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I just did a binge watch (though it took several months) through the entire MASH series. It's virtually impossible for me to take in any kind of culture without writing copiously about whatever it is. I may eventually do some kind of essay to try to deal with the series as a whole, but as I was going through it episode by episode I decided to kind of a do a sort journal/notes kind of things. For example here's what I wrote up about the Pilot. I dunno if anyone would be interested in reading this stuff. If so, I can post more. Pilot (1.1)  So, a journey through MASH. Does it need a justification? Hmm, no, I don’t think so. I should lay out my complete lack of qualifications for writing lengthy, in-depth posts for every episode of MASH. First of all, prior to buying the complete series on DVD, I had seen exactly one episode of the show on television. That’s right, one episode. Also, I hated the movie and thought the book wasn’t much better. But critical acclaim for the series made me decide to give it a shot and why watch a series from start to finish if you’re not going to blather about it in rambling posts like this one? So, let’s get started. The Pilot is from 1972. Given my interest in chronology and the fact that the chronology of MASH seems to be hotly debated on the net, I feel that I should mention that this opens with a straight up date stamp of “1950, 100 years ago.” So, we’re definitely at the beginning of the Korean Conflict. So, this George Morgan who plays Father Mulcahy here. Is it just me or does he look a lot like Mark Hamill? Of course, I am aware that George Morgan isn’t long for the show. He appears here as Father Mulcahy, but is replaced when the series proper starts. So, there’s a fairly long sequence prior to the theme. This is, I think, the only episode this happens on. It briefly introduces all of the characters, engaging in activities of various kinds. And then leads into Radar catching a football and then pausing, hearing the helicopters coming. There’s a great zoom over his shoulder to the helicopters and then we’re into the basic title sequence, only it’s a bit longer, with some added bits. Nothing of substance. Ah, the ol’ golf ball into the minefield gag. Always a classic. First operating scene is the first post-title scene. Hmm, this episode is narrated via the device of Hawkeye writing a letter home to his dad. It seems that this is a device that is returned to over and over through the series. So, it’s kind of interesting that they just straight up start the series as a whole via that device. First fight is of course between Frank and Hawkeye. It starts in the OR over Frank bawling out a nurse. I have to say the jokes here are not brilliant. Spearchucker is sleeping in the Swamp. I hear he doesn’t stick around long. I’ll try to keep track. He’s played by Tim Brown who was in the original movie. In the movie, his name was given as Judson and here he’s Jones, but it’s obviously supposed to be the same character, right? First good joke in the episode is about six minutes in, from Wayne Rogers as Trapper, reading a letter from home: “Bad news from my wife. She still loves me.” Yes, that’s the best one so far. Trust me. So, Hawkeye and Trapper have to raise a couple of thousand dollars in order to send Ho-Jon to the states to attend Hawkeye’s old alma mater. You know, they actually give Hawkeye this horrific line to Ho-Jon when Ho-Jon asks Hawkeye how he can ever thank him for helping get him into college in the US. He says, “You just go back there and become the best possible you you can.” I mean, I’m sorry, but that’s just dreadful. So, the best thing about the Altman movie was the dynamic between Henry Blake and Radar and the series does a great job in their first scene together of Blake being, like in the movie, perpetually a step behind Radar. “Pierce and McIntyre to see you, sir.” *Pierce and McIntyre enter* “Show them in.” So, Hawkeye decides to raffle off a weekend in Tokyo with Lt. Dish, a nurse with “so much body she should be continued on the next girl.” Cue terrifically unfunny montage of Hawkeye harassing Dish. Second fight in the episode comes when Frank gets mad at Hawkeye and decides to smash the still. Stupendously unfunny scene. I mean, it’s pretty terrible. They even do a really awful “boioioioingngngngng” sound effect when he grabs the still. The Painless Pole is mentioned as buying a raffle ticket. I understand this is the only time he’s referenced at all in the series. So, Henry