Plot A: Hawkeye pulls down Charles' pants in surgery. B.J, who had thought of the stunt, denies any involvement when the joke falls flat. Hawkeye's subsequent attempt to square matters makes matters worse, thanks to B.J. However, B.J. does get his comeuppance eventually.
Plot B: Captain Helen Whitfield, an old friend of Margaret's, is a secret alcoholic. Margaret knows that her friend is a heavy drinker but thinks that she's gotten past it--until Whitfield makes some potentially dangerous mistakes.

This was another episode where B.J. displays the dark side of his character. B.J. was party to the first joke on Charles, but when he saw the audience reaction, he quickly denied involvement. Very cowardly. Then spoiling Hawkeye's attempt to fix things, while pretending to help, was just plain mean. I loved how they got back at him--it was beautiful. And the end was wonderful, where they mentioned that they had posted photographs on the bullitin board. Notice also that B.J, like most professional practical jokers, whines "Not funny, not funny," when it happens to him.

Saw this episode this evening. I suddenly wondered how the heck B.J. could sleep thorough being stripped naked, sewn to the cot, and carried into the nurses' tent?

They (Hawkeye and Winchester) probably gave him an injection of some drug to keep him asleep (Sodium Penathol?) that they use on patients to keep them asleep through surgery.

>(Sodium Penathol?) <

I think that's truth serum, so I don't think it'd help in this case!

Sodium Pentathol is truth serum, but it's also used as a general anaesthetic to put people under.

Is just me, or does the camp's reaction to the first joke seem out of character? Surely worse jokes have been played before. And while Charles is more respected and is not as despised as Frank Burns was, he is still seen as pompous and arrogant? Surely someone in the camp would have thought the joke(s) were funny. That the camp as a whole reacted so negatively to the jokes ring false to me.

Is it Gail Strickland who played Margaret's alcoholic friend? I thought she did a great job portraying someone going through delrium tremens. But is her drinking habits really that unusual? Many of the M*A*S*H characters have gotten drunk alone. The only difference is the mistake she made in OR, which was not established as being due to her drinking. (We, the audience, know it was, but neither Colonel Potter nor Margaret know.)

At one point Charles refers to the lower part of his uniform as his 'trousers'. As an American shouldn't he say 'pants'? Or is it just part of his upper-class patois?

The upper-class thing.

"Is just me, or does the camp's reaction to the first joke seem out of character? Surely worse jokes have been played before. And while Charles is more respected and is not as despised as Frank Burns was, he is still seen as pompous and arrogant? Surely someone in the camp would have thought the joke(s) were funny. That the camp as a whole reacted so negatively to the jokes ring false to me."

Throughout the rest of the show, there seems to be an unspoken rule of 'no pranks in the OR'. If it had been in the mess tent, during a lecture, or just about ANYWHERE else it would probably have gotten the reaction Hawkeye wanted. Instead it was during the one time everyone's expected to be (relatively) serious. There may also have been some concerns about cleanliness.

Judging by the way that they carefully concealed Charles'...um...lower middle section, the assumption would seem to be that he was exposing everything. Shouldn't he have been wearing shorts? Underwear would not drop to his ankles the way his loosened surgical pants would.

While Hawkeye is protesting that the joke is funny, the camera goes back to Col. Potter, Margaret, and several nurses. Behind them you can clearly see B.J. grinning away--until Potter starts chewing Hawkeye out, at which point you can see his smile fade.

I believe that syndication cuts part, if not all, of the scene in the Mess tent, where Hawkeye enters to universal booing (and a short time later Charles does so to universal cheers). Hawkeye asks Father Mulcahy to intercede for him, only to find Mulcahy very tight-lipped. Mulcahy tells him that, if he weren't a priest, he would call Hawkeye by a number of bad names (which he carefully lists before repeating that he cannot say such things.)

Prior to the glue scene, there is an extended bit in the Officers' Club with Helen and Margaret, where we find that Helen is going to be stationed just thirty miles from her home.

When Hawkeye comes up to the reserved table for his glue joke, he glances at the supposedly "clean" chair before insisting that Charles sit in it. Shouldn't he have noticed that the chair did, in fact, have glue on it?

BTW, that glue set up incredibly fast. Just moments after Charles sat down, he could not get up without bringing the chair with him.

I loved Charles' little speech to the Officers' Club at large, where his voice suddenly wavered as Klinger and his knife got uncomfortably close.

I believe that Margaret and Col. Potter's confrontation about Helen Whitfield is extended a bit. Margaret thinks at first that it's a sexual double-standard--that the men in the camp can get drunk all they want and it's just brushed off. Potter (as he usually does when Margaret is ranting) quietly lets her blow off steam for a bit--until she comments that he himself has been known to get drunk. At that point, he stands up and tells her pointedly to hold the insolence. Margaret suddenly remembers who she is talking to, backs down and apologizes.

Judging by the way that they carefully concealed Charles'...um...lower middle section, the assumption would seem to be that he was exposing everything. Shouldn't he have been wearing shorts? Underwear would not drop to his ankles the way his loosened surgical pants would. - D.K. Henderson

Well, let's remember that Hawkeye once told Sidney Freeman that he never wore underwear in OR. (Which has been contradicted by every scene where we see Pierce getting ready for surgery or getting out of his surgical scrubs.) It could be that Charles (despite his breeding) had chosen to go "commando" in OR. Just one possibility. (And not much of one.)

"Beaver biscuits!"

Why wouldn't they? They wear undershirts.

Hawkeye stated he didn't wear underwear because of the blood that sometimes spurted out of the patients. (Sidney responded that was more than he needed to know.)

"Beaver biscuits!"

You know what, D.K.? The most likely answer is that Charles was not wearing boxers, but "tighty whities" that day in OR. I mean, c'mon, how often on TV (back then) did you ever see a guy in his skivvies wear anything but boxers? If he was wearing briefs, then maybe the censors are the reason behind (pardon the term) that odd camera shot.

"Beaver biscuits!"

So Whitfield's been at the 4077^th for about a month and a half, two months? Shouldn't we see her (even if it is briefly) in at least one other episode this season? Especially given that she's such good friends with Margaret.

I have to say, B.J.'s actions in this ep are bad enough, that if I were Hawkeye, I would have terminated my friendship with Hunnicutt. What B.J. did is something no true friend would do another person, IMHO.

Exactly what kind of glue was used on that chair? I mean, Super Glue, as far as I know, hadn't been invented yet and it's hard to imagine any other kinds of paste that would so quickly bond Winchester to the chair. Not to mention so strongly glue the chair to the Major's pants. And how long was the glue exposed to the open air? If left out too long, it would have started to harden. And how did Klinger get the glue on the chair in a crowded Officers Club without anyone seeing him do it? If Max had put it on the chair before the crowd arrived, the glue would have dried up long before Charles could have sat in it. And if he put it on while the crowd was in the O Club, someone would have seen him do it.

"Beaver biscuits!"

In "Goodbye" when Hawk & Beej are saying farewell to Potter, Sherm recalls how under his mask he had to keep from laughing at the scrubs dropping incident. His reaction here is anything but that.