As Jerry Seinfeld said last year, “‘People always need [comedy] … they need it so badly and they don’t get it,’ Seinfeld began. ‘It used to be you’d go home at the end of the day, ‘oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘M*A*S*H*’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on.’ You just expected there will be some funny stuff on TV you can watch tonight. ‘But guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme Left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.’”
Offending people is an essential element of a well balanced life.
And the corollary is just as true … going out of one’s way to NEVER offend is a dangerously WEAK way to live. You will inevitably offend someone … no matter how hard you bottle up your own true opinions. And TRUTH will fall victim.
Peter Kwong died a couple days ago too: https://ew.com/actor-peter-kwong-of-big-trouble-in-little-china-dies-at-73-11744131
In the summer of 1970 … this 14yo boy had to sneak into MASH the movie, because the Motion Picture Rating System had just deployed in 1968 and MASH had an ‘R’ Rating (I assume because of the nude shower scene … which was brilliant) no kids under 17yo admitted without a parent. Well, my buddies and I saw the film at the new cineplex in Walnut Creek, CA and couldn’t stop laughing throughout the film. Yeah, we learned what constitutes ‘black humor’ … right down the alley of middle schoolers. And with VietNam at peak stupidity … we had plenty of reason to NOT like the mayhem of war.
Sally Kellerman was sensational… and Loretta Swit was a fantastic TV version. However the TV version of Hawkeye and Pierce NEVER measured up to Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould. Sorry, not even close. And the whole “feminized” Alan Alda was unwatchable … and completely unbelievable as some moralizing Army surgeon. Gawwwd.
The original Hawkeye and Pierce were simply passing time doing a hellish job with black humor. That was reality. I’ve know several ER Doc’s. … and they are actually quite similar. Finding humor in horror is a very HUMAN thing to do … preaching and moralizing about it is tiresome for all concerned.
You’re right. Alda became insufferable in the latter years of MASH. But on the whole it was a great ensemble cast.
Well I DID enjoy Jamie Farr and his cross dressing antics to get Psycho-relieved of duty. Now we are normalizing those psychos … honoring them at State track meets and allowing them to read stories and prance about for our preschoolers. I feel like I should find some humor in that … but I can’t.
Hawkeye and Pierce are the same character. Perhaps you mean Hawkeye and Trapper John. In either case, you’re right, the characters in the movie were far more real, balanced and interesting than what we were fed in the TV series. The Trapper John character in the TV series became subordinated to Alda’s Hawkeye. So much so, that Wayne Rogers left the series after Season 3. After he left, Alda just became more insufferable.
Brain fart. Sorry. And you explained it perfectly.
Actually it was R rated because in the football game Painless says, “your ‘effing’ head is coming off “. First time that word was used in a movie. My brother saw it in theatre and came home laughing. That language was not common place in society. I went the next night. I was mortified.
“… And the whole “feminized” Alan Alda was unwatchable…”
Indeed. And in the most literal sense.
Sarcasm and irony are now seldom understood. It’s lost when explanations are required. Even puns are not appreciated.
Sarcasm is wasted on stupid people.
Seinfeld makes such a good point, not something that crosses the mind really, but I wouldn’t turn the tv on to watch something that is good for a laugh these days, no show comes to mind except Gutfeld sometimes, but that’s not comedy per se, too political.
Hollywood did it to themselves. They politicized everything until half the country decided they no longer wanted to be subjected to unfunny lecturing/Marx-inspired propaganda posing as comedy. Now many liberals won’t even tune in to the garbage, having realized the shows just take their marching orders from The Swamp and the DNC.
M*A*S*H trivial re the theme song Suicide is Painless:
The song was written for Ken Prymus, the actor playing Private Seidman, to sing during the faux-suicide of Walter “Painless Pole” Waldowski (John Schuck) in the film’s “Last Supper” scene.[1] Director Robert Altman had two stipulations about the song for composer Johnny Mandel: it had to be called “Suicide Is Painless” and it had to be the “stupidest song ever written”.[2] Altman attempted to write the lyrics himself, but, upon finding it too difficult for his “45-year-old brain” to write something “stupid” enough,[3] he gave the task to his 15-year-old-son Michael, who reportedly wrote the lyrics in five minutes.[4][5]
Like the series, the theme song got progressively worse as the show aged:
“ The theme song to M*A*S*H, “Suicide is Painless,” first appeared in the feature film MASH (with lyrics) and, over the eleven years the television series was on the air, was modified numerous times.”
https://www.mash4077tv.com/2010/08/listen-to-rare-version-of-the-mash-theme/
The first nail in the coffin for comedy was in 2000 when the late-night shows all got Bush Derangement Syndrome. It was funny for a while but they just kept piling on. The second to last nail was the election of Obama. No one dared to make fun of him. The final nail was in 2016 when Trump Derangement Syndrome and the inexplicable LGBLT madness made the Bush hate look like pleasant banter between friends. No one in Hollywood knows what comedy even is anymore, ‘The Message’ has become all important to the detriment of everything else.
first time l saw Loretta Swit an episode of hawaii 5-0
Watched the Hawaii 50 episode recently…..sadly Loretta got wacked early in the show.
Not many of the cast remain
Gary Burgoff (Radar) was the only character to go from the movie to the TV series….he’s alive and well living in Florida.
MASH was bad actually. Most comedy ages badly, with iron-hard exceptions like Bueller’s Day Off and Caddyshack.