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Cemetry Gator posted:
I did a binge-watch of all 11 seasons of MASH early in lockdown, so some thoughts: The irony is that the showrunners fought to have the laugh track be omitted from the surgery scenes, because while there is 100% a lot of gags there, they wanted them to land as at least being serious in the sense that the actual work was serious. MASH is seminal for a lot of reasons, the single camera nature of the show means it's actually aged reasonably well in terms of style, and there's actually some surprises in how they deal with some social issues pretty decently for the time. There's early episodes that deal with homophobia and human trafficking that do a solid job for an early 70s audience in having Our Heroes show them why these things are Bad. But it's still very much a product of it's time. The show's treatment of women and sex is... spotty at best, although it got better as the show went on, presumably because Loretta Swit had more clout being a star of one of the biggest shows on TV, but there's some early poo poo that is downright horrific when viewed in hindsight. The laugh track thing also does some interesting things with the character of Klinger. The laugh track makes it extremely clear that the sight of a male-presenting/identied character in a dress was meant to be a laugh all on it's own, but without the laugh track... I think he's presented reasonably well for the time? Like, a lot of the jokes boil down to 'rear end in a top hat makes fun of Klinger, Klinger (or Hawkeye or BJ) hits back with a one-liner and humiliates jerk'. Race is a dicey one as well, and I know Korean people have a ton of issues with the show, especially for how it usually depicts the natives in South Korea, generally as near-mute farmers and peasants, almost more like the MASH crew have gone back in time than to a foreign nation. And there was a minor supporting character early in the show that seems to have been dropped due to a racist nickname carried over from the book/movie but to me the better bet would've just been to drop the nickname, considering they basically did that for some other characters. It's arguably one of the first 'dramedies', hitting that '30 minute show that sometimes stops being funny because the story is Very Serious' beat very well. There's pretty much 3-4 'eras' of MASH (usually it's seen as 3, but I think you can argue 4): S1-3: The Trapper John McIntyre years. Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson (Trapper John and Col. Henry Blake, respectively) were clearly sold on the show being more of a buddy comedy where they'd be equal or close to it billing with Alan Alda's Hawkeye Pierce. A lot of the episodes in this run are more sitcom standard fare modified for the war time/army setting, with only a handful of the bigger 'issue' episodes and even those tend to be more gag heavy. But midway through season 1, the episode "Sometimes You Hear The Bullet" provided a template for the more dramatic episodes and Alda nails the performance. It became increasingly clear that the show was turning more into the Hawkeye show with everyone else as supporting players. So that led to both actors leaving, and the infamous "Abyssinia Henry" finale to season 3 that's been parodied a thousand times. S4-8 (I think you can split this into 4-5 and 6-8, personally): This is kind of a case of the show finding itself, and outgrowing some elements, notably Larry Linville's Frank Burns. Linville, unlike Rogers and Stevenson, knew his character wasn't the star of the show, but as all the other characters began to show personality traits that lent themselves to the more dramatic episodes, Frank stayed a cartoon villain. Something had to give, so they replaced him with David Ogden Stiers as Maj Charles Winchester, a similar blowhard, but with a level of competence and empathy that let him slide into the role of sympathetic dramatic lead when needed. They also bring in Mike Farrell and Dragnet's Harry Morgan to replace Rogers and Stevenson, both playing characters much more suited to their slightly reduced roles The show was much less about the goofball draftees vs the army straights, and more 'peacenik docs vs war and The Establishment', which lent itself to fewer of the stock sitcom plots, so you get more war/medical stories with jokes stapled in. The split I mention is when Linville leaves, because that pretty much drops the whole 'regular army as antagonist' element, at least in so far as having a boot licking officer looking to run the good guys in. S9-11: I think this period is a little unfairly maligned, having watched it recently. It's sometimes treated like later seasons of The Simpsons, universally unfunny, albeit for the opposite reason: Too much heart instead of too little. Season 10 does start to get a little heavy on the cloying sentimentality in the hopes it'll make up for the loss of conflict between the leads blunting the jokes. But 9 is generally still very solid and 11 has a back-to-basics approach that suggests everyone involved knew the end was near. One thing that is probably fair is the accusation of Alda getting self-indulgent. Several episodes around this time contrive to give him whole episodes of screen time to himself to monologue and emote, usually written and even directed by the man himself, using his power as executive producer.
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Feb 15, 2021 00:40
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| # ¿ Mar 24, 2025 21:33 |
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Jose Oquendo posted:Is Soap streaming anywhere? I haven't watched it since Comedy Central aired reruns decades ago. You're lucky to even find Benson available anywhere. UK Prime Video only has the first season, and only for purchase, not as part of Prime itself.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:05
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I feel like despite Fox being a hell of an actor, Alex Keaton is gonna play very differently today.
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Feb 15, 2021 02:04
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Norman Lear's impact on the format is basically impossible to overstate. Hell, even as recently as the new One Day At A Time that got cancelled recently he was involved with some pretty progressive stuff within the genre.
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Feb 17, 2021 04:21
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