I can rarely say what I was doing on a particular day in the past (9/11/2001 is an exception, just as previous generations remembered the assassination of JFK, or Pearl Harbor). But when I looked at This Day in History at infoplease.com, I knew exactly what I was doing 25 years ago tonight: watching the final episode of M*A*S*H.
I had watched the show since the second or third season. Since season 1 had a black character called Spearchucker Jones bunking with Hawkeye and Trapper, and I have no memory of him, I must not have watched it then. I had already been watching it for some time when Trapper left the show (at the end of season 3) and was replaced by BJ Hunicutt (seasons 4-11). Since I saw lots of reruns in later years, I can’t say which episodes I remember from when, though. (And I don’t actually “remember” the details mentioned here – wikipedia is a great help in refreshing my memory.)
I don’t think I was too keen on it at first, and I’m not sure how long I would have watched it if it had remained primarily a comedy. I never enjoyed the jokes at Frank Burns’ expense. He was obnoxious enough of course, but I’ve never liked jokes at anyone’s expense. Or black humor. (I have read, though, that much of the black humor of M*A*S*H was very true-to-life, according to those who served at such units in Korea.)
As the later seasons added both more drama and more moralizing, I enjoyed the drama and did not mind the moralizing. While I had sometimes wished I were a boy so I could be a war hero, I tended toward pacifism in my teen years, and greatly admired Alan Alda’s antiwar stance (both as his character Hawkeye and in his role as writer or director of some episodes). I wondered sometimes what I would do if war broke out, a draft were reinstated, and females were included (the possibility that the ERA would pass suggested this could happen). I thought training as a medic offered the best compromise between pacifism and patriotism. But of course neither draft nor ERA became a reality.
Some interesting M*A*S*H trivia I found in wikipedia:
Jamie Farr (Klinger) and Alan Alda (Hawkeye Pierce) served in the U.S. Army in Korea in the 1950s after the Korean War. The dog tags Farr wears on the show are his actual dogtags.
Most of the M*A*S*H main cast guested on Murder She Wrote, another of my favorite TV shows.
The Smithsonian has The Swamp (the tent where Hawkeye and his bunkmates lived) on display.
Radar’s teddy bear, also housed at the Smithsonian for a time, was sold at auction July 29, 2005, for $11,800.
The final episode, aired February 28, 1983, was the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history with over 105 million viewers.
