I learned “Suicide is Painless” on the piano in middle school and my dad saw the sheet music and was like “what the hell is this!!” And I’m like “the opening theme to M*A*S*H ….” Which was his favorite show. I imagine a lot of people don’t realize there a name to the theme.
The first time I became aware of it, was when I watched the actual movie MASH, that the show was based on. In the movie, it gets sung with lyrics.. I thought it was an amazing song when I heard it
And the movie is based on a book by Richard Hooker! It's a pretty decent book, more like the movie than the show obviously, and there is a lot of golfing.
Richard Hooker was a pseudonym. His real name was Hiester Richard Hornberger, Jr, and he served in the Korean War as a surgeon. He wrote a lot of MASH books. My parents and their friends were crazy about them and read and collected them all.
Yea I didn't see the movie till long after I'd seen the series...i was shook when I first heard it...but that aside I didn't like the movie nearly as much as the series...but it had some good moments
The movie, and TV series are very different, for sure! I enjoyed them both for their own Merritts, but I could definitely see someone not really digging the movie. Even for the time it was made, it seems like it might have been a bit off the wall. There's an odd quality that I can't quite put my finger on
It’s a Robert Altman movie. All his movies are like that. He has a distinctive directing style
See The Player and The Long Goodbye to see how this style plays out in other genres.
Robert Altman’s son wrote those in a few minutes for the movie. Despite the lyrics not being used in the TV show, the writing credit on the song led to him making more in residuals than his dad did to direct the film. By a *lot*.
In hindsight, that was quite the disparity in compensation, but no one could have known that would happen, and I bet the director was still pleased with his $70k. That was a decent chunk of cash back then.
It’s an interesting anecdote, and a bit ironic, but that kind of thing happens often. Just a matter of luck. As a photographer, I toiled away at making good images that I thought people would like, and then for some reason I started getting phone calls asking for interviews about a baboon photo that I lightly edited and posted online, barely even thinking about it. I didn’t really like it, so almost ignored it completely. To this day, it’s still a crap image, but don’t mind getting my tires pumped a bit 🤷♂️
They sing the full song in the movie, where it's actually part of a darkly comedic bit in which a dentist with a big dick gets depressed about being impotent, and decides to kill himself and lulz ensue. (Spoiler alert: the dentist does not die.)
It's been a while since I watched it, but I think he had an episode of erectile dysfunction. They stage a whole production to help him get back his confidence.
THATS the main theme of “MASH”?! I mean i guess considering the tone of the show I shouldn’t be surprised but i guess I just wasn’t expecting it to be so blunt
It’s actually meant as a joke. There’s a character in the movie nicknamed “Painless” because he’s a dentist. At one point he attempts to kill himself, but it is very much not taken seriously.
He asks the doctors for a poison pill to kill himself with because he couldn’t get it up for one of the nurses and thinks that means he must be gay.
The entire movie is very dark humor; the doctors aren’t very likable (obnoxious assholes really) but everything is them trying to cope with endless wounded and insane stress in the middle of a war zone.
Was my go to song when I was depressed, every time I thought I’d never see the light from the bottom of the abyss, i would sing this song to myself. Strangely enough it gave me the strength to go on
It was written by the director Robert Altman’s teenage son, and put to music by Johnny Mandel. It was never supposed to be a theme song, just hummed by a character. The version with the lyrics was a #1 hit in the U.K.
Since reddit uses asterisks for *italics* (and other formatting), you can use a backslash to have asterisks show up when you want them to:
`M\*A\*S\*H`
appears as
M\*A\*S\*H
This was the evening routine in my folks' house for ten years, until '83
6:00 Mom serves dinner
6:30 Dinner done
6:50 I help Mom clean up
7:00 M\*A\*S\*H starts, Mom watches.
7:12 Mom daintily snores.
7:16 I turn the sound down / switch channel
7:17 "I'm watching. I'm watching. I'm just resting my eyes."
Miss you, Mom.
My dad was the same way. You'd swear he was sleeping but when you tried to change the channel you'd hear "turn it back". We played the song at his funeral.
I am too young to have watched it when it aired, but when I went to college we got my dad the box set. When I'd come home my dad and I would watch episodes and I fell in love with the show (don't like the first season much so I haven't bothered with the movie). I have since moved out and got the box set this year for Christmas. It is my favorite show of all time (star trek the next generation is a close second for a similar reason).