and his main squeeze, a nurse name of Scorch, have to go down to Seoul to see General Hammond. Radar provides the weekend passes, but unfortunately Frank being acting commander, the raffle is cancelled. At least until Hawkeye gives Frank a shot in the rear and our happy band of misfits wrap him up like a mummy and Hawkeye writes orders that he be kept sedated. Spearchucker shows up to the party, it being a costume party, dressed as a samurai. And for a second, when I saw him coming in with the big samurai hat, I thought he was wearing a Darth Vader costume, which would be pretty amazing, this episode being from 1972 (and SET in 1950). So, Margaret realizes Frank is missing and can’t find him. Hawkeye won’t tell her anything, so she calls General Hammond in Seoul who is played by G. Wood, who also played the character in the movie. There’s a very funny flashback to Margaret and General Hammond working together in Fort Benning. And by working together, I mean making out violently on top of a medicine cabinet. I think it’s the only time I actually laughed out loud watching this episode. So, General Hammond and Henry fly down to the 4077 after Margaret’s call. Radar, the only person to have heard the helicopter coming, is there to meet them at the pad, bedpan on head. He did come directly from the party. It’s something I’ll be coming back to a lot, but Gary Burghoff is the only possible person who could sell a lot of these moments. So, Lt. Dish is in suspicion that Hawkeye is going to fix the raffle so that he wins. He’s a gentleman though and he actually fixes it so that Father Mulcahy wins. George Morgan’s anguished reaction is about the only thing he actually does in this episodea s Mulcahy. I don’t think he has a single line. So, General Hammond shows up and places Hawkeye and Trapper under arrest, but then a large shipment of wounded arrives and then Hawkeye and Trapper so impress Hammond in the OR that he dismisses the charges. Big surprise there. So, for the credits, the cast list is read over the PA system with a short clip of each of them. Hilariously, Odessa Cleveland, who plays a nurse named Ginger, is given a full credit along with all the others despite the fact that she has exactly two lines in the episode. Okay, so there are a couple of things I wanna do on this little journey. One is, of course, to create a ranking of all the episodes in order of quality. This will, of course, be changing and mutating as we go along. For now, it’s rather a short affair. Pilot, despite the fact that I find it to be a generally weak episode, gets to come in at number one. See list appended to the end of this post. Second thing I wanna do is create something I’m calling The Abridged MASH. Now, the show’s a classic; it’s one of those shows that people should watch and, despite a lot of continuity problems, I think the show does have a definite emotional arc through the series and it really is one long story about these people, at least at its best. But when you want to go through the Korean Conflict again with the crew of the 4077th, you’re faced with a problem, namely that there are over two-hundred and fifty episodes, which adds up to a lot of hours. What if you want to take that trip, but don’t have the time to go through all the episodes again? Well, that, quite simply, is what The Abridged MASH is for. I’ll be picking episodes for this abridgement as we go. Which episodes make the cut? I don’t even know yet. Will I be cutting the show in half? By a fourth? It’ll be interesting to see. But the point is to give a solid abridgement, one that respects the story, the characters and the emotional arcs and points being made by the show. Strictly, in other words, the best and the most essential episodes. I’ll be appending that list to the end of each post too. Nothing this post, however, because, horror of horrors, the Pilot does not make my list. It’s a mainly uninteresting episode and it’s not essential. In fact, it’ll make the abridgement flow better than the whole series since Lt. Dish is heavily featured here only to disappear immediately as the series progresses and, as previously mentioned, we have a different actor as Father Mulcahy. So, no, in my abridgement, you can skip this episode. I know it’s the Pilot; I know it’s historic and important. It’s also not a very good episode. Hmm, so far I have a 100% rejection rate. This abridged MASH may be really short. Anyway, that’s it for this time. * out of **** stars. Gene Reynolds, Larry Gelbart MASH Episodes, by Quality: 1. Pilot.
