Great moments from M*A*S*H - 1

I'm not much of a TV or DVD person, but probably one of the best things I ever did was splurge last winter and buy the complete series of M*A*S*H on DVD: 11 three-disc sets with some of the best TV comedy ever created. I bought them a set at a time, on Amazon (I don't think I paid more than $20 for any one set), although the entire series is available in a big boxed set entitled MARTINIS AND MEMORIES or something like that.

M*A*S*H was my favorite TV show in high school --I started really watching it just as it crossed over into syndication, and for a couple years, in addition to new episodes every Monday night, there were reruns... I think at one time, M*A*S*H was running five times a night on three different stations in my area.

From M*A*S*H I learned about crisp, funny dialogue and comedic timing, plot construction, conveying a serious message with a sense of humor, how to work with recurring characters... all sorts of writerly things that, given my strange aversion to reading, I had to learn SOMEWHERE. And all of these things have permeated my own work.

Thus, a recurring theme in this blog: great lines and moments from M*A*S*H. As I watch them, I'll add them.

Today's is a little exchange between Colonel Potter (4077th commanding officer) and Radar O'Reilly (his company clerk), from the 4th season episode "The Price of Tomato Juice:"

Colonel Potter: A two-day pass for Corporal Klinger? Why?
Radar: Why?
Potter: I asked first...
Radar: Well... he put in for one, sir.
Potter: That's ridiculous! He's gone AWOL four times this month. He's forever digging, wriggling, sidling... tunneling out of here. A pass? He needs a pass to get into the place!

A final note: Not to plug product, but one nice feature of the DVDs is that you can TURN OFF THE LAUGH TRACK. I always thought that the laugh track in M*A*S*H and other filmed comedy shows (SCTV springs to mind) was an annoying distraction (some call it an "insult to the audience," like viewers have to be prompted), and am grateful that the discs allow you to view sans canned laughter. Stripped of the laugh track, the episodes really run like short feature films. The aforementioned timing and dialogue come across as never before. Also, really, a lot of times, the laugh track "missed" what was really funny, and punched up lines that WEREN'T all that great.