Mash is just so easy to throw on and unwind to after a long day. And sometimes the episodes have some more heft to them but it never seems too bad. Something about the classic "this sucks but we do it anyway because someone has to and that's what matters" is comforting to me
The heavy episodes almost always make me cry. I remember one Christmas I spent alone and I laid in bed and watched the episode of MASH where they organize the party for all the family back home. I cried like a little bitch.
Man, it’s kinda weird to hear others are just the same as my family.
Dad would fall deep asleep on the couch every night, snoring away, tv on and playing throughout. I would go out of my room and turn the tv down / off, because it was always a little too loud. Without fail, each time he would bolt awake and say things like, “I’m watching that,” and “I’m not asleep”. Lmao. Ok dad.
Good memories.
I'm experiencing it. After dinner is done, you start shutting down. It's about the first chance you get to sit down, all the shit from the day hits all at once, and you realize just how worn out you are. It's really common for my mom and I both to knock the fuck out about an hour after dinner. Dad's always giving her shit for falling asleep but he just doesn't get it.
Honestly, after spending a while without enough to do to keep me busy and moving around, I love that feeling after a long day. The kind of tired that makes a smooth rock feel comfortable. Really let's me know I'll be sleeping well that night
That's a legit reason for me. There are a lot of times I'm not even sleepy but my eyes are so dry and my eyelids feel like they're burning so I close them to get some relief and accidentally fall asleep.
Sometimes I just dim the light down to 30% and emit an audible "ah sweet Jesus that's good"
Hey man, remember when we were kids and would teleport from the couch to our beds while sleeping?
That's one of my favorite memories to think about. I'd be so stunned when I wake up like "how did I get here". All logic out the window
I have no idea how we waited until 6 to eat dinner growing up. We eat at 4 these days. I don't even want to eat that early, but we're all starving by then.
I unapologetically love this part
>The sword of time will pierce our skin
>It doesn't hurt when it begins
>But as it works its way on in
>The pain grows stronger, watch it, grin
14 year old or not, those are some good lines
Yep, written by Michael Altman and was paid royalties for the song. His father, Robert Altman received a one-time payment as the movie director and earned far less than his son.
Same here! I always watched it because, well, we had 2 channels to choose between and I watched it just to watch something. It was always on about 1 hour after school.
It was Fresh Prince in Bel Air, MacGyver then MASH. 5 days a week! By the time MASH was done, my parents usually came home and we started dinner.
I miss being a kid and I miss the days before the internet!
“I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.”
When everyone's being counted off in groups of "ones" or "twos."
Radar: "Are you one?"
Hawkeye (with flourish, hands on hips): "Yes, are *you?*"
Radar (awkwardly under his breath): "Stop it."
“I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.”
One of my favorite lines of the show. Living where I do, I’ve been able to quote it more times than I’d like to admit.
It was early evening for me. It's comfort telly for me and the partner. Still watch it today.
We had a chat about it and found out we had both cried during the last episode.
for sure, this show airing meant that it was late and you were likely being sent off to bed.
but I always stayed up for it. I still have fond memories of watching it with my grandfather. He fought in WW2 and korea, and this was the only war related thing he would watch. He said it was the closest thing he ever saw to what it was like, being near, but not on the front lines. and it never glorified war in any way.
My dad was a WW2 and Korean War vet and had me watch it with him when I was a little kid. He wanted me to know that war wasn't glamorous and like the cartoons I watched.
Oh. Interesting. I wonder if that's why my dad let me watch it with him. I was likely a bit too young to understand it all, but he'd also been in the Korean War, and was generally a pretty progressive guy in his older age.
I didn't like (or get) it as a kid and it came on right after Knight Rider, MacGyver or Star Trek TNG (don't remember which of the three), so indeed this was when I switched off.
Hawkeye:
*War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.*
Father Mulcahy:
*How do you figure, Hawkeye?*
Hawkeye:
*Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?*
Father Mulcahy:
*Sinners, I believe.*
Hawkeye:
*Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.*
Everyone agrees to just let these old shows die so as not to run them into the ground anymore riiiiight up until it's a show _they_ like. Then "It might be good this time!"
That said, who knows, it might be good this time.
I always loved that bit...
[Switches to Maudlin]
"This isn't a war....it's a murder..."
[Switches to Irreverent]
(a la Groucho) "This isn't a war, it's a murder!"
