Vignettes of what happens in the compound are what Hawkeye's letters to his dad are all about. In this one we have several unrelated incidents. First of all, a huge grenade is seen in the body of a patient (could this really happen?). Hawkeye must surgically remove it, facing the possibility that it may explode. Another patient tells Hawkeye that the blood he is about to receive must be "white" blood (since Ginger, who is black, is standing nearby). The boys decide to darken his skin while he sleeps so he can face what it would be like to be mistreated because of his color. Henry receives a movie from his wife. It is a birthday party for his little girl. There is also some pretty funny stuff with Henry and his neighbors at a gathering. There is also a hilarious staff meeting. Why Hawkeye and Trapper are on the staff but not the other ranking officers, I don't know. I realize that they are stars, but it seems a bit odd. I guess if we want to compare it with Star Trek (in any of its incarnations) it was always the same five or six people that made all the decisions). Just saying.
5 Reviews
The right blood
elo-equipamentos8 April 2017
Mash is really a good series and often funny as was made in the 70',maybe this kind of comedy today won't well received...but was successfully otherwise didn't have eleven seasons,in this episode Hawkeye writing a letter to your father telling some news and situation but the most interesting is about the Sergeant Condon who needs a proper color blood...anyway a good episode really!!!
Charles R. Drew's story
safenoe12 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
This episode really hit the nerve, debuting 51 years ago, especially with the outrage over the treatment of Dr Charles R. Drew. But it happened that the writers' research wasn't up to scratch, as the alleged mistreatment of Dr Drew as highlighted in Dear Dad...Three, didn't happen at all. In fact, Dr Drew received professional treatment. But still, back then there was limited research sources, so we can understand.
Odessa Cleveland returns as Lt. Ginger Bayliss, RN, and I'd love for her to be a guest on the M*A*S*H Matters podcast, so she can recount her days on M*A*S*H as I'd love to know more about the early days of this fine series.
Odessa Cleveland returns as Lt. Ginger Bayliss, RN, and I'd love for her to be a guest on the M*A*S*H Matters podcast, so she can recount her days on M*A*S*H as I'd love to know more about the early days of this fine series.
I'm a sucker for the Letter Episodes
tonyhammer6 June 2023
Warning: Spoilers
The only way I can explain my fondness for the letter episodes is that they remind me of when I would write Mom in the early 1980s, after I moved away from home. I enjoyed getting her letters. (She always wrote them with a pencil, in cursive.)
The grenade surgery was crazy suspenseful. The medical crew showed a lot of good old fashion guts for not only deciding to extricate the grenade, but to actually go through with it. To this day, I still can't fathom a grenade inside a persons body.
The homemade film from Henry's wife was a nice touch. The icing on the cake was when Trapper said "what did you do Henry, slip something in her succotash?". The way his accent was emphasized on the word succotash made me laugh out loud. It's still one of my favorite quotes from the series.
The grenade surgery was crazy suspenseful. The medical crew showed a lot of good old fashion guts for not only deciding to extricate the grenade, but to actually go through with it. To this day, I still can't fathom a grenade inside a persons body.
The homemade film from Henry's wife was a nice touch. The icing on the cake was when Trapper said "what did you do Henry, slip something in her succotash?". The way his accent was emphasized on the word succotash made me laugh out loud. It's still one of my favorite quotes from the series.
The one where Hawkeyes writes to his father...a third time
jarrodmcdonald-121 April 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This was the third episode in a season and a half of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye wrote a letter to his father, chronicling the various goings on at the camp. As I've said before in my previous reviews, this was a gimmick the writers certainly enjoyed using as it meant they could do slightly more experimental storytelling. Not everything has to follow a linear narrative in these vignettes, though we do know Hawkeye will finish the letter by the final scene even if we never see him actually mail it off.
There's an interesting bit that happens in the O. R. one day when a wounded soldier has an unexploded bomb embedded into his skin. Henry, Hawkeye and Margaret remove it and get rid of it. Watching the actors play the scene, I have to commend them for keeping such serious faces, especially Loretta Swit. When she looks down at the actor on the table with the bomb supposedly attached to him, you almost believe there is a real bomb there by the way she uses her eyes so intensely to convey the delicacy of the operation and the danger they all face in that moment.
