!![[Film/{{Mash}} The Movie]]
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[[folder: Fridge Brilliance ]]

* When Frank gets sent away Duke says to Col. Blake "Fair is fair, Henry. If I nail Hot Lips and punch Hawkeye, can I go home?" Well, later on he ''does'' have a tryst with Hot Lips, and he ''does'' get his orders to leave soon after, without even having to punch Hawkeye.

!![[Series/{{Mash}} The TV Series]]
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[[folder: Fridge Brilliance ]]

* The show's exterior shots at least attempted to replicate Korea's mountainous terrain but the vegetation is quite sparse compared to the lush greenness that Korea is known for. This is actually perfect for the setting. Korean War veterans will tell you that so many munitions were spent on the frontline that the terrain was blown bare of any plants and trees and that both sides would intentionally target anything left standing so that neither would have any cover in an advance. It took decades before the trees fully grew back and veterans visiting decades later will marvel at how dramatically Korea's natural terrain (not to mention the urban areas) has changed.
* Hawkeye always referred to Colonel Potter by his rank or his last name ("Colonel, I need some help here" or "Ah, Colonel Potter, you're just in time for Happy Hour"), while he tended to call Lt. Col. Henry Blake by his given name. At first, I thought it was primarily because Hawkeye and Blake were more friends than officers. Then it hit - Hawkeye also had far more respect for Potter than he had for Blake (probably because Potter didn't put up with much from Hawkeye). The only time Hawkeye called Potter by his given name was when he was going to ask Potter to stay in Korea... and it came out like he was asking a loved one not to leave. I have no doubt that Hawkeye loved Henry Blake, but he ''respected'' Potter - and using Potter's rank was his way of showing it.
** It's not all one-way, either. Potter actually ''thought'' of himself as a Colonel first, a doctor second. He'd have told Hawkeye off if he'd gotten too casual with him. Blake was a reluctant commander who preferred not to be reminded of his rank or administrative duties when among his medical colleagues: doctor first, Colonel second (or third, if "drinking buddy" was also applicable).
** And this dynamic is inverted, naturally, with Frank Burns. Hawkeye ''et al.'' clearly didn't routinely address him by his first name from a sense of chummy camaraderie.
*** On that note, they typically call Winchester "Charles" as both a rejection of military protocol and as a way of acknowledging that they view him as an equal. Ironically, Winchester likely takes that as an ''insult'', since his Blue Blood makes him think he's superior to them. Still, he never objects to this (but don't call him "Charlie" or "Chuck").[[note]]In Charles' case, he likely wouldn't want to be called "Major", since he's as reluctant a participant as Hawkeye and BJ, but he'd probably prefer "Doctor Winchester" or the like.[[/note]]
*** This also relates to the above - Charles is a doctor who is in the military, rather than a military man who is a doctor, like Col. Potter. On the other hand, Burns ''does'' consider his military rank significant, even if he's not a career Army man the way Potter is, so he would see lower-ranked officers addressing him informally as an insult (in fact, he directly complains to Henry about it in "Chief Surgeon Who").
* In the season seven episode "Preventative Medicine", Colonel Lacy is refused permission from command to start an assault for Hill 403. He then says he will send out reconnaissance to try and draw fire and get it done anyway. This is a strategy taken directly from General Patton in World War II, who called it the "rock soup method".
* All the characters who [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome disappear without explanation]] were in a frontline unit in a war zone, with a mine field nearby. In fact, one nurse near the end of the series dies after stepping on a mine while on a walk. These characters could have died, and it was too depressing for the main characters to mention close friends and colleagues dying. The nurse late in the series had only been there about a month, and no one had gotten to know her, and Henry dying was so much of a shock that they couldn't help but think of it.
** A less depressing alternative is that they were either transferred to another unit or managed to get discharged and sent home. Since the nurses had the highest attrition rate in the show's run, a reasonable theory would be that some got pregnant from the large amount of sex being had at the 4077.
*** Or, they were disciplined for adultery and/or fraternization (a serious - and strictly enforced - offense, then and today, punishable by the UCMJ under Article 134), and were dishonorably discharged.
*** A discarded early plotline had Hawkeye impregnating two nurses and trying to avoid marrying either one.
** Even leaving aside points, it's Fridge Brilliance because it's the military, and people come and go for lots of reasons, and it's usually nothing to make a big deal of like Henry's going home.
** Rewatching the early seasons, there are a lot of nurses that cycle through the camp on short stays (usually long enough for Hawkeye to attempt to bed them, then leave). Aside from that, many nurses' request transfers after a short time (this was back before Margaret's famous "cup of coffee" speech when she routinely treated the nurses like they were nothing to her, coupled with Frank's infamous mistreatment of the nurses [he once put a nurse on report for giving him the instrument he had requested]). Henry even complains that one batch of transfer requests had ''three'' nurses simultaneously requesting to leave.