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Aug 23, 2012 15:59
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Wezzo posted:This was very interesting. You should make a blog and post them there one-a-day, like people have done for The Simpsons (eg http://meblogwritegood.wordpress.com/ ) Actually, I have started a blog (or rather, re-started after my first one went down in flames). It's at https://absoluteknave.squarespace.com/. It's still very thin right now as I'm just getting this one back up and running again. I just enjoy posting most of what I write on the various forums that I frequent as well. For instance, I did some binge watching of The Dead Zone. Different reviewing style than I'm doing on the MASH episodes, but it's still fun. The Dead Zone Wheel of Fortune The first episode of USA’s six season series that attempts to both adapt King’s epic novel to television in long form and also to springboard off King’s premise into new territory. This first episode hews pretty closely to the novel, which, if you haven’t read, you really must. It’s quite possibly King’s very best novel and one of his most mature works. In the happy surprise category is Anthony Michael Hall as the recently comatose, haggard and haunted, limping, pea-coated psychic Johnny Smith. Walken’s performance in the film remains iconic, but Hall is no slouch; you can’t see much of the John Hughes actor left in him, but he’s surprisingly good in the role. The directorial flourishes that take us in and out of his psychic visions are surprisingly well modulated and don’t look fake, which is about all you can ask for television on basic cable. As this one wraps up, Johnny is awake and is being reluctantly manipulated into helping the police catch a serial killer: So far, so novel. We’ll see where it goes from here. What It Seems Things are still pretty taut here. Chris Bruno is a fantastic Walt Bannerman who, in this telling of the story, is married to Johnny’s former fiancée, Sarah. This allows the show good reason to keep Sarah and Johnny’s biological son, now being raised by Walt, in close and it also helps all the police activity carry its own extra weight. Bruno is extremely good and just keeps getting better. An early scene here of Hall and Bruno outside a victim’s house is stellar, all barely hidden animosity and seething frustration. Quality of Life The opening serial killer case wrapped up in the first two episodes, this episode springs into territory not in the novel as Johnny actually attempts to return to his teaching job. But when his visions seem to indicate that one of the school’s star athletes is about to drop dead of a coronary but the doctor’s don’t agree, Johnny is thrust into an unpopular position. This was a low key episode, but pretty good. Chris Masterson, most famous for Malcolm in the Middle, does a good guest spot as the star athlete struggling with his respect for Johnny and his desire to do right by his team. Enigma In this episode, Johnny helps an old man rediscover the love of his life, a woman he knew in World War II. In the process, Johnny falls in love with the woman himself through the visions he has of her in the past. This is as clumsy as it sounds, culminating in an absolutely terrible sexual vision in which Johnny sort of experiences the man he’s trying to help and the woman he’s looking for having sex decades previously. This is as risible and creepy as it sounds. The production values of the sequences set during the forties are outstanding though; the show is stretching to show that it can pull these money sequences off and they do. Hall does the best he can, which is try to relate the pain of the visions to the pain of his own life and the fact that the woman he loves is now married to someone else. The episode has a bittersweet, poignant close based on this. But the whole episode is a letdown. Unreasonable Doubt As even a cursory glance at the title and knowledge of television tropes will tell you, in this episode, psychic Johnny Smith gets called up for Jury Duty. They have some fun with it, but the episode is so by the numbers, you could probably tell me everything about it right now and you haven't even seen it. Plus, there's a vision late in the episode that could have had real power, as Johnny experiences how it feels to be a defenseless woman sexually assaulted by thugs, but Lieberman muffs it completely. A couple of nice supporting performances help out, but this ain't 12 Angry Men. It is significant for one reason, however, as it is the first episode of the series in which Hall's Johnny is the only recurring character to appear. A great strength of the series as it progresses is the way it allows its cast to appear only when needed; it gives the show a miniseries feel, since the 'standard cast' isn't in every episode. This feels like a watershed a bit, tuning in to a rote crime thriller and seeing only one character from the title sequence actually in the episode. There's really no place for the others and no reason for them; so they aren't here. Simple as that; and how refreshing.
