Season 7, Episode 20: C*A*V*E
Special Guest Star: Rose Bee
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Great discussion; I loved hearing about Rose’s writing inspirations!
Why have no comic writers picked up on the potential of the C*A*V*E acronym? “Agents of C*A*V*E“? – I’d buy that in a heartbeat!
No Anaesthesiologists! Again! For Cardiothoracic surgery! What are the patients doing… biting down on a firm stick?! Col. Potter needs to get onto his personnel office, stat!
Dr. Lewis, your comments triggered an Afghanistan memory. People who know me will tell you that almost anything can. Once, in the large western province of Herat, the senior medical officer in our task force got an invitation to visit the major hospital in the capital. As the community relations guy, I drove and led the escort team. She was impressed with the facilities, which were not awesome by developed world standards, but more than adequate. They also had a fairly comprehensive staff. They bemoaned how hard it was to get an endocrinologist, but apparently that’s tough in lots of places. When it was over, our doc told me the thing they needed help with most was anesthesiology. She had done a rotation in that field and enjoyed it. She really wanted to go back and teach them a thing or two, which I would have been happy to support. The chain of command said “no” for some reason I can’t remember, because I thought it was dumb. I can’t complain too loudly, though. My leadership there was mostly very wise, and they gave me a lot of latitude to get things done. This was just one of the missed opportunities. C’est la guerre!
Great episode Rob I really enjoyed listening to your conversation with Rose. So, the Franklin books are canadien and were translated to French. As a result the name of the turtle in french is Benjamin. I just thought that I would share that fact. Thank you Rob for another great episode.
Awesome discussion and guest. It’s always great to hear how younger people are fans, so the show will live on.
This is a memorable episode because it’s so unique with the well-constructed cave set, plus I’ve always liked caves probably in part because of the Batcave. But also my mom was from Kentucky which has a lot of caves and our family went there a lot. Mammoth Cave at one point had a cafeteria deep in the cave and the all-day guided tour would stop there for lunch. Also, when we traveled my dad would play 20 Questions with us in the car, so I have two connections from my childhood to this episode!
This was terrific, truly enjoyed this insightful conversation!
I think CAVE is a really interesting episode, lots to dive into – like Hawkeye’s claustrophobia. I really like the moments we see him being frail. We have seen him deal with nightmares, sleepwalking, and his obsessive joking is obviously a way for him to deal with a lot of his issues. Also his flirting – like you mention, I think that a lot of that is to amuse himself, he doesn’t really expect to get lucky every time – but it’s a routine to keep his mind off other, darker things, and in a constantly stressful environment it’s a thing to hold on to, a sense of control.
Isn’t there a scene in an early episode where he hides in a nurse’s foot locker? That seems like torture is you’re claustrophobic, but honestly also like Hawkeye to totally commit to his flirting game, to play the character he has become in camp – the womanizer, the jokester, the leader, the cool guy.
I’m not claustrophobic myself, but I would still hate being in that cave. I am a horror fan with a very vivid imagination, and books and movies have taught me that nothing good ever dwells in caves! If one of those “The Descent”-creatures would pop up over Charles’ shoulder, I wouldn’t be surprised 🙂
As for Margaret, we have never really seen her have a problem with loud noises before – or has she only been really good at hiding it and it isn’t until now she is willing to admit to having a problem? There is an earlier scene where they are being shelled and she is hiding in her tent with Frank, and is much more focused on him than on the shelling, and maybe that was a big part of what Frank was to her – a distraction, something to take her mind off the horrors surrounding her.
It makes me think of Comrades in Arms to, where she is terrified and admits it to Hawkeye. Maybe that is an explanation to her behavior the next day. Sure, she had slept with her arch nemesis, but she also showed herself vulnerable. He saw her naked in several ways, and she was simply embarrassed, but more comfortable leaning into the romance. She was used to dealing with love interests, but not showing weakness, so she grabbed on to what she felt she could control and just ignored the emotions, the fear, she had accidentally let slip out.
I also think it’s so interesting how she says she went into the army to be a nurse, because I truly think the nurse is the core of Margaret. The army is all about her father. The army was of course the only thing young Margaret knew, living on bases, moving to wherever her father got stationed, and it was also the only way she could get his approval, climbing as high as she could through the ranks, while her heart always beat for the patients first and foremost.
I love how brave she is here, going back to camp with Hawkeye even though she’s terrified. Reminds me of Bug Out where she chose to stay behind even though she was terrified. And of course Aid Station where she very selflessly volunteers right away, while the boys are trying very hard to turn invisible and eventually have to draw bed pan sausages to decide who has to go.
Her character arc is just so darn good, and so is Hawkeye’s. I love that we see both of them at their highest high and their lowest low, they are there to support each other or call each other out if necessary, and it’s just lovely that they have reached a point where they can open up and comfort each other, the scene in the cave where they talk about their fears is just beautiful. I’m glad they didn’t chose to close ranks and comfort each other like they did in Comrades in Arms, though, that would have been very embarrassing for everyone. 😀 😀 😀
I will also say this when it comes to being sensitive to noise – that truly can grow worse with time. I am very sensitive to noise myself, and it has gotten worse in later years. It was never a big deal when I was younger, but things in life like stress, worry, and other sensitivitets have really amped it up. Loud noises is not fun at all, but also smaller things like too many people talking at the same time, for example, can make me so stressed and overwhelmed I get tunnel vision and my heart just starts beating out of my chest. It can honestly be quite terrifying, and panic inducing.