There's a great episode of 30rock with Alan Alda on it and they gave him the line "A grown man crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show."
It was a sitcom, sure, but it was a dark situation so it makes sense that there was a lot of subtle dark comedy mixed with the more obvious lighthearted gags.
One thing I always remember is the laugh track - or, more specifically, the lack of the laugh track during surgery scenes. Kinda brings it back to the overall anti-war message that, while they’re still making jokes when they can, war is no laughing matter. Very much an example of humour as a coping mechanism.
Seasons 1 - ~~four~~ 3, after that they killed off Henry it all started going down a very serious road.
For context though, the show was aired as the Vietnam War was being piped into people's living rooms, the first war in human history to get that much exposure, and actually the show outlasted the war.
At a certain point, with the things that were being shown about the real actual war happening right at that time, I expect there became less and less the writers were comfortable joking about, and more reason to use the show as a platform for exploring the full horrors and costs of war.
Alan Alda took over writing duties at some point, even though the character he played was the main comedic element of the show, the person playing the character was a very passionately anti-war person, and took the show in that direction, exploring and promoting anti-war sentiment.
I loved the first 4 seasons of M*A*S*H, and didn't really like or watch the more heavy, war drama stuff as a kid, but the context of the time makes the direction they took much more understandable and admirable
I'm not so sure, remember Vietnam was the first modern war where not only were people unsure about If it was a war they should even be fighting, or could even be won, but also the raw combat footage was being shown on television back home, completely dismantling the idealist vision of 'our boys going off to fight the good fight'.
The horrors of the WW2 concentration camp and the WW1 trenches were largely absent in the propaganda being shown back home for those wars (at least until after WW2 was mostly over for the concentration camp footage), but the for the people at home during Vietnam, the futility and brutality of war was being shown in a way never seen before, and had a huge impact on public sentiment about it altogether.
Soldiers coming home from WW2 were paraded, whereas Vietnam Vets were spit on, to sum it up.
Classic, but not sure about timeless. I started rewatching season 1 and you couldn't have a black character called Spearchucker on TV today, not to mention blatant sexism. M\*A\*S\*H couldn't be made in 2023.
Spearchucker only lasted like 5 episodes. Hawkeye’s constant sexual harassment of the nurses is pretty cringe though. It’s still one of my favorite shows I just accept it for being a show about the 50s made in the 70s.
That show was amazing in a lot of ways. On the surface it's commentary about war is timeless. But they tackled every social issue from racism, cross-dressing, homosexuality, and so much more. This and a few other series like, Sander's and Son, All in the Family and such, were real social eye openers.
What is most sad about MASH was that in the end Hawkeye never gets to go home. That last episode is one I tend to avoid because of how powerful the statement of Hawkeye's PTSD is just so clear that it feels personal.
One of the best shows every made
Not sure what you mean.
Hawkeye is one of the last to leave the camp, but he does leave the camp. Once he acknowledges the chicken, Sigmund discharged him from the psych ward.
He’s on the chopper heading to Seoul to catch a flight stateside when he sees BJ’s message.
Klinger doesn’t go home because he, ironically, stays to find Soon-Lee’s parents and start a life in Korea.
I said this above... copypasta.
He physically leaves, but his story or the Chicken/baby demonstrates that his PTSD was so bad that every time he closes his eyes, he's back there.
just started a rewatch with my girlfriend. in addition to the super progressive themes, we find ourselves laughing out loud at least five times per episode. some of the best writing in TV history.
Hawkeye : War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy : How do you figure, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye : Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy : Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye : Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
I stayed up until after this show. Amazing.
Perhaps, but I don’t think it’s exactly that… my kid memory can relate to this very specifically
MASH literally did signal the end of a block of kids shows on some network(s) and was pretty unrelatable to kids even if it’s a “good show” - most kids probably wouldn’t watch it for long after it came on.
It was a distinct change from kid to adult content back in the day when there was no “on demand”, no DVRs, no Netflix or whatever, not a whole lot of “kids only” channels either.
you just got to see what you got to see, and when this show came on it was not kids programming time anymore
Yeah. On Saturday mornings the cartoons ended and depending on the network in my area, either started playing MASH, Star Trek TOS, or golf. Eventually I discovered Super Scary Saturday on TBS and would switch to that after cartoons ended.