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Aug 24, 2012 16:07
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Came up with another episode review in my project in watching through MASH. To Market, to Market (1.2)  Biggest laugh in this episode is a brutal edit to the title sequence where the camera cuts away from Hawkeye just before Lt. Dish appears over his shoulder. You can see the top of her head begin to appear and then they cut away. So, as this one opens Hawkeye and Trapper operate on a wounded 2-star general. There’s a near foul-up because they’re out of hydrocortisone. Turns out the black market hijacked the shipment. Spearchucker gets a mention in dialogue. I wonder if he’ll actually appear. So, the new shipment of hydrocortisone arrives. Only the truck is empty, the supplies having been stolen again, somehow without the driver even knowing this time. There is a “hilarious” *BOING* sound effect when Hawkeye and Trapper look in the back of the truck and see that it’s empty. Do they have to do one of those every episode? Hope not. McLean Stevenson and Gary Burghoff just keep stealing the show. HENRY: (lovingly polishing his desk) “Bet you don’t know what kind of wood this is.” RADAR: (not even looking) “It’s oak.” HENRY (still polishing) “Nope, it’s oak.” I mean that doesn’t really pop on the page, but they kill it. G. Wood makes a vocal appearance when Hawkeye backs Henry into calling General Hammond on the phone about the hydrocortisone. But Hammond won’t send them any more, since the requisitions already show that they received their shipment. Luckily Radar is able to track down some hydrocortisone that a black marketer known as Charlie Lee happens to have. So, Hawkeye and Trapper head to Seoul to talk to him. Charlie Lee is played, marveleously, by Jack Soo, who classic television fans will remember from his brilliant deadpan work on Barney Miller. So, he has the meds, but he wants $10,000 dollars, which, given the rate of exchange in the Pilot, would require raffling off five nurses. Hawkeye and Trapper try to figure out something to trade with him, but he has everything. And then Hawkeye comes up with an ace in the hole: Henry’s fancy antique desk. What’s kind of amusing is that Hawkeye borrows liberally in his sales pitch to Charlie Lee from the speech that Henry gave earlier. Of course, Hawkeye wasn’t in the room when Henry gave that speech. Of course, knowing Henry, he’s given that speech a million times, so that’s not such a problem. Jack Soo is able to make you buy this. He sits there in his fancy sweater and his flashy bandanna and you believe, “Hmm, this is a gangster who would definitely say yes to a deal that got him a fancy desk.” So, Hawkeye and Trapper bring Charlie to the 4077th disguised as a Korean general so he can inspect the desk himself. McLean Stevenson once again proves that he deserves the MVP award by slamming his thumb in the drawer and greeting the “general” with his thumb in his mouth. So, they arrange for Charlie’s truck to come back at 0600 the next morning, so Hawkeye and Trapper go to Henry’s office at 0500 to figure out how to get the desk out of Henry’s office. However, Frank and Margaret are both suspicious so Frank tries to follow them and then Margaret hears a noise in the office and they both enter. Pretty good scene here. Hawkeye and Trapper hide under the desk and have to endure about thirty seconds of really awful romantic discussion. The two of them then leave, but Frank locks them into Henry’s office. The truck arrives but Radar can’t get the door unlocked. This leads to a sharp cut to the outside of the office and then the back wall falls off. Hawkeye and Trapper carry the desk out, but then, of course, Frank is coming. So Frank walks around a corner to find Hawkeye and Trapper kneeling at the desk, which they have covered with a tarp, hands clasped, eyes heavenward. “Early mass,” Trapper deadpans. It’s a good moment. I mean, it’s very sitcommy, but pretty clever. All the shenanigans have made the driver of the truck nervous and he’s booked out of camp, so Hawkeye shouts, “Get O’Brien.” Frank, meanwhile, still suspicious, has gone to rouse Henry. The two arrive on the scene just in time for a helicoptor to roar by overhead, Henry’s desk dangling from a long, long line. Hawkeye and Trapper stroll by nonchalantly. Okay, so the shot of Henry and Frank and the helicopter with the desk. That is kind of legitimately comic genius. So, Charlie Lee brings by the hydrocortisone. Henry wanders by as Charlie is chatting with Hawkeye and Trapper. “You got a relative that’s a general?” Henry asks. “We all look alike,” Charlie replies. Odessa Cleveland gets another mention in the cast list as Ginger. Who was she related to, I wonder? Well, it’s better than the Pilot. By quite a bit. I mean, it’s a farcical episode, especially the last seven minutes or so. But I’ll take it. I mean, I laughed a few times. It’s an improvement. ** ½ out of **** stars. Michael O’Hurlihy, Burt Styler MASH Episodes, by Quality: 1. To Market, to Market 2. Pilot The Abridged MASH To Market, to Market
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Sep 15, 2012 17:53
