Season 8, Episode 17: Heal Thyself
Special Guest Star: Mike Bason
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I really enjoy this episode and your covered of it, along with all your episodes. Heal Thyself has a line that i use way to often in life, “just a little insomnia but I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it. ”
I understand for comedic sake and for the Potter’s line “between you and the mumps Winchester, is prefer the mumps. At least i know they are going to go away.” However, if he really felt that way he could always transfer him like he keeps asking. I guess a good surgeon beats personal feelings.
You mentioned that Winchester never mentioned that he had the mumps so how did Hawkeye know. That would most likely be in their military file. If you remember in the episode Springtime, as an excuse to get near Lt. Simmons, Radar says to Lt. Baker that she never answered question 7 on her health card, did she ever have cholera, diphtheria, etc. I’d guess that Winchester’s card would have memento of he had the mumps.
Thank you again and remember when it comes to mumps, if you get them as a kid you don’t get them as an adult but if you get them as an adult, you don’t get kids.
As always, I would never compare working in the ED to being a combat surgeon. But I can tell you that I know of several docs who couldn’t take the stress and strain of ER medicine and left. So I can understand Newsome here.
I thought the new configuration of the OR made it feel more like a factory assembly line, adding to the dehumanizing and loss of feeling that can happen when someone is faced with neverending stress.
Lastly, I wonder if there is some backstory to Newsome we don’t see. I can see a world where after his earlier horrific combat time, he showed signs of cracking. So the army sent him to Japan for a much more controlled and less stressful medical career. He is too talented to have leave medicine completely so they moved him. But when the 4077 is short, they looked around … who has combat experience? Newsome. And so they sent him back and all that trauma intensified and revealed itself.
Great discussion. “You get it as an adult, you can’t get kids” is in my lexicon for sure!
I took it that the mumps plot got so much airtime because the writers were a little too amused by playing Odd Couple with Potter and Winchester. The two have never gotten along, as Charles was basically shanghaied by Potter to the 4077th, and he always makes Potter pay for that in exchange for keeping a surgeon as good as Charles. Their scenes here evoked a lot of their one-up-manship scene in S7 E19’s Young And The Restless. That story also featured a new doctor in the camp. But I agree, the “A” plot was so good, maybe this part could have been backburnered just a smidge.
Also to see how much changed in 25 years, I’ve been on a binge rewatch of “Scrubs” since a brand-new season aired this year. That show had 2-3 additional cast members per season that would clock anywhere from 2 to 8 episodes. Unheard of in the 70s and 80s, but give it a couple of decades, and it becomes the norm. However that also came with more attention to continuity and longer story arcs, basically switching from episodic to serialized shows. Maybe those things *all* had to happen in order for a “Dr Newsome” arc to be possible. Ah well, 20-20 hindsight perhaps.
Another fine episode. I just want to mention my own fandom of the late great Edward Herrmann. I agree that The Lost Boys is likely his best known performance, I always think of him as the crusading minister who lead The North Avenue Irregulars agains an illegal gambling ring. It’s one of my earliest movie going experiences. He also was the patriarch of the Gilmore clan in the wonderful TV dramedy The Gilmore Girls. Yes, I absolutely adore that series.
In regards to Zane Grey, I’d like to preface my opinion by stating I love westerns. I’ve read dozens of western novels and watched scores of western films. I’ve only read Riders of the Purple Sage (perhaps his most well known novel) and I struggled to get through it. I much prefer Matt Braun or Louis L’Amoure.
I was a kid in the ‘70s and my family had a huge old time console record player.
It really was a big piece of furniture.
The turntable obviously played 33 1/3 and 45, but also had the 78 and 16 speeds!
We only had a very few 78’s and I can attest to the fact that those records were incredibly brittle.
If you dropped them they did shatter into a million pieces.