* Edward Winter, known for portraying Colonel Samuel Flagg, first appeared as a Captain Halloran, an officer with the CID in the episode ''Deal Me Out'', where he played poker with Sidney Freedman. When Colonel Flagg later met Sidney Freedman in the episode "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler" he remarked that they once played poker together.
** Particularly good, as when he first appears as Colonel Flagg, a G2 officer shows up investigating him and tells Hawkeye and Trapper John that Flagg had previously infiltrated the CID.
*** And now I note the brilliance of the character's name - Samuel Flagg, as in ''Uncle Sam''.
* In the episode "Margaret's Engagement", Houlihan compares her new fiance to Frank Burns thusly, and I didn't catch the implications of that last example until several years later:
--> '''Margaret''': "I'll always have a soft spot for a real patriot. But when I can have Adonis, why bother with Pinocchio? When I can have hewn oak, why do I need stucco? When I can have knockwurst, why settle for a..."
--> '''Hawkeye''': "...a cocktail frank?"
* Margaret mentions her father was dead, yet he shows up alive and well later on in the series. Maybe she meant he was dead to her in the metaphorical sense, since their relationship was rather distant when he shows up.
** Eh, YMMV. ''He'' was distant, but she showed nothing but affection for him. She always speaks of him fondly, throughout the series.
*** Margaret explains in "The Party" that she had been trying to hide the fact that her parents were divorced. Claiming her father was dead may have been one of her ways of doing that.
* Why did Trapper and B.J. get discharged before Hawkeye? The MASH universe maintains the points system used in World War II (in RealLife this system was discontinued long before the Korean War). Under that system, married men received extra points from the get-go (and men with children got even more) so as to allow them to return to their families sooner while still fulfilling their draft obligations. Also, B.J. was shown to have gotten at least one medal during his time at the 4077. Awards were often worth discharge points, especially one as prestigious as the one that B.J. got.
** Although note that B.J. was not ACTUALLY discharged. His orders were a mistake, and he was stopped before he got very far.
** According the [[http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/kw-stale/stale.htm U.S. Army Center of Military History]] “…a soldier earned four points for every month he served in close combat, two points per month for rear-echelon duty in Korea, and one point for duty elsewhere in the Far East…The Army initially stated that enlisted men needed to earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the States, while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army reduced these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and thirty-seven points for officers.”
** As for Trapper, In Season 3's [[Recap/MashS3E7CheckUp "Check-Up"]], it's suggested that, unlike in the movie, Trapper was posted to the camp before Hawkeye.
* [[JerkassHasAPoint Frank was right about Donald]]. Not in a 100% specific sense, but he did tell Margaret that Donald might not be on the level. Sure enough, look at the end result of that marriage...
** He wasn't the only one. When Margaret shows Potter a picture of him, he asks who the girl in the picture is. Which raises the question of just how careless (or audacious) Donald was that he gave Margaret a picture of him ''with another woman.''
--->'''Margaret''': I think she's his cousin.
--->'''Potter''': Huh, close family.
* When B.J. strays, he nearly writes his wife and confesses until Hawkeye talks him into simply acknowledging his mistake and not letting it harm his wife. Why does Hawkeye get so vehement in the process? Because Hawkeye has seen the damage that hurting your significant other can cause, as we find out that his long-term girlfriend (whom he acknowledged as the only woman he ever really loved) left him because he [[MarriedToTheJob was so involved with his work]].
* The episode "Comrades In Arms (Part I)" opens with Hawkeye and B.J. singing opera (badly), which leads to this exchange:
-->'''Charles''': Do you realize you are both singing entirely different operas and they are both out of tune?
-->'''Hawkeye''': Well, don't blame me. I didn't write this stuff.
** Here's the Brilliance - the screen credit less than ''fifteen seconds prior'' was '''Written By Alan Alda'''. So he '''did''' write it!
* In "Bless You Hawkeye," Potter's idea that Hawkeye's illness is psychological seems like a strange intuitive leap, until you consider two things. One, Potter been a doctor a long time, and he might have seen something like it happen before. Two, there's Hawkeye's sudden conviction that he was going to die. His symptoms were serious, but not so bad that he should think he was dying. And sure enough, it goes back to a childhood trauma in which he ''almost died.'' So him saying he was going to die was a symptom.
** More fridge brilliance later in the episode: Sidney asks Hawkeye about his childhood. It seems a rather broad subject to tackle, but that childhood incident causing Hawkeye's problems naturally comes up, even if he doesn't know why, because it's in the back of his mind; if it wasn't, it wouldn't be bothering him.
* In his second appearance, Klinger goes to kill Frank with a grenade until Father Mulcahy talks him out of it. In a later episode, after Klinger steals the coveted long johns that were really Hawkeye's but were in Margaret's possession, he confesses the theft to Mulcahy and hands them over without taking time to wear them. No doubt Mulcahy had earned Klinger's trust from the previous grenade situation.
