Plot A: It's Christmas time, and everyone donates special goodies for a party for some orphans. Charles donates a tiny can of smoked kippers (or oysters?) much to everyone's disgust. However, he secretly takes a box of candy to the orphanage, a gesture that his family makes every year, as he explains to the man in charge of the orphanage. Later, at the party, he is angered to find that the man has sold the candy--until he finds that the man did so to get money for more substantial items.
Plot B: Hawkeye, B.J, and Margaret fight the clock for a badly wounded soldier, so that his children will not remember Christmas as the day their father died.
hi i like mash, its a cool show! YAY BJ was my fave so sweet!
This is Charles' second Christmas at the 4077th. He would spend at least three there. (Next season would give us the ep, "The Day After Christmas".) In his first, "Dear Sis", there would be no hint of his family's tradition. Given the sizes of the packages Winchester gets in this episode, it's hard to think they would have gone unnoticed in "Dear Sis". Then again, it's possible this is the first time Charles personally carries on the family tradition.
This episode may contain a hint that the 4077th is indeed a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. In most episodes, the local orphanage is Sister Theresa's. In this episode, it appears to be Mr. Choi's (or is it spelled Choy's?).
As someone else has pointed out (probably D.K.), there are separate standards between the officers and enlisted men. Note in this episode that the officers are able to offer their ham, cookies, and fudge. Potter then puts Klinger in charge of procuring food from the rest of the camp. It doesn't sound like they're being asked to voluntarily donate anything.
When Father Mulcahy arrives in Pre-Op, we're told the time is 9:48. The clock behind Hawkeye and Margaret seems to say 9:15 however.
Klinger has a pretty good set of ears. In a noisy tent, he's able to clearly hear Mr. Choi's and Charles' conversation outside the Mess Tent. And the conversation takes place several feet away.
This is a biggie for me. As laudable as Captain Hunnicut's efforts are, I can't quite see the point. The idea is to keep the patient alive until it becomes December 26th. The rationale is to prevent the soldier's death from being associated with Christmas. But really, is December 26th that significant a difference? It's still the holiday season. Because of Christmas, the day the soldier died will still be easily remembered and I would think still inextricably linked to the Yuletide holiday. As long as the doctors are willing to falsify the death certificate, why not move the date of the soldier's death another two or three days away?
I think a few hours would be easier to fake than a few days. They could lose the body for a bit but it would be problematic at best to do so.
Except later in the season, in the episode "Tell It to the Marines", Hawkeye, B.J. and Colonel Potter would all falsify Private Jost Van Liter's medical record to keep him at the 4077th for the remainder of his tour of duty. For three weeks. Besides, would they really have to lose the body?
I would think the soldiers who found the body would have reported that they found him and tuned him over to the 4077 which would have eventually gotten back to HQ and might have caused a bit of a stir. Not that the 4077 is close to caring about that but it just seemed to make more sense for a few hours to be easier than a few days to me at least. As for losing the body it would seem to be an easy excuse to say oh he got up and walked off then they find him dead later somewhere else like the latrine or Rosie's. Remember the general who died in the line of duty (in margaret's tent) which shows how the crew didn't mind rearranging things to be more beneficial for themselves. Just some ideas. I don't get to watch MASH much since I don't have satellite and the local channels only use it as filler when they run out of anything and everything else.
The soldier who found the body could make any kind of report he wanted to. I doubt he has any medical knowledge. He'd have no idea how long that guy would live. All Hawkeye, B.J., Margaret & Colonel Potter have to do is say he fell into a coma for a few days then expired. Really, it doesn't matter what the soldier reports. It's what the medicos report that'll matter. All I'm saying is, if they want to falsify the death certificate by a few days, no problem. They've done worse. Any discrepancy would probably dismissed as the usual Army foul up.
Maybe I'm not thinking conspirically enough but yeah I can see what you mean. I just don't see the point of going to that extremes for so little return. It might have been marked up as a mistake or something but since the 4077 has quite a record of "foul ups" it almost seems like they had a special reason for continued existence and not broken up to try and fix these problems.