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 The House (2002) - James A. Contner Easily the strongest episode of the first season and a surprisingly mature and intelligent episode for this early in the show's run. Johnny begins to be haunted by visions in his own home and eventually comes to believe that, while he's been told his mother died of natural causes during his coma, this may not be the entire truth. David Ogden Stiers, always reliable, has been mostly on the fringes as the enigmatic Reverend Purdy, a televangelist who is also the executor of Johnny's estate thanks to his mother's will, but this episode allows him to really come to the forefront and show us all the conflicting sides of the character, who will, as the show progresses, become the show's best character. A scene near the climax of the episode where Purdy finally reveals the truth to Johnny is just beautifully acted by Stiers and a scene that follows hard on that, when Johnny finally realizes that his visions of his mother have actually been trying to alert him to something totally different than he thought, is just incredible. Hall absolutely slays the wrenching scene and the emotional power of the moment is a high water mark for the series until . . . well into the second season, I'd say. Great episode of television; absolutely perfect. Enemy Mind (2002) - Jon Cassar And the best episode of the first season is immediately followed by . . . one of the weakest episodes of the first season. The high concept driving this episode is the question of what happens when a psychic gets blasted with high powered street drugs during a police raid he's assisting with? How does a mind so profoundly altered as Johnny Smith's react to mind altering substances? The answers are "not much" and "in no interesting way." Pretty bland episode; really entirely wasted in my opinion. Probably my second least favorite of the first season and probably my third or fourth least favorite of the first three seasons. Netherworld (2002) - Robert Lieberman The series' first attempt at a Twilight Zone episode. Johnny Smith wakes up one morning to find that he never had a car accident, never went into a coma, has no visions and is married to Sarah, the woman he lost during the five years he was comatose. Everything is perfect in Johnny Smith's life suddenly; what about the coma and his psychic abilities? Some sort of strange nightmare that he's just woken from? Or is something more pernicious and deadly happening here? This is familiar ground to anyone who watches television or movies, but Lieberman does a good job at capturing the off-kilter reality that Johnny finds himself in. As he struggles to understand what's happening, he's faced with the age old choice: would the world be a better place if he had everything he wanted or not? And, in the end, if he could have the choice again, would he choose the visions, the ability to save lives, even at the expense of the coma and his tragic state of existence? Hall elevates the episode by really giving a very good performance. He's torn between his desire to stay in this strange alternate reality in which he's truly happy or return to the reality in which he's tormented, but also a savior and helper to those in need. It's at this point that the show really begins to wrestle with what made the novel so compelling, which is Johnny Smith's absolutely tragic state of life, the sort of absolute suffering that Johnny Smith faces because God or Destiny or what have you has put the finger on him and pulled him out of the life he would have chosen in order to be the figure of fate that he has become. I think all of us have those moments when we wonder 'what if' and 'why me;' the power of King's novel was to tap into those two emotions, wrap them together and ramp them up, until Johnny Smith's suffering stands in for the way that all of us suffer loss and disappointment as we live this life and his destiny stands in for the way in which we are able to still find redemption through that suffering. The show takes a while to really warm up to this, but they start flirting with those ideas here and the episode is incredibly entertaining and gripping. The Siege (2002) - Michael Shapiro Johnny gets involved in a hostage situation during a bank robbery; he thinks his visions should be able to help him find a way out, but everytime he tries something, his visions change only in the path they take to get to an ending he can't escape, an ending where he is killed. The idea of the episode is a good one; I dig the fatalistic bent of the episode where Johnny is able to keep influencing events, but somehow never enough to actually save his own life. But the best thing about this one is the performance of Stephen Miller, a Canadian actor, as the gunman. It's a shocking, sympathetic performance and as he finds the humanity in the bank robber, a good man pushed to desperate actions, the episode connects on a human level. It's Miller you'll remember when this episode is over and not Hall.  Here There Be Monsters (2002) - Michael Robison Johnny and his sidekick/physical therapist Bruce are passing through a small town that has just experienced the brutal and as yet unsolved murder of a couple of young children. Johnny decides he needs to use his psychic abilities to help, but this small town is in no mood for shenanigans and before he knows it, Johnny's made himself the prime suspect. This is a pretty silly episode, but Hall sells a few moments as best he can. And this is the first episode since The House that Stiers as Purdy has a large part. Since The House ended with us feeling incredibly sympathetic toward Purdy, it’s no shock that this episode features him acting, deliciously, amoral and unlikable again. This guy just elevates every episode he’s in.