A subsequent vignette has a racist soldier (Mills Watson) not wanting a blood transfusion from a black person pumped into his body. While I think this type of racism probably happened and was sometimes overt, I don't think a doctor's reaction to a patient's prejudices would be so overt the way Hawkeye's is. If Hawkeye was a black man, or if he had a black girlfriend then I could see him taking this so personally. But he gets more upset than nurse Ginger does, and she is black. It just felt a little over the top and preachy.
Also we have a scene later where Hawkeye is still thinking about it, long after the operation is over. He wants to either get revenge or teach the soldier a lesson, which he does with help from Trapper and Klinger. Again, I just found it all so over the top and I don't think a white doctor would spend a lot of time trying to right this kind of wrong. I think he may not have agreed with the racist soldier's point of view, but he would have just let it go, since there are too many other stressors during the war and he has to pick and choose his battles carefully.
My favorite scene in this episode involves all of them having a staff meeting in the mess tent. It's nice to see Father Mulcahy become a more integral presence, since he's included in the meeting with the other main characters. There is some funny business involving who will lead the meeting, then amusing comments from Radar's report of their previous meeting, followed by a decision to take a vote to end the war. It's kind of a long scene that doesn't have a lot of action. They are all just sitting around a table engaged in banter, but it's a good sketch satirizing what happens in meetings nobody wants to attend in the first place.
Another good scene has Radar screening a home movie that Henry's wife sent, which they watch inside Henry's office with Hawkeye and Trapper. Supposedly the occasion is the birthday of Henry's daughter Molly, which is attended by other children.
Henry's wife supposedly had a baby in the last episode of season 1, yet we see no evidence of a baby anywhere and the wife certainly doesn't look like she's recently given birth. Of course, the baby could have been in the house sleeping, but you think the wife would certainly have used this home movie to include footage of their newborn son, whom Henry hasn't met.
The end of the party sequence, as seen on screen, has the wife assemble the kids holding up letters that spell out the phrase 'Miss You.' I must admit this did choke me up a bit, especially since we know Henry won't actually make it home from the war.
There's an interesting bit that happens in the O. R. one day when a wounded soldier has an unexploded bomb embedded into his skin. Henry, Hawkeye and Margaret remove it and get rid of it. Watching the actors play the scene, I have to commend them for keeping such serious faces, especially Loretta Swit. When she looks down at the actor on the table with the bomb supposedly attached to him, you almost believe there is a real bomb there by the way she uses her eyes so intensely to convey the delicacy of the operation and the danger they all face in that moment.
A subsequent vignette has a racist soldier (Mills Watson) not wanting a blood transfusion from a black person pumped into his body. While I think this type of racism probably happened and was sometimes overt, I don't think a doctor's reaction to a patient's prejudices would be so overt the way Hawkeye's is. If Hawkeye was a black man, or if he had a black girlfriend then I could see him taking this so personally. But he gets more upset than nurse Ginger does, and she is black. It just felt a little over the top and preachy.
Also we have a scene later where Hawkeye is still thinking about it, long after the operation is over. He wants to either get revenge or teach the soldier a lesson, which he does with help from Trapper and Klinger. Again, I just found it all so over the top and I don't think a white doctor would spend a lot of time trying to right this kind of wrong. I think he may not have agreed with the racist soldier's point of view, but he would have just let it go, since there are too many other stressors during the war and he has to pick and choose his battles carefully.
My favorite scene in this episode involves all of them having a staff meeting in the mess tent. It's nice to see Father Mulcahy become a more integral presence, since he's included in the meeting with the other main characters. There is some funny business involving who will lead the meeting, then amusing comments from Radar's report of their previous meeting, followed by a decision to take a vote to end the war. It's kind of a long scene that doesn't have a lot of action. They are all just sitting around a table engaged in banter, but it's a good sketch satirizing what happens in meetings nobody wants to attend in the first place.
Another good scene has Radar screening a home movie that Henry's wife sent, which they watch inside Henry's office with Hawkeye and Trapper. Supposedly the occasion is the birthday of Henry's daughter Molly, which is attended by other children.
Henry's wife supposedly had a baby in the last episode of season 1, yet we see no evidence of a baby anywhere and the wife certainly doesn't look like she's recently given birth. Of course, the baby could have been in the house sleeping, but you think the wife would certainly have used this home movie to include footage of their newborn son, whom Henry hasn't met.
The end of the party sequence, as seen on screen, has the wife assemble the kids holding up letters that spell out the phrase 'Miss You.' I must admit this did choke me up a bit, especially since we know Henry won't actually make it home from the war.
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