Well, the Army is known for it's snafus. It'd be just one more in the midst of a rainstorm.
To me the doctors go through a great deal of trouble keeping the soldier alive just those few hours. Then Hawkeye turns around, moves the clock up a few minutes & says, "There he made it." He couldn't do that four hours ago and let the poor guy die in peace? They knew he was a goner. If it's so important to them (B.J. anyway) that the soldier's death not be associated with Christmas, why not put more distance between the events? I don't see that there's a whole lot of difference in the efforts. But then, that's just me.
Without watching the episode again I have to say that what you say does make some sense from a certain point of view. I have a lot of family in the Army a couple of uncles served in Korea and for all the jokes about it the Army really isnt that revolving inclined planed up. At least from what all I have seen and heard so that is why I thought and said what I did. But at least in the MASH Universe what you say does make some sense.
The main syndication cut for this episode is the scene where Charles tries to get a jeep from Rizzo in order to deliver his candy. He puts the packages in the jeep before approaching Rizzo, who, naturally, is asleep over the jeep he is repairing. Unfortunately for Charles, the news of his piddling donation of smoked oysters has flown around the camp, and Rizzo insists on a lot of paperwork before he can sign out a jeep. Charles, trying to appeal to Rizzo's "masculine" nature, tells him that he needs the jeep for an "assignation". Rizzo: "You want to kill someone?" After Charles manages to explain, Rizzo happily gives him the jeep, assuming that Charles had refused to donate goodies because he wanted to keep them to give to his supposed "date."
You would have thought that the camp would be relieved to hear that their turkey dinner had been lost. Remember what happened the last time that they had turkey?
Wonder how much leftover hog jowls and pigs feet Rizzo had afterwards?
Actually, I wonder if the children would have enjoyed the hog jowls if Klinger had not made it clear that they were something disgusting. It was the same with the oysters. Klinger didn't even give them a chance to sample them--the can hadn't even been opened. He just told them that it was something yucky.
On the other hand, Klinger really shows his good side in this episode--not only "anonymously" bringing Charles some food, but stripping off his uniform in the freezing cold just so that the children would feel at ease.
Father Mulcahy has his moment, too, standing up to B.J. when B.J. doesn't want him to give the last rites.
The biggest problem I see with Charles' donation of smoked oysters is that there's so little of it. Not many of the children - even if Klinger hadn't turned them against the oysters first - would get any.
This episode marks the fourth time this season that Hawkeye operates on a patient with a head wound.
Do the children understand English or not? When they first arrive at the 4077th, Mr. Choi speaks to them in Korean to explain what is going on. Yet, later, when Klinger is taking them through the food line, Max speaks to them in English, no translators, and they seem to understand him fine.
When Father Mulcahy arrives in Pre-Op, we're told the time is 9:48. The clock behind Hawkeye and Margaret seems to say 9:15 however. - me
I may be wrong on that. Looking at the clock on DVD (and with the zoom function), it's not so clear what time the clock says it is. However, when Potter was in Pre-Op, the clock distinctly said 9:35. That means thirteen minutes passed between the time Colonel Potter left Pre-Op, went to the Mess Tent and told the Padre to get to Pre-Op. And in those 13 minutes, the Father left the Mess Tent and went to Pre-Op. Would it really take 13 minutes for all of that to transpire?
Did Max really expect Charles to eat hog jowls and pig feet? (Incidentally, I've had hog jowls. Nothing but fat. Ugh.)
I love that Winchester lets Klinger get by with calling the Major "Charles". Very nice touch.
Between the time of Margaret soliloquy on death and the point she says she'll get the death certificate, B.J.'s body posture seems to change.
"Beaver biscuits!"
Here's something I can't believe hasn't been brought up before: When the children arrive, Klinger tries to get them to come out of the jeep. They refuse because, as Mr. Choi explains, they're afraid of uniforms. So Klinger strips his off. The children are then willing to leave the jeep and join in the Christmas festivities. You mean, all it took was Max to take his uniform off and the kids were no longer frightened? Even though there's a whole camp of people dressed in khaki? Really?
"Beaver biscuits!