Originally a movie, this TV show was a very ambitious project taken on by Fox and CBS that turned into one of the more popular shows at the time. The thing for me that set MAS*H apart from other comedies is that they had an intermingling of tragedy and also real-world war horrors mixed in. These situations were rare, but when they did happen on the show, it had a real impact on the audience. It was primarily a silly comedy but at times it could be an emotional roller-coaster that was on in my household every week. It was one of the few shows that my family actually looked forward to. It still remains one of the highest-rated TV shows of all time.
The year was 1972
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MAS*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and it was meant to be taking place in Korea during the Korean War. The timing of this show's release was a pretty daring enterprise on the part of the creators because the United States was still, at the time, at war with Vietnam and there were a lot of people that were very sensitive about that sort of material. Although classified as a sitcom, there were many that referred to it as a dark comedy, or even a comedy drama. They no doubt were very careful how they chose to navigate the story even though I didn't realize it at the time because I was very young. Perhaps it was this controversial subject matter being presented in a comedic light that made it so popular. It was edgy for its time.
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The characters consisted of Army "lifers" such as Colonel Potter who was there out of national duty and he and "Hot Lips" show a dedication to the war effort that other characters in the show do not share. Hawkeye and Hunnicutt for example, were civilian medical professionals who were forced to participate through a civilian draft. This is where a lot of the show's tension comes into play as the perspectives of the military vs. the civilian population, and their views on war in general, become a topic of tense conversation in the various episodes. Since the USA population was going through exactly that sort of debate for years in real life at that point, this hit very close to home as it seems everyone knew someone who had died in what many saw to be senseless wars in Asia.
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The show did wonders for many people's careers and that is likely most true for Alan Alda, who played "Hawkeye" on the show. He was the main character in a way and he is the most reluctant to have anything to do with military red tape and due to his importance as a surgeon, they don't have much choice but to allow him to do his own thing. He never polishes his boots, his uniform is always disheveled, and he is constantly reprimanded for not wearing his officer stripes.
He only ever carries a weapon once in the entire series, and when they are ambushed he fires his service pistol into the air rather than at the enemy.
The opening sequence, which featured a musical version of the song used in the film entitled "Suicide is Painless" and the rather serious scenes depicted in the intro, gives a strange impression about what the show is actually like. It is very rare that any one episode is anywhere near as serious as the opening credits are.
The series began by using primarily a sound stage for interior shots and the outdoor location was the same one that was used in the film. Both were in California. Later, many of the "outdoor" scenes were filmed in the sound studio as well and the outdoor location was only used for scenes involving a helicopter. Some of the outdoor scenes that are actually filmed indoors are a bit hokey because it is quite obvious that they are not actually outside and the stark contrast of "real" outside is very noticeable during any of the helicopter scenes.
As the series was winding up, the outdoor area caught fire and most of the set was destroyed. The producers took advantage of this disaster and wrote it into the final episode that the base was being hit with enemy bombs and this was forcing their evacuation.
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Another fun fact about MAS*H is that the actors and most of the crew didn't want there to be a laugh track in the show at all. The studio insisted but they eventually reached a compromise that there would never be any laugh track during surgeries even though there was comedic lines. Go ahead and look, there is never any canned laughter during any operating room scenes in the series' 11 years on air.
Despite the fact that there were far fewer televisions in 1972 than today, their weekly viewership would be considered very very good by any show's standards these days. Across the 11 year run, they averaged more than 20 million viewers in the USA per episode.
The final episode, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was a broadcast of monumental proportions and it was 2 and half hours long. This is something that had never been attempted by any series up to that point and it pulled in an estimated 125 million viewers. Considering that it is estimated that there were less than 100 million televisions in existence in the United States in 1983 this means that basically EVERYONE watched the final episode. The highest amount of water use that New York City has ever had all at one time occurred about 3 minutes after the final episode of MAS*H finished, suggesting that everyone in the city was "holding it" until the show was over. Remember, we didn't have a method of pausing the broadcast at those times and there were a lot of full bladders, and a lot of flushes, that all happened at the same time.
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A true icon of television history and one of the highest rated shows of all time, MAS*H holds a special place in anyone's hearts who was alive when it was being broadcast. The show likely could have continued for many more seasons but they wrapped it up and went out on a high note rather than drag it on for the sake of profits (which they almost certainly could have done for a much longer amount of time.) I suppose it was time to wrap it up since the show at the time of its final broadcast was already more than 3 times as long as the actual war it was representing.
No one saw this becoming as popular as it ended up being. It was a truly wonderful time of television and I am happy to say that I was alive during it. I don't know if it really stands up to today's vigorous demands of immediate gratification, but it might for some people. I would recommend that you at least go and have a look at some of the more popular episodes, such as "Sometimes You Hear The Bullet" to see what you think all these years later. They are all easily seen for free on a number of streaming platforms as well as Youtube.
And it all began today, 48 years ago.