I learned “Suicide is Painless” on the piano in middle school and my dad saw the sheet music and was like “what the hell is this!!” And I’m like “the opening theme to M*A*S*H ….” Which was his favorite show. I imagine a lot of people don’t realize there a name to the theme.
The first time I became aware of it, was when I watched the actual movie MASH, that the show was based on. In the movie, it gets sung with lyrics.. I thought it was an amazing song when I heard it
And the movie is based on a book by Richard Hooker! It's a pretty decent book, more like the movie than the show obviously, and there is a lot of golfing.
I bet dick loves hookers
I don’t believe richard had a middle name
Richard Hooker was a pseudonym. His real name was Hiester Richard Hornberger, Jr, and he served in the Korean War as a surgeon. He wrote a lot of MASH books. My parents and their friends were crazy about them and read and collected them all.
I didn’t know about that book, I always thought it was based on Catch-22.
You can't see Major Major right now. You'll be able to see him when he's not here.
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That’s some catch, that Catch-22
It's the best there is!
Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.
Catch-22 was a great book. The movie was okay. Hulu did a limited series that was pretty good.
Incredible book. I read it years after I got out of the navy and it got me mad all over again about stupid shit I had long forgotten lol.
"We're the Pros from Dover"
That's a pen name.
Like Bic?
Or Pilot.
It's a great song, but somebody should check on Robert Altman's son
He tired to be a 14 and this is deep as he could.
I think the words were actually written by Robert Altman's (the director of the film) son.
Note: this was his 14 year old son. Kinda worrying that those lyrics were written by a kid.
It was meant as a joke, I’ve read. He asked his kid to write the worst song he could think up.
Yea I didn't see the movie till long after I'd seen the series...i was shook when I first heard it...but that aside I didn't like the movie nearly as much as the series...but it had some good moments
The movie, and TV series are very different, for sure! I enjoyed them both for their own Merritts, but I could definitely see someone not really digging the movie. Even for the time it was made, it seems like it might have been a bit off the wall. There's an odd quality that I can't quite put my finger on
It’s a Robert Altman movie. All his movies are like that. He has a distinctive directing style See The Player and The Long Goodbye to see how this style plays out in other genres.
He also did Nashville and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, two of my favorite movies
To be fair the theme song for mash is the melody of the song, the tv show doesn’t use the lyrics from the song but I believe the movie did
There's actually an episode, first season I believe, that pans over a guy playing the theme on his guitar singing the lyrics.
Probably Loudon Wainwright III, I think he was on there for a couple seasons.
Lyrics written by the 15 yo son of the director (who made more out of the film cos of that than his dad did)
And he ended up making more than his Dad in the long run. He still gets royalties.
A name *and* lyrics! https://youtu.be/ODV6mxVVRZk
Robert Altman’s son wrote those in a few minutes for the movie. Despite the lyrics not being used in the TV show, the writing credit on the song led to him making more in residuals than his dad did to direct the film. By a *lot*.
In hindsight, that was quite the disparity in compensation, but no one could have known that would happen, and I bet the director was still pleased with his $70k. That was a decent chunk of cash back then. It’s an interesting anecdote, and a bit ironic, but that kind of thing happens often. Just a matter of luck. As a photographer, I toiled away at making good images that I thought people would like, and then for some reason I started getting phone calls asking for interviews about a baboon photo that I lightly edited and posted online, barely even thinking about it. I didn’t really like it, so almost ignored it completely. To this day, it’s still a crap image, but don’t mind getting my tires pumped a bit 🤷♂️
Well, now you need to pay the baboon tax.
SHOW US YOUR BABOON
BABOON BABOON BABOON BABOON!
I R BABOON
SHARE THE BABOON
Hello, we've been trying to reach you about your baboon photo's extended warranty
You gotta share that baboon pic or this place is going to riot.
BRING BY THE BABOON
Let's see that fucking baboon!!!!
Baboon
I forgot there were lyrics. Thank you for the link.
wow i never knew
I only knew it had lyrics because of that old family guy episode where Peter sings it and there's no joke
The Manic Street Preachers did an amazing cover of the theme song, I highly recommend checking that (and the rest of their discography) out.
They sing the full song in the movie, where it's actually part of a darkly comedic bit in which a dentist with a big dick gets depressed about being impotent, and decides to kill himself and lulz ensue. (Spoiler alert: the dentist does not die.)