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Sep 16, 2012 20:47
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MASH Project Requiem for a Lightweight (1.3)  So, as this episode, which can be found, of course, on the first season DVD set, begins, Hawkeye and Trapper are on their way to the operating room, distracted because they’re playing a walking game of Gin Rummy. Suddenly, they run into a nurse just coming out of the showers, clad only in a towel. It’s Marcia Strassman as new nurse Margie Cutler. She’ll be a briefly recurring character. Later, while the two are chatting up Cutler, Margaret comes up and sends Cutler away and then gives Hawkeye and Trapper a reaming out and tells them to stay away from her nurses. Trapper then tells Hawkeye that he’s exhausted and is going to sack out for a week. Hawkeye says he’s got some patients to check up on. They then, of course, bump into each at the door to Nurse Cutler’s tent. Trapper is carrying a small bouquet of flowers and Hawkeye has a pair of silk stockings slung over his shoulder. “Are those for me?” Hawkeye asks Trapper, pointing to the flowers. “If you’ll put those on,” Trapper says, thumping the stockings. Radar brings Henry a sheaf of blank papers to sign. “It’s to cut down on your workload,” Radar says. “I’m not signing blank papers,” Henry snaps, “I don’t even know what I’m signing when they’re not blank.” So, Margie tells Hawkeye and Trapper that Margaret’s transferred her to another outfit. So, they hit up Henry to try to get him to override her. Henry offers them a deal. General Barker wants the 4077th to put up a boxer for the inter-unit boxing tournement. Henry says if Hawkeye and Trapper help him with his problem, he’ll help them with theirs. Trapper tells Henry to just get whoever they put up last year. “I can’t,” Henry deadpans. “She’s gone.” Hawkeye and Trapper tell Henry that they can’t do it. Immediately upon leaving his office, Hawkeye starts putting the hard sell on Trapper about what great shape he’s in: “I’ve seen the guys sneaking peeks at you during calisthenics.” “Which guys have been sneaking peaks at me in calisthenics?” “I’d rather not say. Some of them are married.” Next thing you know, Trapper’s sparring with Radar. Gary Burghoff does some sublime physical comedy here. McLean Stevenson enters, watches blank faced for about ten seconds and then says, “I’ll write his wife.” Great delivery. Oh HEY it’s William Christopher as Father Mulcahy! First appearance! The scene ends with Radar planting one right in Trapper’s stomach. Pretty good. More comedic sequences of training. “How far have I run?” “Thirty feet.” “That’ll do it.” Trapper’s working out on a punching bag, which is actually Frank’s duffel bag. Margaret happens by: “Wait a minute, isn’t that Frank’s bag?” “I thought you were Frank’s bag.” Touche, Trapper, touche. That’s the first legitimatly funny insult they’ve given Margaret. So, General Barker arrives with his boxer, who is, of course, incredibly huge. Radar tells a story that he heard about the guy getting mad and punching a jeep. And knocking it out. I don’t even know how to react to a story like that. John Orchard appears here as Ugly John. It’s his second appearance after a brief OR appearance in the Pilot. I think he vanishes pretty quick. Anyway, Ugly John being an anesthetist, he douses Trapper’s right glove in Ether. Just keep jabbing him, Ugly John says and he’ll go down. Does this lead to an extremely labored gag in which Ugly John accidentally passes out himself? You know it does. Henry decides he wants Trapper to back out since he’s afraid he’ll get hurt, especially his hands, you know, Trapper being a surgeon. Hawkeye reassures Henry by letting him in on the ether trick, but Hawkeye, rather stupidly now that I think about it, tells Henry in front of Frank. I’m not sure what Hawkeye was thinking there. General Barker asks Henry if he’d like a gentlemanly wager: “What do you say to a hundred?” “Dollars?” Frank and Margaret switch Trapper’s small bottle of ether with a bottle of distilled water. Father Mulcahy introduces General Barker’s fighter: “With a record of ninety-seven wins, no losses and three arrests . . .” Very funny gag in which Radar rings the bell very loudly and the guy sitting next to the bell on the other side flinches. It’s all in the execution. Trust me, it’s funny. Hawkeye figures it out when Trapper keeps getting knocked down. He dashes back to the OR for some real ether. So, the General’s fighter gets the ether in the face and topples out of the ring, landing, of course, right on Frank and Margaret. The next day, Henry brings Nurse Cutler to the Swamp: “Gentlemen, you have lived up to your part of the bargain. I have lived up to mine. *aside to Nurse Cutler* Keep moving or you’re dead.” Hawkeye tries to put the moves on Cutler, but she goes for Trapper and his black eye , of course. “I managed him,” Hawkeye says ineffectually. “Does it hurt?” Maggie moans, gazing into Trapper’s eyes. “No, not at all,” Hawkeye avers. Well, that wasn’t much of a twist. I suppose the main interesting