M*A*S*HCast 169 – The Party

Season 7, Episode 25: The Party

Special Guest Stars: Dan Greenfield and Shawn M. Myers

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10 responses to “M*A*S*HCast 169 – The Party

  1. I have always loved this episode. In memory, it always strikes me as entirely cheerful, but rewatching it now, I was taken aback by B.J.’s line, “I don’t care about anything”, and the dark way that Mike Farrell delivers it. As the seasons progressed, Mike gave B.J. the occasional hints of what’s below the seemingly happy-go-lucky surface, suggesting anger bordering on rage, and real darkness. Of all of them, I suspect that B.J. was the most in need of therapy in the years to come, to deal with everything he has so clearly bottled up inside of himself. I hope that Sidney settled in the Bay Area after the war.

    But tell me…why New York City? Why not Chicago? It would have been more centrally located for everyone, and in that era of train traveling, it was the nation’s hub, and therefore easier to reach. But by having it in NY, Peg Hunnicutt had to undertake a week’s worth of traveling there and back, which just seems kind of inconsiderate to me.

    I love the truck scene, in particular the bit with Potter and Klinger. In the final years of the show, I think the relationship between these two was one of the highlights. For all of the Colonel’s affection for Radar, I think ultimately it was Klinger who became like a son…and occasional daughter…to him.

    However, how exactly was the message passed from truck to truck? Did they tie a note to a rock and throw it into the back of the truck in front of them?

    Another great season General, and I can’t wait for next year!

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  2. The mail path through the 4077 could make sense if it was a way for some of the poorer families to save money. It would be cheaper for them to send it that way then actually mailing it normal postage. And 1/3 of Americans srill did have phone service let alone cost for long distance so that might not have been useful.

  3. This episode was so fun!! The moment where Dan figured out they would’ve seen a show in ’52 because the Tonys were on the year after made me die laughing. This is such a good season-ender and I think one of my top 10? maybe? favourite episodes of the whole show. It’s wonderfully directed, that whole sequence moving through the different cars is so exciting and fun, doubly so because it’s so unique for the show. The moment with Hawk and Margaret and their letters gets me every single time. And the whole middle portion with them trying to pick a date is so lovely and hilarious it makes me want to weep! I’m weeping right now! Also random point but there’s some excellent knitwear in this episode too, Radar has this cardigan and Charles has this shockingly brown sweater i cant even talk about it it’s too much okay moving on.

    Great BJ episode too, being so excited about the party and then almost instantly being clobbered back down to apathy LOL sorry for laughing I just love when he’s sad. Last week it was brought up about this thread that goes through the show where characters are either living for today or living for the future and I feel like BJ slams up against that wall in a big way in this episode. So excited about the idea of planning this thing for everyone back home, thinking about what it’ll be like to have everybody together once this whole thing is over, only to have a big steel door slam in front of him when nobody’s on his level and his patient, here, now, is getting worse and there’s nothing he can do. Like the universe is telling him quit thinking about the future, quit thinking about home. But at the other end, he hears the party’s on and that his patient is doing fine one right after the other! Like the universe is telling him Wait maybe love will save us all in the end. or something. (Sidenote, Peg getting her real estate broker license!!! Good for her. Big thumbs up.) I also love how he moons over the idea of everyone sitting around missing them and crying their eyes out and I LOVED what Rob said about how BJ’s plan to have everyone stand in front of a fake fort dix sign wasnt ‘getting around’ anything, it was just lying. Yessir, that’s our beej!

    So glad I got caught up on mashcast enough to be able to listen along weekly, this season has been so much fun. How lucky we all are to have this podcast!! What a great show!! yay!!! Sad it’s over for now but reeeeaallllyyy looking forward to season eight for noooo particular reason at all ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚

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  4. I’m very fond of “The Party”, it’s a really good way to end the season. It has a lot of movement, with the bug out, and with the change of scenery it just feels bigger than episodes usually do. It has no heroic deeds from a medical aspect, no life and death-situations, but I really like that a “small” thing like a reunion back home becomes so important, and we also see some great realizations for some of the characters. Hawkeye, Margaret and Klinger all learn something about their loved ones, what they are willing to do for them. In the last episode we saw how much Klinger longs to settle down with someone back home, and here we see him being so protective of his mother, and it’s such a great insight to his character.
    I also like how obsessive BJ is about the reunion, many of the characters have this obsessive side, and I really like how Hawkeye is there for him, and makes sure things work out. Their friendship is so wonderful to follow through the series, in every aspect of it.

    I really love the scenes in the cars, the transisions between the scenes are so much fun, and hearing what the letters say is great.
    I love Margaret’s reaction to reading her letter, it says so much about her and her life before. She is just not used to getting affection or affirmation from her parents. We will meet her father (in one of my favorite episodes) and will see how he is just incapable of telling her he loves her and is proud of her, he feels it goes without saying and needs for Colonel Potter to finally pry the words out of him. I think Margaret’s mom was the same way, loved her daughter but didn’t really express it. That paired with the drinking problem Margaret mentions on an earlier episode, makes her home environment not very outspokenly loving. It explains a lot about Margaret’s fascination for older men in uniform, I think she from an early age grabbed on to the one way she could get affirmation and just ran with it. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted, but it was what she could get.
    Maybe that is also why Margaret is so keen on taking other people’s words for truth, we see it with Lil and BJ for example. They tell her “hey, life isn’t so bad” and she immediately goes “hey, life isn’t so bad”, and maybe it all started when she was a kid, not really having anyone to turn to when she really needed advice. She is so strong and stubborn, so assertive, but there is also this little girl in her that is just rootless in many ways.
    I think she has spent her life putting these little families together, friends and boyfriends, her colleagues at the 4077. We hear her refer to them as family in an earlier episode, and we will see in upcoming “Are you now, Margaret” (another one of my favorite episodes) that she is fiercly protective of her old friends from school, willing to to go to great lengths to protect them and her father. So seeing the happy tears in her eyes when she reads her letter, realizing that she actually is so very important to her parents, it’s just such a huge, beautiful moment, I love it so much.

