M*A*S*HCast – Season 3, Episode 20: Love & Marriage
Special Guest Star: Paul Wildenberger
Air Date: February 18, 1975
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Wow! I hadn’t realized it before, but it looks like MASH addressed the issue of human trafficking long before it really entered the public consciousness. Way to go MASH. Unless, it was already in the public consciousness, and I was just too young at the time to realize it.
Thank you for another great episode.
I remember seeing a story on 20/20 back in the ‘80s about a scam in South Korea targeting American military doing the same thing McShane was involved in.
It would have been nice to have had a regular Korean character to speak for Koreans on the show. Ho Jon seemed to do that some. In the moose episode, Hawkeye was outraged but Ho Jon was like “it is what it is, they need the money”.
I saw the S8 episode where Soon Tek-Oh played a North Korean that kept surrendering to Hawkeye and BJ the other night. He was always good at what he did, even when not speaking English. Kind of a comic relief version of Mako.
Pak was definitely a sleazeball. It would have been funny to make him a recurring character, always coming in with some money making scheme.
I agree this was a great episode for Wayne Rogers. Trapper had a bit of a dark side that Hawkeye and BJ lacked. Yes, if they had let him
have more scenes like this he might have stayed longer.
I totally agree about having a Korean character. Looking at the TV landscape, they at least made some progress by having the occasional character who wasn’t a cliche, and representation was better than none. Even today, we’re reminded there’s more work to be done on this front. But I’m somewhat heartened to see MASH made some effort.
This is my favorite 3rd season episode because it divides up relatively equally between Trapper and Hawkeye in a way that so many other 1-3 season episodes didn’t. Although I do agree with Paul that I would have preferred less of Radar. Maybe with a better edited scene we could have gotten some wisdom and advise from, say, Father Mulcahy?
I echo the opinion that MASH should have had a recurring cast of “local” supporting characters….that would have given the show an even deeper sense of time and place, I think. Besides that, though, I would have liked to have seen more episodes featuring other people in the outfit like Zale, and McShane, and yes, Igor and Dennis and Goldman. It’s a shame that it took MASH 10 years to get around to writing an episode about Kelleye! I think one of the less-successful parts of MASH is its lack of well-rounded supporting characters; this is a characteristic of TV shows that we have really gotten used to because of shows like Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, ER, etc.
That’s an interesting thought about having an ensemble cast. albeit the obvious difference being those shows were hour-long where they have the time to develop more characters, and primarily dramas. Comparing MASH to other half-hour comedies and I’d think it holds up in terms of extended cast. But I get what you’re saying. There’s some great stories to be had beyond the main 6-8 cast members.
Zale did get a couple of episodes where he was featured. The one where he and Klinger are forced to have a boxing match and knock out Frank was funny. Then he had one where he was crying to BJ about his wife having an affair but he was actually having one himself.
Igor never got much to do beyond bar tending and serving food. Rizzo came the closest to breaking into the main cast.
I always liked Kelley and wish she had been developed more. They also could have developed more secondary nurse characters.
But I agree it is hard to have too many second tier characters in a half hour show. The Facts of Life made a wise decision when they cut half the girls after the first season.
My favorite parts of this episode:
McShane’s heel-turn with Trapper. I wasn’t prepared for how it was handled, and Dugan acted the hell out of it!
Frank shooting out the light. Fantastically executed bit. Props to the props and FX departments!
Hawkeye: “Just come hold her hand.” Radar: “Oh, no no no!” Makes me laugh every time.
Thanks for another great podcast, gentlemen!
I knew McShane would turn out to be a wrong un because Frank liked him and I don’t think was a very good judge of character.
I’ve seen this episode many times and it finally occurred to me that what McShane and Pak were involved in was human trafficking. I lovr MASH and it was incredibly ahead of its time.