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That last episode of M*A*S*H must have been a mutha

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by SnoopyBoy, Feb 4, 2008.

  1. EE94

    EE94 Guest

    Unfortunately, all those plot points you mention are what killed the show.

    MASH's appeal was its black humour. It lost that not long after Frank departed and Winchester arrived.

    I agree with Slap that by the end, it was unwatchable.

    The final episode, however, was one of the better ones at tying up the loose ends, though that was made simpler by the obvious plot of ending the war (or police action)
     
  2. The lady killing her child because they were about to get captured still haunts me.

    "It wasn't a chicken. It was her baby!"
     
  3. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    This was also in the days before VCRs were ubiquitous. If you wanted to watch M*A*S*H, you had to watch it when it was broadcast.

    Nothing short of a Super Bowl-type event which needs to be watched live will top it. In fact, except for Cheers' last episode, the only broadcasts since that M*A*S*H finale that have made the top 29 are sporting events.
     
  4. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    It was unwatchable very soon after Trapper and Henry left. Fact.

    And I have serious doubts that Neilsen can calculate how many people watched the Super Bowl on Sunday. No amount of calculations and extrapolations are going to compute when you figure how many people get together at parties, bars, dorms, airports, etc. No fucking way. They may as well pull a number out of a hat.
     
  5. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    The Cheers finale beat the Seinfeld finale?
     
  6. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    I liked 1972-1976 more, but the suggestion that the show wasn't good the rest of the way in... I disagree.
     
  7. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    Yep, according to this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_television_episodes
     
  8. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Good. Seinfeld sucked too and everyone knows Boston is better than New York.
     
  9. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    and super bowl numbers are misleading as well. i mean fuck, what, 25 or more percent of the people who watch the super bowl actually turn it on so they can watch the commercials and not the game?
     
  10. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    MASH had such a long run and it was consistently decent. I've seen a few reunion specials and later additions to the cast would always freak out when their first season started and the ratings would drop. Larry Linville would tell them, don't worry they'll come back after checking out newer shows, and the ratings would confirm that.
    I think MASH's secret was you never knew what you were going to get episode to episode, and there were enough characters and avenues to bring in guest stars that the could have gone on if they wanted to. The show actually lasted longer than the Korean War.
     
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    M*A*S*H ran out of gas near the end of its run -- one particularly idiotic problem was 70s styles seeping into the show -- Houlihan wearing a Farrah Fawcett-style blond shag hairdo, Hawkeye with hair down to his collar, and B.J. with a handlebar moustache. People in the Army in the Korean War simply did not look like that, period. (Hardly anybody anywhere looked like that in the early Fifties). It undercut the believability of the show.
     
  12. jmm1412

    jmm1412 Member

    My main issue later in the show was the preachiness. After that, though, it was the direction. It was horribly shot. Literally dark. And any conversation involved back-and-forth close-up shots. I think that was Alda's influence, as he started to direct more later in the run. Really amateur.
     
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