    I also got to comment on this thing about loving a show without loving everything about it. Yes! I adore MASH, if I could only watch one show for the rest of my life, MASH it would be, but it still has episodes I can’t stand. I watch very little of Season 1-3, for example. This is such a strange sign of the times, we are losing the ability to critique things in a polite, objective manner, and we are for sure losing the ability to have a polite discussions. If someone dislike something I love, it’s not an attack on me as a person, we are just different people picking up on different things. I used to be fairly active in a MASH-group on Facebook, but stopped, and this is a big part of why, so many people were just not able to accept any kind of negative opinions about the show, “then you’re not real fan” was the most common respons when anyone tried to discuss or analyze something, and it was just exhausting.
    So thank goodness this podcast exists, and this comment section, filled with so many interesting and analytical opinions, and polite people.

    I can’t believe S7 is over! It has been so great, and I am so proud to have been a part of it! Looking forward to S8 so much.
    And also – Rob, you know this podcast can never end, right? When we reach “GFA”, we need to start over again. ๐Ÿ˜€ ๐Ÿ˜€ ๐Ÿ˜€ ๐Ÿ˜‰ ๐Ÿ˜‰ ๐Ÿ˜‰

  5. A really nice episode, which has a lot put into it. Great comedic interactions between characters, some good bug-out moments, shades of “A War For All Season,” with the way it plays with the progression of times, and a nice dose of touching character moments. I love how so much of it hinges on BJ’s concern for his patient, and Hawkeye’s concern for BJ. It just barely missed the top 25 when I did a recent ranking for all the episodes, which is saying a lot consider how many amazing episodes the show has.

    And I agree with what you talk about at the end. MASH is my favorite series, but I’d say it’s perfectly fine to have criticisms for the show. In fact, for me MASH is a perfect example of a flawed masterpiece, since I can easily point to any number of issues with episodes, sub-stories, certain recurring jokes, etc. And I have my own preferences for seasons as well, with season 1 being low on my list, and 10 probably being my least favorite after my recent rewatch, but that doesn’t mean I dislike those seasons. Far from it, since some of those episodes still are all-time classics in my eye. It’s just that some aspects get in the way of making it as consistent as some of the others.

  6. One thing I never considered when the camp moves to a new location: what do they do with the water and the water tower? Do they take both? Do they just take the tower and leave the water? Do they leave both behind? Are there multiple water towers: for the showers, the kitchen, the room where they scrub up โ€ฆ

    And when they get to the new location (figuring they take just the water tower) how long until there is usable water in the water tower? Do they have to wait for it to rain? Will the Army send a water truck to fill it up?

    And what happens in the winter? What keeps the water from freezing?

    Iโ€™m probably overthinking it and the solution is simple

  7. This episode is in my Top Five for MASH. To think of the effort that went into getting families of draftees together like this is fun to think about.

    You had asked about how much a MASH would move during the podcast. Typically, theyโ€™d move as the front line moved. When the fighting stabilized at the 38th Parallel, they would have been in the same spot for longer periods of time. It would make sense to put in a cement floor for a situation like that.

    The modern Army has Combat Support Hospitals (pronounced CASH), which are like the children of the MASH concept. But CSHs are large and hard to move. So, they wouldnโ€™t bug out the way a MASH did. These facilities are in areas that are firmly controlled by the US military. Theyโ€™re climate controlled tents with all of the modern needs of a hospital. Having been a patient of one in 2003, I can tell you that they provide amazing care and often joke about the 4077.

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  8. Definitely one of my favorite episodes. As you guys observed, it’s amazing how vivid these off-screen characters have become for us. It really allowed them to blatantly break the TV/Movie rule of “Don’t tell me, show me.” All the pivotal action happens offscreen, and it’s as rich and fulfilling as it could be, only being described to us. Not just a testament to how well those characters are drawn for us, but Burghoff’s talent in describing the party, and the emotional reactions to it – conveyed as you said, behind surgical masks! Oh, and the letter caravan is one of my all-time favorite directing moments. Great way to end the season!!

  9. Iโ€™ve always loved this episode. Iโ€™m surprised that no one made mention of one my all-time favorite lines of the entire series. When Margaret reads her parentsโ€™ letter, Hawkeye responds with the absolutely wonderful line โ€œParents โ€ฆ just when you got ’em pegged, they turn around and show you how much they love you.โ€

  10. The Party is easily makes my list of top three MASH episodes. I love not just getting to meet the families of our favorite characters, but also getting to hear about how they interact and eventually bond with each other. I wish this episode had a special extended edition, where we could hear Radar read the rest of the letters.

    When it comes to how everyone paid for travel and lodging, I have to imagine that the Winchesters helped to foot the bill for a lot of this. I say that, because, rewatching the episode this time around, I got the impression that the rest of the Winchesters are not nearly as stuck-up and elitist as Charles.

    Thank you for another remarkable episode and season.

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