So I can really understand how living under such incredibly stressful conditions as they do at the 4077 could make it a whole lot worse, so it makes sense to me that Margaret is losing the ability to hide it.
Well this was once again a very long comment, but this podcast is just so good I can’t help myself, there is always so much insight from the guests and it just sets me off. 🙂 Thank you for another wonderful episode!
I was reminded of Bug Out also, because of Margaret’s fears of the coming Chinese army. I wonder if her fear of being assaulted was mixed in with her fear of loud noises, and that one of the fears, in the moment, overrode the other and that is what she talked about with Hawkeye and Radar. I’m going to watch that episode tonight if I can see some inking of a fear of noises.
I’m incredibly sensitive to noise. The loud din of a crowd, someone chewing loudly, a rumbling truck. Not all of it elicits anxiety, but I do feel my fight or flight response triggered and I want to move away. As I grow older, it’s the large crowds that give me the most stress and I’ve started to talk to my spouse about such situations. I cannot really avoid them, but speak the dislike of sound out loud helps her understand me a bit better.
Thank you for sharing that! I’m sorry you have the noise sensitivity too, it truly is a lot to handle and often very challenging, but it’s a relief to know that there are many of us out there trying to cope with living in a very loud world.
I think we can all agree that there’s no way whatever that Radar, of all people, forgot to file the DOA-63/J form. More likely, that smarmy Major…who didn’t even bother to glance at the code book before declaring that Col. Potter’s response was incorrect…simply misread the paperwork, and no one double-checked to make sure there weren’t any American units in the way of their shelling.
C*A*V*E* – Claustrophobia: a vicious entity? Captains are very edgy?
I always thought that these fears came out of nowhere especially when you see how debilitating they can be. I was able to explain away, at least in my own head, Margaret’s. She has always been military, always been ‘get the job done’. She would be able to hide her fear. We certainly have seen shelling near the hospital before without her cracking. She just buried it. Except here, where she has grown close enough to Hawkeye over the years to show it.
Anyways, I always wonder about the transport back to the hospital in this episode. How long was the ride? Did they take an ambulance? Did they drive or did a corpsman? I guess my concern would be calculating the bigger risk – a less than optimal operation in the cave which is safe or a potentially deadly ride back to a hospital that could be being actively shelled? I don’t envy making that decision.
Loved every second of this discussion, a new favourite for sure. Rose if you see this we are such kindred spirits (sounds like weve been in a lot of the same fandoms too hahahaha) and i also have a countdown in my head when i get obsessed with something for how long till i put it on a tshirt or knit it into a sweater. My MASH sweater is going terribly thanks for asking. And when she said ‘whenever i find something i love i open my arms and take it into my whole life’ WOWWWWW that is. Exactly the feeling. Loved the insights into Margaret and how a sensitivity to sound would have carried through her life and influenced her decision to join the army. Really wonderful and exactly the kind of outside-the-lines character study stuff i love ❤️
Another great episode Iron Guts! I liked the discussion about Enid Kent. She appeared on the show Head of the Class as Simone Foster’s mother. An intellectual character. I pictured her as a relative of Nurse Bigelow.
Great discussion! Rose’s enthusiasm was infectious. I think you are right about Star Trek really kicking off fan fiction as we know it, mostly though the APPAs and Fanzines of the time. I never thought about the shots from other episodes inspiring those types of stories, but that makes perfect sense.
My Mom had claustrophobia, and when we would visit Kentucky caves, like Mammoth Cave that Mike Thomas mentioned above, she wouldn’t go in very far, and wait for us outside. About 10 years ago my wife, kids and I visited the Lost River Cave in Bowling Green, KY. Caves don’t normally bother me, but there is one point where you have to bend over in the boat to go under the cave ceiling. That was a little unsettling!
I had no idea that the Franklin turtle character sprang from the writer seeing this episode! Our kids read the books and watched the animated series based on them. He was popular enough at the time that Andrew was lightlly teased a bit about being a turtle due to our last name.
My family just visited Mammoth Cave this past summer. I was able to manage it except for when the ceiling was really low. It wasn’t the tight space nearly as much as knowing that there were thousands of cave crickets just above me and they looked like spiders.
I can definitely see that!
I went back and watched “Bug Out” and from seeing the scenes in the empty OR with Hawkeye, Margaret and Radar, Margaret is clearly more afraid of being assaulted by the Chinese than the loud noise. But, she does, at one point, say “Why does the warm have to be so loud?” So I would consider that an inkling of what we are seeing in C*A*V*E.
There is a criticism of the later seasons of M*A*S*H that Rob has mentioned a few times, that the cast/characters became too close and that robbed the show of some conflict. I have to disagree there. The closeness of the characters as presented by the cast actually adds a different flavor of drama as they continue to be in a terrible war. They do learn on each other more, and they understand each other more, as Hawkeye and Margaret do in this episode. But their friendships are also strained at times, as when Hawkeye does the unnecessary surgery on Commander Lacy and BJ objects. I prefer to see the familiar aspect of the characters than to see the more random and antagonistic relationships of the Henry Blake years.
Whenever I get too hung up on consistency in older shows like MASH, I remember what John Ostrander once wrote. “Continuity should be a tool, not a straightjacket.” Now, he wrote that for a comic book, which has its own problems because comics *taught* me to care about continuity, so I won’t get into that. But I appreciate the sentiment that sometimes it’s worth “fudging” continuity if it results in a good story. And I do like seeing Hawkeye struggle against himself, which is the worst possible thing for someone as self-confident as he is. So in the end, it was worth it to me.
I love the wide variety of guest hosts you get, Rob. Rose was delightful!