Cant even tell you how excited I was to hear a lady macbeth mention, with Mike comparing Newsome’s hand-wringing to hers. ‘Mashbeth’ is such a specific crossover of my interests and one ive thought about a lot! Theres a scene in 5.13 ‘hawk’s nightmare’ when hawk is sleepwalking while radar and klinger watch and discuss it, and it’s JUST like in macbeth (act 5 scene 1) when a doctor and one of lady macbeth’s gentlewomen are discussing her from afar while she walks around wringing her hands, muttering about the damned spot that wont wash out (‘Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand… what’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed’) all while fast asleep! There’s something in there about both hawk and lady macbeth regressing to a childlike state, something about them both being haunted by the deaths of children, something about this lingering sense of guilt over the parts they played in the deaths of innocent people and what that means in hawk’s (and newsome’s!!) case given theyre DOCTORS and not ‘at fault’ but still end up haunted and stained with blood that wont wash out, just like the macbeths. Its twisted. Its nuts. Its MASH!!!!! Great episode as always!!
It’s always a treat to hear a guest talk about their favorite episode!
Personally, I like Heal Thyself, and I completely agree – I wish there was more focus on Steve’s storyline. Edward Herrmann is such a tremendous guest star, and the character is so interesting. Love the thought of a three-parter – that would have been wonderful. I would have loved to get to know more about his personality, see him interact with all the regular characters more, then his breakdown would have hit so much harder.
The way he talks about his past experiences sounds a bit like he’s talking about something he saw in a movie, it sounds like he has put this rose tinted filter of adventure over what he’s been through, and it would have been awesome to see it fall apart little by little during several episodes.
Charles and Potter being at each other’s throats (ha ha) becomes uninteresting in comparison, I think this is one of those episodes where the A and B-plot don’t go together at all. The small moment of Charles showing genuine concern about about not being able to have kids is great, but it’s over so quickly, and we don’t even get to see any reaction from him after Potter comforts him.
Also – kind of ironic that Charles is so into Caruso in this episode, after being so anti-Italian in Bottle Fatigue. But here the singer offers Charles something, and we have seen many times that he softens when he can gain something.
Oh, and in my mind – at some point after this, Charles will be super duper bored, and pick up a Zane Grey-novel out of pure desperation, and he will enjoy it a lot. It’s the same side of Charles that likes Tom and Jerry, and lowbrow comedy. He won’t admit liking it, of course, but he’ll be so into it, I can just see it.
I really like Hawkeye’s and BJ’s reaction to Steve, they seem really young. “Oh, we have a cool new friend, we’re the Three Stooges, he can be in our little club.”
Same with Margaret, she seems to have a very girlish reaction to him, being smitten and laughing kind of awkwardly. Again, would have been great to see him interact with the regular characters more.
After his breakdown, the other character’s reactions always gets to me, how these incredibly capable people, used to seeing so much misery and just taking charge of any situation, are all just so lost. All they can do is watch. No wounds to stitch together, and the helplessness in their eyes is hearbreaking.
Forgive me! I did not see your observation about the discontinuity in Charles’ anti-Italian leanings and his adoration of Enrico Caruso. But I’m glad that someone else noticed it, too. That bothers me whenever I see this episode.
Like Mike, this episode left an indelible impression on me as a kid. Up until that point, I had never seen a person who was truly broken. What seals it in the episode is not how Newsome looks in Potter’s tent, though that is horrifying to watch. It is seeing Charles lower his head when the camera first shows him after BJ and Hawkeye comes in. He understands in then too; that the war got to Newsome and that Newsome will never be the same. When the camera goes back to Potter, then Charles, then Margaret, you see how emotional they are. It is so unnerving to watch a person completely break down in a short period of time. I put Edward Herrmann’s role and performance here in the top tier of MASH guests.
I cannot watch this episode and not feel emotional about it. It is a kind of scary that hits hard for someone like me who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. I haven’t been to the point that Newsome gets to, but I have been in such severe panic attacks that it does feel like drowning. I’m please that MASH was willing to go this far into portraying problems with mental health. It truly is foreshadowing for what Hawkeye deals with in the finale.
A great episode and great conversation once again. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Mike!
