characters are just there to react to and serve the men.  Johnson is a partial exception.