M*A*S*H (television)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** The reason the attitudes seem so anachronistic is that the series, like the film, isn't really about the Korean war. It's about the Vietnam war. Neither the movie nor the series would have been green-lighted if they were explicitly about Vietnam. So yeah, this is a form of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]].

* This show made Korea look so backwards. I'm no expert on Korea, but I know South Korea is now one of the Four Asian Tigers. Was it really Amish-Land in the early '50s?

** The series is supposed to take place around Uijongbu, which is an actual city. During the Korean War, Uijongbu was only a small village, so the portrayal may be justified.

*** The only place shown to be "backwards" (i.e. poor, farming communities) was the immediate area surrounding the 4077th and the Korean countryside. Seoul was never shown, but sounded like a large metropolitan city (because it is) and the place you want to go to when you go on leave if you can't get to Tokyo (which is the Las Vegas of the east).

*** I have to agree with this somewhat. The only reason Hawkeye said anything about respect was to fool Margaret into pulling her pants down. As soon as she gets her butt cheeks hanging out, Hawkeye says something like lurid and offensive. His moral code of professionalism only extended to those he liked. Frank was no saint. Hawkeye was a serious jerkass. Both of them were completely bonkers. In that episode, Frank tried to get Hawkeye convicted of mutiny, which has a death sentence as a possible outcome. Somehow, the can still work together afterward and continue to be room-mates.

** Simple. At the start of the show, Hawkeye was an [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]/[[Jerk With a Heart of Gold]] type of character. He always expressed the writers' anti-war viewpoint, but early episodes don't really try to portray him as a great human being. Then he started to turn into Alan Alda and act like he was some sort of moral paragon. But his skirt-chasing, martini-drinking, Frank-abusing shticks lingered ([[Comedic Sociopathy|where else would the comedy come from?]]), so for much of the show he was essentially a self-righteous hypocrite. Not the writers' intent, of course, but you can see how it happened.

** Could be a form of [[Fridge Brilliance]], since the show was set in The1950s, when even your more liberal types would have less enlightened attitudes towards women ("girls" well into their 30s) and the concept of sexual harassment barely existed.

* Radar, as we all know, is so-named because of his ability to anticipate the needs, words, and actions of his C/O Lt. Col. Henry Blake. Once Col. Potter took over the operation, Radar was able to anticipate him just as easily, and also to anticipate Hawkeye on the rare occasions that Hawkeye found himself in command. So why is it that Radar was entirely unable to anticipate Frank Burns when he was in command?