things about this episode are all kind of cast related: it introduces Nurse Cutler who will briefly be a supporting character and, most significantly of all, introduces William Christopher, the “real” Father Mulcahy. Beyond that, it introduces him as having trained boxers in the past; that’ll be an enduring part of his character, his love of the violent game of boxing. Interesting that they had it from the beginning. Did Dago Red love boxing in the movie? Man, I don’t remember. On the technical side of things, it’s worth mentioning that this is the first episode directed by legendary television director Hy Averback, who would end up directing an astounding number of MASH episodes. Plotwise, not a particularly strong episode. Some good line deliveries, but nothing out of the ordinary. *1/2 out of **** stars. Hy Averback,Robert Klane MASH Episodes, by Quality: 1. To Market, to Market 2. Requiem for a Lightweight 3. Pilot The Abridged MASH To Market, to Market
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Sep 28, 2012 15:48
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 Dinner with Dana (2002) - Jon Cassar Absolutely idiotic and profoundly annoying episode that revolves around muck raking reporter Dana Bright, who has been a recurring character since the very first episode. In this episode, she gets Johnny over to her house and attempts to seduce him, if by seduce we mean she blinks heavily at him and heaves her bosom about a hundred times. But Johnny's psychic abilities show him the wounded little girl inside this supposedly confident woman! Yes, it's ultimately revealed that when she was a little girl, her father . . . sent her to her room when she was bad! Wait, what?! This is what passes for psychological trauma now? My God, at least she could have been abused or something; did he at least slap her? No, just . . . sent her to her room. Plus, Kirstin Dalton doesn't have any depth at all; she's really a horrible actress who is one of the main problems with the first couple of seasons of this show, I think. This is still probably the show's very worst episode. Utterly risible. Shaman (2002) - Rachel Talalay The penultimate episode of the first season and one of the best of the series. Driven by visions of disaster, Johnny finds himself in the Maine woods, but when he stumbles into an ancient cave he realizes that the disaster he keeps seeing occured hundreds of years ago and then he finds himself in communication with an ancient Native American shaman who is receiving visions of the same disaster before it happens. Sound confusing? It really isn't; this episode is masterfully sketched out and the way the episode very quickly orients you to the fact that when both Johnny in the present and the Shaman in the past touch the same object in the cave, they can see and interact with each other is a masterpiece of economy. Adam Beach is the shaman and its a very evocative performance, made even more amazing by the fact that the episode keeps Beach's performance entirely in the Indian language of his people, without even a single subtitle. Seeing Johnny and the shaman trying to communicate about their shared visions and deduce when and where the disaster will strike when they don't even speak the same language is wonderfully engaging. Most shows would have cheated and had the shaman miraculously speaking English, but not so here. This is a gripping and charming episode. A real exercise in legitimate creativity.  Destiny (2002) - Robert Lieberman The thirteenth episode of the brisk first season and a great finale. Johnny's vision leads him to save several teens from a disastrous fire and when one of the teens turns out to be the son of a wealthy businessman, Johnny finds himself becoming a media icon overnight. Johnny isn't too sure how he feels about this, but that's soon the least of his worries; popular, charismatic Greg Stillson is coming to town to campaign for the local Senate seat and when Johnny shakes his hand at a press gathering, he's given a mysterious vision that eventually resolves into the apocalypse, a vision of Washington, DC utterly destroyed. In this long form version of the novel, where the show has spent most of the first season telling its own stories, it's great to see Stillson and realize that the show is going to give us the novel's story too. What makes this even better? Greg Stillson, so memorably played by Martin Sheen in the Cronenberg movie, is here played by Sean Patrick Flanery, in what, as the show progresses, becomes his best performance, a conflicted, realistic, canny, pragmatic and amoral politician. This is great stuff; when Hall and Flanery meet in this episode, you can already see the sparks flying - these are two actors at the top of their game, imbuing their every moment together with a sense of absolute good and evil. The episode ends on a dark note, Johnny having finally given in to a nagging temptation, Greg Stillson on the march to Washington and Johnny unsure how to stop him. This episode signals good things for Season Two. What a fun season of television.
