M*A*S*HCast 161 – The Price

9 responses to “M*A*S*HCast 161 – The Price”

1. This is the first episode I remember seeing an ad for on TV. I still hadn’t watched the show and didn’t have any idea what it was about. I’m not even sure if my dad was watching the show yet either. But within a year or so I would have started to watch reruns regularly after school.

   My middle school friend and I had an empty desk between us in school and when people would ask us whose desk it was, we would say “Tuttle”. We also (somehow) got the movie through our local library. I didn’t enjoy the movie much, but I did record the theme song on a cassette tape and figured out the lyrics.

   Eventually I discovered there were new episodes still being made and would watch them too.

   My dad and I didn’t agree on much, but we both really enjoyed this show. The “soot, sir” scene with Henry Blake never failed to make him laugh out loud. He would always complain about the laugh track and was glad it missing from the final episode.

   He passed away a few years later and I’ll always be happy that he and I could connect over this show.

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2. Another outstanding episode, both for M*A*S*H and for M*A*S*HCast. Tim is, no surprise, an excellent guest. I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with Tim at a couple comic-cons and he is just as great a guy in person as he is on a podcast.
   This episode of M*A*S*H was a great showcase for Harry Morgan. He gives so much to his portrayal of Colonel Potter. Sometimes with a sudden bellowed colloquialism and sometimes with a small nod or smirk. This show gained a great asset when they snagged him.
   Auntie Mame! I fell in love with that movie when my local PBS channel played it during one of their fundraisers. I must have been about 12 at the time and I’ve seen it several times since. Most recently about a month ago. I was even in a community theatre production of Mame back in the late 90s. Rob, you are right about that ending scene. Perfection.
   Tim, using your last name to snag this episode was brilliant! Who else could have been Rob’s co-host? Rob, did I ever mention that ‘April Fools’ was my middle name? Just remember that when season 8 rolls around.

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   1. PBS fundraisers is exactly how I saw Auntie Mame, too! That’s excellent, Paul! You are just as delightful in real life, my friend!

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3. I think if I’d let Major Joe pick our episode for the season, we might have had a better shot at getting to discuss this very special episode. Doesn’t matter, though. You two nailed it! Thanks for doing it justice.

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   1. Oh, and I can understand Ham’s decision. When I volunteered for deployments, it was partly because I knew others were downrange while I was comfortable at home with my family. Of course, when I didn’t volunteer, the service sometimes made sure I got to join them anyway.

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4. Two things I wish I’d done for this episode. First, mention that this is the second time this season where Margaret is on camera only wearing a towel. That’s a little icky.

   Second, I should have asked my wife to watch the show to critique the horse and tack (the saddle, bridle, leathers, etc put on the horse), because when she saw the photo on Facebook, she immediately started analyzing the image. Since nerds of all kinds are wonderful, here are her notes on that point.

   The horse playing Sophie is being cared for very well, having a shiny coat and a healthy weight so she’s getting enough to eat. She’s not overly groomed like horses that compete in shows might have, like trimmed ear and muzzle hair, or a styled tail. So she looks nice but not pristine, which suits Potter’s likely attitude of a fun working horse.

   There’s two styles of saddles used in the US today: English (think equestrian from the Olympics), and Western (think rodeos). English has less leather, no horn in front of the rider, and stirrups that stay high for the rider’s to have bent knees because they steer more with their legs than their hands. Western has the horn to stop the rider from sliding forward, lots of leather on the horse’s back, and the stirrups hang lower. Potter’s saddle appears to be Western. Pak’s is a variation of an English-style saddle called a McClellan, which was used by cavalry in the US Civil War. There’s modifications to Pak’s saddle probably because the props department had limitations, and it’s a stretch to call it an authentic Korean cavalry saddle, but she says it’s a reasonable saddle for Pak’s background, and she approves.

   Another thing about the McClellan saddle is it was made for small people, as it doesn’t have a wide frame side-to-side. Mary is 5 foot 6 inches tall, and she wouldn’t fit on one. Also, the saddle is what she calls a “hurt your rear”, which needs no further explanation. She also noticed the bright orange pad under the saddle in Pak’s scene, which was common for riders in the 70s, kinda old fashioned, and made sense for when the show was filmed.

   I hope these tidbits are interesting. It’s always a hoot to get her equestrian nerd going! Till next time!

