M*A*S*HCast 152 – Major Ego

8 responses to “M*A*S*HCast 152 – Major Ego”

1. Great episode of MASHCast for a great episode of MASH! This is definitely a comfort episode I rewatch many many times and it was great fun to “replay” favorite scenes & line deliveries along in my head while listening to you discuss them.

   Much appreciation to Eric for the stories he shared. One of the coolest things about MASHCast is bringing fans of the show together from many walks of life, and it was wonderful to hear about the cosplay experience. The story of the GFA watch party at the bar made me retroactively jealous as someone who wasn’t born yet, but just imagining what that would’ve been like gave me a good dose of secondhand joy as well. Thank you Rob for continuing to get new and interesting MASH origin stories on the show!

   For my two cents, Klinger’s runner-up Disney princess costume would be his floral dress in lavender pastels with the matching sunhat in “Springtime” a timeless classic!

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2. I had to do a double take during the OR scene because Greenleigh in the surgical mask looked EXACTLY Frank Burns.

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3. Regarding Klinger’s “shoestring catch” comment, I like to believe that the producers had ingeniously anticipated Klinger and Charles’ shared love of the Brooklyn Dodgers in Season 9’s “A War for All Seasons.”

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4. Oh, I think I’ve seen a picture of Eric in that yellow gown, maybe Mash Matters shared a photo of it? Looked amazing, and it’s great to now have a voice to go with the glamorous looks. 🙂 Cosplay seems like so much fun, I love the creativity of it, and it seems like such a nice community.

   I really like Major Ego, it’s a great episode with some nice character development for both Charles and Margaret.
   Charles choosing to do the right thing is always nice to see, and him realizing that his ego was getting the best of him and that he didn’t deserve any article is a great insight to his character. I mean, had it been Frank, he would have had no such thoughts, he would probably have added some extra “panache” to the story. “Oh, I forgot to mention that I saved that young men while bombs were falling all over the place and there was also a tornado.”

   My favorite thing is- surprise, surprise – Margaret’s storyline, though. Greenleigh is a bit creepy, I have to say. Like, just chill, dude! Especially in the OR, when he asks if he can watch her. Just let the woman work. I am a person who can absolutely not work when someone is watching me, so it’s just such an annoying comment… I work in marketing, and do a lot of layouts, and if someone is watching it’s all “Ooops, didn’t mean to turn that upside down”, “ooop, didn’t mean to turn that one blue”, “ooops, didn’t mean to delete that!” 🙂

   I love the little scene with her and BJ, they have such a nice, friendly energy between them, and I wish we would have seen more scene with just the two of them. It’s nice that BJ is so protective of her, and I love how Margaret wants to meet someone like him – a dedicated man who cares about his family most of all – but not him, obviously. I think Margaret really needs to have men in her life that are just like that, just a friend, not a love interest or someone to impress, just a calm presence she can confide in. Like BJ and like Potter.

   Kind of rude of Greenleigh to walk out of the bar with the drink shaker, though, I hope BJ had another one… 🙂

   Really love how Margaret has come to a place in her life now that she doesn’t feel the need to immediately attach herself to a new man. Margaret from the earlier seasons would have loved the idea of having a brand new reporter boyfriend (even if he is just a captain), but now she feels the need to stand on her own feet, she doesn’t need to be a girlfriend, a wife or even a mistress, she wants to find out who she is on her own. Good for her! This is a big part of why I love her so much as a character, she is just constantly on a journey of finding herself, she wants so many things and it’s always fascinating to watch her trying to obtain all these things – often she goes about it in the worst ways possible. She is strong in so many ways, and so weak in others, and all of it creates such a complex, beautiful character.
   Here, her ego – or her sense of self esteem really – is working in the best way possible for her, she lets her new suitor down gracefully, and is ready to move on with her life as a new Margaret Houlihan, in a very positive way.

   I really love Charles’ little smirk at the end. I wish he and Margaret would have had more scenes together too, when we could have seen their friendship developed a bit more. They really have a lot in common as characters, and Loretta Swit and David Ogden Stiers are of course incredible actors, so I would have loved some more material for the two of them to dig their acting claws into.

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   1. Insightful comments, MK!

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      1. Thank you, Captain!

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5. As I watch MASH again through the lens of this show, I am intrigued by what seems to be running themes. One of them is a doctor’s hubris. Remember the episode where Hawkeye’s patient is doing bad and he can’t understand why, knowing he did things perfectly? He then opens up the patient again and finds a small defect in the colon, so small even Frank Burns says ‘anyone could have missed that’.

   It is why I think Hawkeye is trying to help Charles here. He has lived through it. He has experience.

   I don’t know if MASH writers thought along that line. But I like when I see themes crop up again over time and seasons.

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6. I thought it was interesting how you squeezed a discussion of the episode in with the cosplay conversation.

   Many regulars from “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” appeared on M*A*S*H. Besides Greg Mullavey there was also Graham Jarvis who came to camp and instruct the staff how to interact with MacArthur and Mary Kay Place who wrote several episodes and played the nurse who “slaked” Radar. And to put the number of episodes of Hartman into perspective “General Hospital” has made around 16,000 episodes.

   I don’t quite see the Margaret character in the same way as you or your guest do. Margaret has always been “one night stand Houlihan”. If a man had her rank or higher she was in bed with him. Heck, you could even say that Donald was a “one night stand” since she got engaged less than a week after meeting him. Her actions in this episode were not a change. It was just Margaret being Margaret.

   And my favorite line in the episode was one you briefly mentioned — “What a dump!” “The decorator is here.”

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