M*A*S*H finale was the show to watch
106 million fans watched M*A*S*H finale 35 years ago
In today’s Golden Age of TV, it may seem that everyone watches Game of Thrones. Its viewership continues to grow, even after seven seasons. The last episode that aired, 2017’s season seven finale, attracted a series high of 16.5 million viewers.
But those numbers are minuscule compared to the audience that tuned in to M*A*S*H, a sitcom about a U.S. medical team serving in the Korean War. More than 106 million people watched its finale, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, which aired on CBS 35 years ago on Feb. 28, 1983.
No other scripted television show has come close to touching the M*A*S*H finale. These finales tried (stats via the New York Times):
Cheers: 80.4 million on NBC in 1993.
Seinfeld: 76.3 million on NBC in 1998.
Friends: 52.5 million on NBC in 2004.
The show, which debuted in 1972, follows a group of surgeons and nurses — including Capt. Benjamin Franklin ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce (Alan Alda), Maj. Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan (Loretta Swit) and Cpl. Walter ‘Radar’ O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff ) — in the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital stationed in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War.
“The show ’s action derives from the grim work which the M*A*S*H staff tries to forget by crazy afterhours antics,” co-creator Gene Reynolds told The Post in 1973. “Somehow, these help them stay sane.”
It did this largely through two plotlines, “usually with at least one story in the comedic vein and another dramatic,” as was noted in the Archive of American Television. This technique would later be called the “dramedy,” one of the most popular current formats on television.
And by airing during the Vietnam War but setting itself in Korea, the show was able to be a “commentary on the futility of all war, and the inherent madness of military life, no matter the era,” as critic Noel Murray wrote in the A.V. Club.
Further setting the show apart was the desire of creators Gelbart and Reynolds’ to broadcast the show without a laugh track, or prerecorded laughter.
CBS fought them on the laugh track, until they reached a compromise: It would have only a light “chuckle track,” which would never play during scenes in the surgical tent, according to IMDb.
The network also thought the show got too serious.
One of the first episodes to keep audiences laughing before delivering a realistic, sober gut-punch about the horrors of war was in Sometimes You Hear the Bullet, which aired on Jan. 28, 1973. In the episode, Hawkeye’s old friend, war correspondent Tommy Gillis, visits the 4077th and heads to the front lines. The two pal around, drinking martinis and laughing.
Later in the episode, Gillis dies on the operating table.
Burt Metcalfe, an executive producer, director and writer on the show, told The Hollywood Reporter, “At the end of that season, this jerky CBS executive comes into our offices and says, ‘Let me tell you guys how you ruined M*A*S*H,’ and cites that episode. It’s just so far from the truth.
In fact, the network almost cancelled the show after its first seasons.
CBS instead moved M*A*S*H to a coveted Saturday-night slot for its third season, between All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore.
The show ’s creators still refused to tone it down. If anything, they steadily increased the show’s drama through the years, without forgoing the comedy. For example, the show did something almost unheard of on television at the time: It killed off Col. Henry Blake, a beloved character, despite the network’s hesitation.
“We resolved that instead of doing an episode in which yet another actor leaves yet another series, we would try to have (Blake’s) departure make a point, one that was consistent with the series’ attitude regarding the wastefulness of war: We would have that character die as a result of the conflict,” Gelbart wrote, according to Snopes. “After three years of showing faceless bit players and extras portraying dying or dead servicemen, here was an opportunity to have a character die that our audience knew and loved, one whose death would mean something to them.”
In the episode, titled Abyssinia, Henry, Blake is discharged, but his plane is shot down over Japan and he dies.
“We got so much mail. Some people thought it was great and others were very upset. ‘You made my little kid cry!’” Metcalfe told The Hollywood Reporter. “... We got a letter from a 15-year-old girl who said she understood our motives. ‘I feel that I have joined that all too non-inclusive fraternity of those who have lost a dear one overseas.’ I thought that was such an incredible observation by someone so young. That was the response we were hoping for.”
The show lasted for 11 seasons, at which point the show’s producers and writing team chose to take it off the air “to protect itself from devolution,” as Metcalfe told Smithsonian. The finale is still available to watch on various platforms. It wouldn’t be right to offer spoilers, but rest assured that each characters gets his or her own unique sendoff — some heartwarming and, in typical M*A*S*H fashion, some gut-wrenching.