It's been a while since I watched it, but I think he had an episode of erectile dysfunction. They stage a whole production to help him get back his confidence.
THATS the main theme of “MASH”?! I mean i guess considering the tone of the show I shouldn’t be surprised but i guess I just wasn’t expecting it to be so blunt
They sing it in the movie, for one of the men who was suicidal, can't remember who it was.
The dentist
The Painless Pole!
It’s actually meant as a joke. There’s a character in the movie nicknamed “Painless” because he’s a dentist. At one point he attempts to kill himself, but it is very much not taken seriously.
He asks the doctors for a poison pill to kill himself with because he couldn’t get it up for one of the nurses and thinks that means he must be gay. The entire movie is very dark humor; the doctors aren’t very likable (obnoxious assholes really) but everything is them trying to cope with endless wounded and insane stress in the middle of a war zone.
Was my go to song when I was depressed, every time I thought I’d never see the light from the bottom of the abyss, i would sing this song to myself. Strangely enough it gave me the strength to go on
Sad songs help us feel, process, and release emotions that would otherwise drive us to despair. I'm glad you're still here.
It was written by the director Robert Altman’s teenage son, and put to music by Johnny Mandel. It was never supposed to be a theme song, just hummed by a character. The version with the lyrics was a #1 hit in the U.K.
I didn’t know it until I was an adult, I always called it “the M\*A\*S\*H theme song” before that.
Since reddit uses asterisks for *italics* (and other formatting), you can use a backslash to have asterisks show up when you want them to: `M\*A\*S\*H` appears as M\*A\*S\*H
This was the evening routine in my folks' house for ten years, until '83 6:00 Mom serves dinner 6:30 Dinner done 6:50 I help Mom clean up 7:00 M\*A\*S\*H starts, Mom watches. 7:12 Mom daintily snores. 7:16 I turn the sound down / switch channel 7:17 "I'm watching. I'm watching. I'm just resting my eyes." Miss you, Mom.
My dad was the same way. You'd swear he was sleeping but when you tried to change the channel you'd hear "turn it back". We played the song at his funeral.
I didn't watch it with my Dad but after he passed I watched the entire series I really miss my dad when I hear the music
I am too young to have watched it when it aired, but when I went to college we got my dad the box set. When I'd come home my dad and I would watch episodes and I fell in love with the show (don't like the first season much so I haven't bothered with the movie). I have since moved out and got the box set this year for Christmas. It is my favorite show of all time (star trek the next generation is a close second for a similar reason). Mash is just so easy to throw on and unwind to after a long day. And sometimes the episodes have some more heft to them but it never seems too bad. Something about the classic "this sucks but we do it anyway because someone has to and that's what matters" is comforting to me
The heavy episodes almost always make me cry. I remember one Christmas I spent alone and I laid in bed and watched the episode of MASH where they organize the party for all the family back home. I cried like a little bitch.
Man, it’s kinda weird to hear others are just the same as my family. Dad would fall deep asleep on the couch every night, snoring away, tv on and playing throughout. I would go out of my room and turn the tv down / off, because it was always a little too loud. Without fail, each time he would bolt awake and say things like, “I’m watching that,” and “I’m not asleep”. Lmao. Ok dad. Good memories.
Hard to imagine how tired our parents really were
I'm experiencing it. After dinner is done, you start shutting down. It's about the first chance you get to sit down, all the shit from the day hits all at once, and you realize just how worn out you are. It's really common for my mom and I both to knock the fuck out about an hour after dinner. Dad's always giving her shit for falling asleep but he just doesn't get it.
Yep I've become the old man nodding off all the time
I don't have kids or anything but I still feel this as a working adult. After 8pm all I want to do is wind down and go to bed.
Honestly, after spending a while without enough to do to keep me busy and moving around, I love that feeling after a long day. The kind of tired that makes a smooth rock feel comfortable. Really let's me know I'll be sleeping well that night
“I’m just resting my eyes” is such a classic
"Checking my eyelids for holes" was my grandpa's excuse.
