M*A*S*H: Payday

M*A*S*H: Payday
CBS
March 4, 1975
Dramedy
DVD
C+

This Regier & Markowitz story has

• Father Mulcahy gambling,
• Klinger offering Blake a bribe,
• Trapper stealing Hawkeye's watch to gamble with,
• Burns buying Houlihan a phony pearl necklace, telling her it's real, and saying he wants to "rape her nape,'
• Houlihan tricking Burns in revenge so that he'll steal the phony necklace back and exchange it with the real one,
• and Hawkeye trying to do something decent by donating a windfall of $3000 to Mulcahy for the local orphanage but almost getting arrested for theft.

Johnny Haymer (Zale), Jeff Maxwell (Straminsky), Bobbie Mitchell (Baker), Mary Peters (Nurse), Eldon Quick (Sloane), and Jack Soo (this time Kim Chung Quoc and by that point on Barney Miller) all return.

M*A*S*H: To Market, to Market

M*A*S*H: To Market, to Market
CBS
September 24, 1972
Dramedy
DVD
B-

Now this is more like it.  When some hydrocortisone is stolen for the black market, Hawkeye and Trapper promise Charlie Lee (a 54-year-old pre-Barney-Miller Jack Soo in his first of two M*A*S*H appearances) Henry's oak desk.  This first of two M*A*S*H episodes written by Burt Styler has some of the fighting-the-craziness-of-the-war-with-their-own-craziness that we associate with the series.  When Trapper, Hawkeye, Blake, and Burns are all staring into the sky as a helicopter takes the desk away, there's a promising glimpse of the series' potential.  Also, no sexism or racism, yay!  (Lee uses racial stereotypes for his own advantage, with the sort of intelligence we expect from Soo.)

Odessa Cleveland again appears as Ginger Bayliss, while G. Wood just provides Hammond's voice on the phone.  Robert Ito plays Lin and later would be a nameless North Korean.