About Hawkeye knowing Charles’ has never had the mumps I don’t think it’s a mistake or that something was cut, I always inferred it was something that Charles had mentioned off-screen – perhaps in a conversation with Hawkeye and B.J. when the disease began to break out in camp. As such, I really like it because it makes it feel like the 4077th is alive and continues to exist after the cameras are turned off.
While I like the plot around Steve (and Edward Herrmann is doing a great job with the part), I’ve always felt he’s a bit too much of a perfect fit for Hawkeye and B.J. and their special brand of humour (he’s just a bit too likable, a bit too much like “one of the guys”, a bit too much like a clone of Hawkeye and B.J.) that, to me, he is more of a plot point than a character, and I wish they had given Steve his own distinct personality so that he could be both a character and a plot point.
Great discussion. Edward Herrmann was fantastic. I know him mostly from Gilmore Girls. I knew he seemed familiar while watching this episode but didn’t make the connection until I saw the end credits. Gilmore Girls started 20 years after this episode, and he was of course older but also playing a more upper-crust patriarch on that show while at the same time having a sweet relationship with his granddaughter. I agree his character here and his interactions with Hawkeye and BJ feels straight out of the MASH movie or the first season of the series when there were multiple characters like Hawkeye.
I always watch the episode before listening to your podcast, but in this instance, I think I’m going to watch it again after listening to the podcast in order to fully absorb and appreciate Herrmann’s performance.
I agree the Potter/Charles subplot is not on the same par as the A plot. I frankly grow a little tired of Angry Potter snapping at Charles. Yes, Charles acts like an arrogant jackass, but Potter is usually better at handling people. I know he’s sick and irritable as well as in close quarters with Charles, but I’ve noticed Potter acting like that with Charles at other times. The odd couple dynamic between them feels kind of forced, but at the same time, they’re both such great actors that I still enjoy watching them together.
I always enjoy the podcast, but especially when it’s about episodes that are so outstanding.
Rob, I found myself nodding along when you were talking about the Newsome story being a multi-episode arc. I would go so far as to say that they could have brought him back at the same frequency they brought Sidney Freedman back in a guest role over several seasons. Seeing Edward Hermann going joke for joke with Mike Farrell and Alan Alda made me want to see more of him. It was hard to see Newsome’s descent within a 24-minute episode. If they had allowed us to get to know Newsome even more over an arc of several episodes in multiple seasons, that fall would have landed so much harder emotionally for us. It would be like if Sidney were killed — perish the thought! Alas, I was much too young to be in the writers room when this season aired.
Sorry for double posting, but I almost forgot! I don’t know if anyone else has pointed this out. It’s just another one of those M*A*S*H continuity errors (and I have a headcanon theory about those that helps explain the errors…happy to elaborate sometime, but it starts with the premise that Henry never died), but…in the previous episode Charles was freaking out over Honoria marrying “AN ITAL-I-AN,” but when quarantined with Col. Potter, he is absolutely gushing over Enrico Caruso (almost typed Enrico Palazzo there). I guess in Charles’ mind, at least until he had a change of heart, the Italians were good enough to entertain him, but not good enough to marry into the Winchester family. You’d think they would have spaced those episodes out a little more, but I imagine with as many moving parts as M*A*S*H had, it’s easy to miss these things.
Like Shawn mentioned previously, we also had a bunch of 78’s growing up. Not only were they brittle, but they were thicker than 33’s, so even less flexible and more cumbersome. You didn’t want to LOOK at them wrong or they’d break apart.
I certainly have opinions about A and B plot episodes, but in this case I like the balance – I like that the B plot builds a healthy, familiar sense of comedy, because when the A plot virtually comes crashing into it via Newsome going into Potter’s tent, there’s a real sense of the horror of war invading the comfortable joy that was built – that quarantined tent was like a haven of comedy hidden from the war, but there’s no escape.
As a weird side note, as a kid I somehow conflated Edward Hermann with Roger Bowan who played Henry Blake in the movie. Looking at them now, I’m not sure how I made that mistake, but at the time, I thought they just brought the actor back the same way they brought Harry Morgan back after playing General Steele. I wasn’t the smartest kid.