My grandpas was “inspecting my eye lids” 🤣🤣🤣 I miss him so much
That's a legit reason for me. There are a lot of times I'm not even sleepy but my eyes are so dry and my eyelids feel like they're burning so I close them to get some relief and accidentally fall asleep. Sometimes I just dim the light down to 30% and emit an audible "ah sweet Jesus that's good"
I went to rest my eyes and it turned out I wanted to rest the rest of me too
That’s lovely
Hey man, remember when we were kids and would teleport from the couch to our beds while sleeping? That's one of my favorite memories to think about. I'd be so stunned when I wake up like "how did I get here". All logic out the window
Honestly, it would be great for my back if that service would resume
i dread the for poor bastard who has to lift me up 😭
I remember humming the theme song to Dallas as I laid in bed.
My mom would always watch the opening credits for Dallas then change the channel. She loved the theme song, but disliked the show.
:)
Thanks for sharing this
I have no idea how we waited until 6 to eat dinner growing up. We eat at 4 these days. I don't even want to eat that early, but we're all starving by then.
The theme is glorious and written by a kid
Mad lyrics for a kid lmao.
If I remember correctly the original writer didn’t want to write it so he just had his kid do it. Or that’s what I was told at least
Robert Altman and the composer couldn’t get the lyrics to be melodramatic enough, but they realized a 14 year old absolutely could.
I unapologetically love this part >The sword of time will pierce our skin >It doesn't hurt when it begins >But as it works its way on in >The pain grows stronger, watch it, grin 14 year old or not, those are some good lines
Better than the suicidal shit I wrote at 14
This man is about to get concerned redditor'd
Yes, reminds me of Pink Floyd's 'Time'.
People just seem to forget that some of the world's best compositions were written by people in their teens.
Mozart composed his first opera at 5 and first symphony at 12
How old?
14, iirc
That explains the name the kid picked for the song then
He was a subscriber of /r/im14andthisisdeep before it even existed... Woah...
That sub exists because of people already existing being like that tho lol
Yep, written by Michael Altman and was paid royalties for the song. His father, Robert Altman received a one-time payment as the movie director and earned far less than his son.
And that kid made more money from that one song than the director made from the movie.
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Same here! I always watched it because, well, we had 2 channels to choose between and I watched it just to watch something. It was always on about 1 hour after school. It was Fresh Prince in Bel Air, MacGyver then MASH. 5 days a week! By the time MASH was done, my parents usually came home and we started dinner. I miss being a kid and I miss the days before the internet!
Whaddya crazy?? I got my first zingers from Hawkeye! "You were ordered to stand down!" "I did, but I fell up again!"
"Fire that gun!" "OK, you're fired."
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Frank to Hawkeye: "I came to relieve you." Hawkeye: "You do resemble an enema."
“I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.”
KLINGER I WANT YOU OUT OF THAT DRESS! Never on a first date sir!
When everyone's being counted off in groups of "ones" or "twos." Radar: "Are you one?" Hawkeye (with flourish, hands on hips): "Yes, are *you?*" Radar (awkwardly under his breath): "Stop it."
"You haven't heard the last of this!" "I wasn't listening to the first of it."
“Pierce I’m here to relieve you. “ “You do resemble an enema. “
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"Dear Dad..."
I think it was more, "It's on, it's late/time for bed."
I'll even harrycary (sp?) if you show me how.
>harrycary LOL Harry Caray was a sportscaster. You're thinking of harakiri.
“I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.” One of my favorite lines of the show. Living where I do, I’ve been able to quote it more times than I’d like to admit.
It was time to turn the TV off because the show often aired around children's bedtime
Heyyyyy somebody give the place a shove!
Its not that MASH was not a great show, its that it was 9 PM… BEDTIME!
At least someone gets it. It doesn’t say it’s a bad show, but I knew my parents would send me off to bed at this time.
Ah, that's the rub. Where I lived, it'd come on ~4PM. I watched a lot of MASH in my early teens as a result.
Same! Mash was the afternoon show for us, I loved it.
It was early evening for me. It's comfort telly for me and the partner. Still watch it today. We had a chat about it and found out we had both cried during the last episode.
for sure, this show airing meant that it was late and you were likely being sent off to bed. but I always stayed up for it. I still have fond memories of watching it with my grandfather. He fought in WW2 and korea, and this was the only war related thing he would watch. He said it was the closest thing he ever saw to what it was like, being near, but not on the front lines. and it never glorified war in any way.
My dad was a WW2 and Korean War vet and had me watch it with him when I was a little kid. He wanted me to know that war wasn't glamorous and like the cartoons I watched.
