TV Show: M*A*S*H

The 4077 Unit in Korea apparently was where funny doctors were stationed. Now, 26 years after the series left the air, it’s not the plots that we remember, as with other comedies. It’s the writing, the repartee that’s still sharp to our twenty-first century ears.

In my opinion, the casting of M*A*S*H was never up to the high standards of the writing. Alan Alda was brilliant, so was Harry Morgan. But Larry Linville? Loretta Swit? Wayne Rogers? Just adequate.

So instead of chronicling the show’s achievements, I think it’s more appropriate to remember some of the great one-liners from the show:

Frank Burns: Funny thing, war: never have so many suffered so much so so few could be so happy.
Margaret: We’re lucky to be two of the few and not the many.
Frank Burns: I know, darling, and I love being both of us.

Hawkeye: No wonder they execute people at dawn. Who wants to live at six A.M.?

Col. Potter: I said fire that weapon.
Hawkeye: All right. [to the gun] You’re fired.
Hawkeye: [to Potter] I did it as gently as I could.
Col. Potter: That was an order, Pierce.
Hawkeye: [Snapping his fingers] Oh waiter, would you take this man’s order, please?

Col. Potter: The General answers his own phone. Must be a Unitarian.

Radar: Sir, I was just crossing the compound when…
Frank Burns: I have no interest in the compound.
Klinger: He has no compound-interest.

B.J.: [Hawkeye and B.J. had walked into the woods to try and find civilization] Just woods and more woods.
Hawkeye: I met a little girl with a basket for her grandma.
B.J.: Wearing a little red riding hood?
Hawkeye: Actually she was with seven little dwarfs.
B.J.: She’s in the wrong woods.
Hawkeye: Or the wrong story.
Col. Potter: Are you finished, doctors?
Hawkeye: Are you…?
[B.J. nods]
Hawkeye: Yes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICiFnQrHOrk&hl=en&fs=1&]