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Sep 30, 2012 01:50
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I'm just watching through a great British series from 1983 called Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime; it aired here in the States on PBS' Mystery! program and I'm a sucker for that show. Recently reread the short story collection the series is based on and it convinced me to check out the tv series, which I hadn't seen before. It's not as good as the Poirot adaptations with David Suchet, but it's a lot of fun. Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime: The Affair of the Pink Pearl This was the first episode of a ten episode series that aired here in the States on PBS’ Mystery! program. It featured James Warwick as Tommy and Francesca Annis as Tuppence. They’re both kind of perfectly cast, though it took me a bit longer to warm up to Annis as Tuppence. Warwick and Annis are charming, witty, sophisticated and they have fabulous chemistry. This adapts the first three stories from Christie’s book: A Fairy in the Flat, A Pot of Tea and The Affair of the Pink Pearl. It’s faithful down to the dialogue being, in some instances, lifted straight out of the text. The roaring 20s design is fantastic and the chemistry helps sell the series. The Blunt Detective Agency is just a front for crime here, not the espionage den that it was in Christie’s original set of stories and the three stories from the book that dealt with the spy game aren’t adapted for this series; all the others are, beginning with this one, which is a lot of fun. I will, of course, be skipping the usual DID I SOLVE IT section in these adaptation reviews, since I’ve read the stories. If the adaptations ever change the solution, I’ll note it; otherwise, I can hardly help, now can I, knowing the solution from the beginning? Tony Wharmby, David Butler Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime: Finessing the King Excellent adaptation on this one. They structure it a bit differently, with the clue about the newspaper headers coming far later in this episode than it does in the story, but everything else is almost exactly as it is in the story. I especially note Peter Blythe as Bingo Hale; as the wrongfully accused (or is he?) he’s wonderfully abrupt, angry and frustrated (and frustrating) in his one scene with our lead characters. Christopher Hodson, Agatha Christie Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime: The House of Lurking Death To me, it feels odd to have this story so early in the series run. It comes very late in the original short story sequence and the fact that several people die, essentially because the Beresfords screw up, is very shocking when it happens in the story. It seems to me that it needs to come later in the run. Isn’t it going to feel strange when the Beresfords are back to treating the whole thing like a silly romp next episode? Well, perhaps not. But a very creditable adaptation. “I am the flail of the Lord” is just as silly on screen as it is on the page, but the show does what it can. Christopher Hodson, Jonathan Hales Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime: The Sunningdale Mystery This was one of my favorite stories in the book, so I went into it with high hopes. They jettison the central gimmick of the story, which is that Tommy and Tuppence solve the mystery in one sitting, without leaving a restaurant in which they’re discussing the case. In this version, they go to Sunningdale, lounge about a hotel and walk around on the golf course where the murder took place. But the solving is still all second hand; all the information comes via Tommy’s narration. The show pulls off the mystery’s solution very well, without tipping their hand too early. They play perfectly fair, just like Christie does. There’s a wonderful, very dramatic moment when Tommy muses on how quiet the murder must have been; he remembers seeing men die in the War with just a moan or “a funny little cough.” Warwick really slays the moment; it’s a rare moment of seriousness and you can see the darkness lurking on the edges of the sunny little pair’s world, the darkness of what the two of them saw and experienced during World War I. Very good episode, easily right up there with The Affair of the Pink Pearl. Tony Wharmby, Jonathan Hales, Agatha Christie
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Dec 9, 2012 00:12
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CarlosTheDwarf posted:I guess I'll recommend something available on Netflix that's not very popular. Harper's Island. Basically a 13 episode show about a wedding group stuck on an island with a serial killer. It's not a good show. But it's entertaining if you like horror/slasher type movies with some mystery added. I watched the first two episodes of that and gave up. The main thing I took away from what I saw was that there's a reason most slasher movies aren't thirteen hours long.
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Dec 28, 2012 20:09
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