I don't mind saying I am wrong a lot around here, but I am right about the later years of MASH. It was garbage.
MeTV had a DOS retrospective this week. My wife wanted to watch one, and it was an episode from 1982. The writing was hackneyed, the jokes terrible. Winchester fell in love with a visiting French nurse. I think they even had sex, if I could read between the broadcast standards of 1982. Then she started talking about a future, about visiting his family, and he shut down 100 percent. There was no resolution, no 'aha moment', not even any comeuppance for his horrendous behavior (he felt his family wouldn't accept her because she lived with a man previously).
The other plot line was a standard plot line about Hawkeye and "Beej" working against the bad old US army. Done one million other times.
The show rode the coattails of the movie and the three Trapper/Blake years for an incredibly long time. Without the early years, that show would have all the cultural relevance of Gimme A Break! or She's the Sheriff.