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5. I very much enjoyed this, thanks for an interesting discussion. Using your last name to get an episode is great, I personally shamelessly used my Swedish-ness to get my hands on “Inga” 🙂 , so we are working smarter, not harder, here, Tim! 😉 😉 😉

   I do have some different opinions than the two of you, though, because I don’t really care for the format in this episode – the three story lines – and there are some details that just rub me the wrong way…
   I honestly wish they would have skipped the Klinger-side of this episode. Him trying to bribe Potter just feels too silly to me and the tone of it doesn’t really match the other two stories. Sometimes, the balance between a more serious and a more lighthearted plot is really pitch perfect and they complement each other, but this is not it for me, and absolutely nothing comes out of it.
   I would have loved to get to know Ham a bit more, for example, we get to hear him tell BJ and Hawkeye his story, and then we hear him tell them he is going to join his friends in the army after all, but it’s all tell, and no show, and I wish we had been on that journey with him, even for just a little bit.
   Ham’s story line works really well with Potter’s too. Potter selflessly gives up something very important to him for someone else, or for the greater good if you will, and Ham could have continued to hide and tried to get away, but he chooses to give up something very important to him too, his way of life as he has known it so far, to join the army, for what he must believe is the greater good. There are some wonderful, common themes there that could have been explored further.

   This paired with some really over the top reactions here and there just makes the whole episode seem a bit off tonally. That weird fight between Klinger and Zale just before the scene cuts, as you talk about. Radar’s reaction to Sophie missing. Hawkeye groaning and grabbing his head when they pull the blanket off Ham – it seems like it belongs in a farce, too over the top, and I wish they would have had skipped this and given the whole episode a more serious tone.

   The whole thing with having Ham hide in the shower-tent just so they could have Margaret run out in a tiny towel feels very off. Loretta Swit can for sure rock a tiny towel, but when they had her do that in None Like it Hot, at least it made sense to the story, and there we also saw some of the guys wearing very little. Here, it’s just unnecessary.
   I completely buy that Hawkeye would flirt with Margaret on the way to the shower tent, but BJ playing along feels so wrong. Imagine Peg writing BJ saying there were two guys at work bothering and flirting with her – he would have been furious! It reminds me of the short scene in It Happened One Night, when BJ, Hawkeye and Margaret are walking out of post-op after their night shift, and Hawkeye asks Margaret if they should walk her to her tent, because someone might knock her down and take advantage, and BJ says “Let’s get inside before we do”. Margaret just shrugs it off, but still – it is a pretty threatening thing to say even as a joke, and again – what if someone had talked to Peg that way? It’s for sure a really interesting little insight to BJ’s personality.

   There are some things I like here, though. Potter giving up Sophie is beautiful, and Harry Morgans acting is wonderful, I love how calm he is, and how much is going on in his eyes.
   I also really like the fact that BJ and Hawkeye don’t get what they want here. They have such a drive to save people, whether it’s patients on the operating table or Ham in this case, but sometimes they just don’t win, there’s nothing they can do about it, and they are just left with their frustration and anger.

   So, overall, this is an episode I would have loved to see handled differently. When I heard the writer of this episode also wrote Operation Noselift I went “Oh, of course it is, that makes sense”. Because that is one of my least favorite episodes in all 11 seasons, so it makes perfect sense that I don’t care for the tone of this one either. I’m gonna spare you all a rant on the noselift-one, though 🙂

   Again – very much enjoyed listening to your discussion!

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6. Press Pass 21: “M*A*S*H Notes” [Updated]
   From the mashHistorian.
   The second release discusses the 1980 Emmy wins for Morgan and Swit. The series up to that point had earned 12 Emmys and 81 nominations. Surprisingly, we learned about an actor’s strike and what several of the cast members did during the strike including Farr taking his family on a trip to Europe, Farrell opening a vegetarian restaurant, Morgan returning home to his ranch and horses, Alda working on a movie he directed, wrote, and starred in along side Carol Burnett (The Four Seasons), and Swit singing on The Monte Carlo Show.

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7. One of the “my heart just stopped” moments with regards to pets was with my first German Shepherd, Thor. This occurred PK (Pre-Kira) when we hadn’t put a fence up yet. I had just gotten done mowing the yard in the August heat and when I came in, I must not have closed the door all the way. It took my wife and I probably about 45 minutes before we noticed that we hadn’t seen the dog in awhile. I ran to the door and, yes, it was open. I desperately looked outside and there was my 125 lb GSD, laying at the corner, under the street sign, with a “No one had better mess with this property” look on his face. I called him and he came right in, and we put fencing the property to the top of the list of projects.

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