Oh. Interesting. I wonder if that's why my dad let me watch it with him. I was likely a bit too young to understand it all, but he'd also been in the Korean War, and was generally a pretty progressive guy in his older age.
I didn't like (or get) it as a kid and it came on right after Knight Rider, MacGyver or Star Trek TNG (don't remember which of the three), so indeed this was when I switched off.
It’s funny because I’ve said for years the MASH theme song bums me out because it reminds me of bedtime when I was a kid, so this hits home lol
My mother is Korean, MASH was the bedtime exception for us.
I love MASH it’s become a timeless classic
Its core messages about war haven't aged at all even 50 years later. Such good writing.
Hawkeye: *War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.* Father Mulcahy: *How do you figure, Hawkeye?* Hawkeye: *Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?* Father Mulcahy: *Sinners, I believe.* Hawkeye: *Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.*
One of my favourite quotes from anything ever
Yea, see. I’m usually expecting some laughs from a sitcom. All the laughs in MASH seemed to come from the Klinger premise or Hot Lips humor.
It’s dark humor, for sure. Not always the chuckles kind, sometimes the punch in the gut kind.
I liked the Futurama take where "iHawk" is a robot doctor that has two settings: Irreverent and Maudlin.
Futurama is suppose to have a 2023 premiere on Hulu. 20 new episodes too!
Everyone agrees to just let these old shows die so as not to run them into the ground anymore riiiiight up until it's a show _they_ like. Then "It might be good this time!" That said, who knows, it might be good this time.
I always loved that bit... [Switches to Maudlin] "This isn't a war....it's a murder..." [Switches to Irreverent] (a la Groucho) "This isn't a war, it's a murder!"
> (a la Groucho) "This isn't a war, it's a murder!" You spelled "Moyder" wrong.
There's a great episode of 30rock with Alan Alda on it and they gave him the line "A grown man crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show."
Futurama had a gut punch or two itself. That dog episodes man….
Here lies Philip J. Fry, named after his uncle to carry on his spirit
Don’t get me wrong, Jurassic Bark is a good cry, but damn if Luck of the Fry-ish doesn’t just punch you in the gut.
Depends on the season. Got much more serious towards the end of its run but 1st few seasons are v silly.
>Got much more serious towards the end "Will someone shut up that chicken" ...
It was a sitcom, sure, but it was a dark situation so it makes sense that there was a lot of subtle dark comedy mixed with the more obvious lighthearted gags. One thing I always remember is the laugh track - or, more specifically, the lack of the laugh track during surgery scenes. Kinda brings it back to the overall anti-war message that, while they’re still making jokes when they can, war is no laughing matter. Very much an example of humour as a coping mechanism.
Based off the wiki, the laugh track was forced by the producers but the director was able to convince them not to use it during surgery.
don’t blame them for not wanting it at all, nothing kills immersion faster than canned laughter.
Seasons 1 - ~~four~~ 3, after that they killed off Henry it all started going down a very serious road. For context though, the show was aired as the Vietnam War was being piped into people's living rooms, the first war in human history to get that much exposure, and actually the show outlasted the war. At a certain point, with the things that were being shown about the real actual war happening right at that time, I expect there became less and less the writers were comfortable joking about, and more reason to use the show as a platform for exploring the full horrors and costs of war. Alan Alda took over writing duties at some point, even though the character he played was the main comedic element of the show, the person playing the character was a very passionately anti-war person, and took the show in that direction, exploring and promoting anti-war sentiment. I loved the first 4 seasons of M*A*S*H, and didn't really like or watch the more heavy, war drama stuff as a kid, but the context of the time makes the direction they took much more understandable and admirable
Makes sense. If they had Hogans Heroes running during WWII it would have seemed a little tone deaf.
I'm not so sure, remember Vietnam was the first modern war where not only were people unsure about If it was a war they should even be fighting, or could even be won, but also the raw combat footage was being shown on television back home, completely dismantling the idealist vision of 'our boys going off to fight the good fight'. The horrors of the WW2 concentration camp and the WW1 trenches were largely absent in the propaganda being shown back home for those wars (at least until after WW2 was mostly over for the concentration camp footage), but the for the people at home during Vietnam, the futility and brutality of war was being shown in a way never seen before, and had a huge impact on public sentiment about it altogether. Soldiers coming home from WW2 were paraded, whereas Vietnam Vets were spit on, to sum it up.
It’s good but as a kid it meant time to go do the dishes.
