One of my comfort TV shows is M*A*S*H. If I’m home (and awake) when it airs on ME TV (hold the jokes, please), that’s what I’m watching.
The episodes are usually played sequentially, so it was especially interesting that “A War for All Seasons” (season nine, episode six) was on tonight’s schedule. This one follows our beloved crew over the course of one year, from December 31, 1950, through the same day in 1951, as Col. Sherman T. Potter (played by perennial sidekick Harry Morgan), the 4077th’s commanding officer intones, “May [it] be a damned sight better than the old one, and may we all be home before she’s over.”
As we go through the seasons, the one theme that connects them from spring through summer and into autumn is baseball, in particular the Brooklyn Dodgers’ seemingly insurmountable lead in the pennant race. It begins with an argument between Potter and Cpl. Max Klinger, the company clerk (Jamie Farr). The former thinks the St. Louis Cardinals are the cream of the NL crop (Potter hails from Missouri), while the latter — who frequently sports a cap ostensibly for the Toledo Mud Hens (too modern looking, IMO) — says the Bums can’t be beat. The two lay a bet, but because Potter is sure the war will be over long before the end of the season, they set July 4th as the cut-off, since, as the colonel notes, whoever is on top on Independence Day has habitually been the winner.
Of course, the war drones on, and the bets increase, dragging in the rest of the gang, including Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers), who knows little about the national pastime but agrees to bankroll Kilinger in expectation of a big payoff.
Of course, we all know how that one turned out.
Good fun.
Can’t promise this will work for everyone, but the episode is viewable via Facebook.
is available on Amazon.com,
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