This was the way it was in our house too.
Show was good, but have you seen the movie, where they just mercilessly bully and sexually assault someone for disagreeing with them
The movie did not age well.
The book aged even worse.
The last episode has one of the most powerful scenes ever written in the history of television, it's still hard to watch to this day
Classic, but not sure about timeless. I started rewatching season 1 and you couldn't have a black character called Spearchucker on TV today, not to mention blatant sexism. M\*A\*S\*H couldn't be made in 2023.
Spearchucker only lasted like 5 episodes. Hawkeye’s constant sexual harassment of the nurses is pretty cringe though. It’s still one of my favorite shows I just accept it for being a show about the 50s made in the 70s.
Mash was amazing, I was watching it while I was a kid. Most of the time it was not scary, it had a lot of good life lessons.
The theme sounded like bedtime.
That show was amazing in a lot of ways. On the surface it's commentary about war is timeless. But they tackled every social issue from racism, cross-dressing, homosexuality, and so much more. This and a few other series like, Sander's and Son, All in the Family and such, were real social eye openers. What is most sad about MASH was that in the end Hawkeye never gets to go home. That last episode is one I tend to avoid because of how powerful the statement of Hawkeye's PTSD is just so clear that it feels personal. One of the best shows every made
Not sure what you mean. Hawkeye is one of the last to leave the camp, but he does leave the camp. Once he acknowledges the chicken, Sigmund discharged him from the psych ward. He’s on the chopper heading to Seoul to catch a flight stateside when he sees BJ’s message. Klinger doesn’t go home because he, ironically, stays to find Soon-Lee’s parents and start a life in Korea.
I said this above... copypasta. He physically leaves, but his story or the Chicken/baby demonstrates that his PTSD was so bad that every time he closes his eyes, he's back there.
I can play the intro to Sanford & Son in my head still.
just started a rewatch with my girlfriend. in addition to the super progressive themes, we find ourselves laughing out loud at least five times per episode. some of the best writing in TV history.
Suicide is painless was a good song
I loved so many of the Potterisms. One of my favorite: "Scuttlebutt is as common as cooties in your skivvies!"
I hated it as a kid, maybe because like you. It came on at my bed time. Maybe that’s why I like it now, feels like I’m breaking the rules
Fuck you. I turned the TV *on* to watch MASH
Some of us had a bed time anywhere between 1972 and 1990. Dunno if it still airs, but that shit came on around mine in the 90s.
2003-2004. I think FX showed the entire series’ in 6months or something mad. Epic
The first thing I add to any plex server I set up
Yeah, this came on after Disney Afternoon and 10-yo me was like "noppppe".
Me too. For some reason I hated the music from the opening. No way in hell I was going to watch. But I was a dumb kid at the time
Hawkeye : War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. Father Mulcahy : How do you figure, Hawkeye? Hawkeye : Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell? Father Mulcahy : Sinners, I believe. Hawkeye : Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander. I stayed up until after this show. Amazing.
Fuck that, MASH was a great show
I think he means that it was bed time.
Perhaps, but I don’t think it’s exactly that… my kid memory can relate to this very specifically MASH literally did signal the end of a block of kids shows on some network(s) and was pretty unrelatable to kids even if it’s a “good show” - most kids probably wouldn’t watch it for long after it came on. It was a distinct change from kid to adult content back in the day when there was no “on demand”, no DVRs, no Netflix or whatever, not a whole lot of “kids only” channels either. you just got to see what you got to see, and when this show came on it was not kids programming time anymore
Yeah. On Saturday mornings the cartoons ended and depending on the network in my area, either started playing MASH, Star Trek TOS, or golf. Eventually I discovered Super Scary Saturday on TBS and would switch to that after cartoons ended.
Soul Train.
It was such a great show I was allowed to stay up and watch it
Yeah, same. Some things didn't age well, some others aged surprisingly well.
MASH remains the greatest TV show made to this very day.
One of the few grown-up shows we actually liked.
9:00 p.m.
Do you all remember Space 1999? It came on after Star Trek about 1am central time on Saturday night.
Hawkeye is my spirit animal
Im 27 and i saw reruns on TV a few years ago late at night, i really liked it and watched the whole series, its great
One of the greatest TV shows of all time
My bed time was whenever Nick at Nite started. George Lopez in slow-mo meant sleepy.