* In "Major Topper", Charles keeps topping whatever stories Hawkeye or B.J. tell with better ones, culminating in him claiming to have had a date with Audrey Hepburn. They call bullshit, and he produces a photograph of him with the famous starlet, the implication being that all his stories are true. It's the one before that that gets to me. They run out of morphine, and get the patients through the night with placebos (sugar pill "painkillers" plus (actual) sleeping pills and a lot of ice packs) -- Potter's idea. Hawkeye is saying how it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen, and Charles dismisses that, recounting a story in which he witnessed an operation done without anesthesia, the patient having been put under via hypnosis. Flag on the play; Charles was the one loudly and repeatedly insisting that placebos wouldn't work, that they couldn't possibly work, and then when they do? "Oh, that's nothing, I've seen better." Bullshit. But it actually works for the joke that way. He spins these cock and bull stories, Hawkeye and B.J. don't really buy it, but they let it go. Then when they've finally had enough and call him out, that happens to be the one he was telling the truth about, and he has photographic evidence.
* Throughout the series, a number of shenanigans are necessary because of the characters conveniently forgetting that the VIP tent exists, thus having to bunk elsewhere (see Col. Mulholland in "House Arrest," Tony Baker in "The Nurses," etc.). When you remember that the hospital is frequently shelled from both sides, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the VIP tent gets blown up or used for other purposes every now and then.
* In "The Life You Save," the B-plot involves Hawkeye being responsible for the mess tent's setup, with fifty trays being mysteriously missing. After rewatching "Dear Ma" and finding out that North Korean snipers sometimes sneak into their mess tent for food, suddenly those trays vanishing makes a lot more sense.
* It's likely that Frank Burns fulfilled a role of ToxicFriendInfluence for Margaret, considering that she used to be basically a female version of him over the course of Burns' entire role here, but began to mellow out after Frank left and loosened up to an extreme degree over the rest of the show.
* The staff frequently drinking alcohol or coffee instead of the local water or powdered milk makes sense with what they're dealing with - [[MustHaveCaffeine long hours in OR]] [[INeedAFreakingDrink after which they need to forget what they just saw]] - but also would be very helpful in staving off waterborne diseases like dysentery, as it's mentioned more than once that it's common in their area.
* In the episode [[Recap/MashS8E21GoodbyeCruelWorld Goodbye Cruel World]], Klinger tries to forge Potter's signature on the discharge package to I Corps. After filling a legal pad with "Sherman T. Potter"s, he finally settles on the "perfect one." Later, Potter discovers the pad and mentions, "You put too much swoop on the 'T'". Potter seems like it's a joke but he probably figures that there may be a time when his signature is needed but he can't do so and would instruct Klinger to sign for him. He wants to make sure the signature is a good one. Radar openly admits to forging Potter's signature on documents for official reasons at one point (and Blake's at another), so presumably by this point Potter trusts Klinger enough to not do anything ''too'' outrageous with his signature.
** Potter's not stupid; he knew damn well what Klinger was up to with the signatures. But he also knew that he and the other officers had been too hard on Klinger about the office decorations, and since Klinger had gone on his R&R and come back without incident, it stands to reason that Potter understood Klinger had had a change of heart about going AWOL. This was Potter's way of saying he appreciated Klinger had come back while still letting him know that he'd known exactly what Klinger had been initially planning.
* Col. Potter's presence allowed Margaret to mellow out. When Henry was running the outfit, it was clear that he was a competent medical man, but was, by his own admission, in over his head militarily. To someone like Margaret, who was Regular Army, Henry's lack of military protocols must have been galling, which is why she latched onto the only person who seemed as patriotic as she felt herself to be, i.e. Frank. Potter, however, was also Regular Army. And demonstrated quickly and in short order that he had a handle on things. He had an air of authority, and could quickly shut down Frank when he went on one of his spiels. After seeing that Potter was competent and capable, she was able to relax a bit, and allow herself to be more human with others, because she felt they now had a decent leader at the helm.
* In Colonel Flagg's last appearance, he busts up a card game that turns out to have the mayor and police chief of Uijeongbu in it. The police chief says, "I got a lot of big contacts at I-Corps; they'll fix your wagon!" It seems likely that someone at I-Corps did just that, and the reason why we don't see Flagg after this was that he was [[ReassignedToAntarctica sent somewhere he couldn't cause any more trouble]].
* When Bigelow is hurt by the falling watertower, Margaret brings her a makeup kit. Why would she do that? Because she knows that Hawkeye is beginning his shift in Post-Op in a few minutes and also that the storm interrupted their date.
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[[folder: Fridge Horror ]]

* In "The Novocaine Mutiny", Frank says that he's aware that the hearing he brought against Hawkeye will result in Hawkeye's death "or [[FateWorseThanDeath worse]]", which is followed by a joke about wanting virginity. So Frank, who has entries in UnintentionallySympathetic, was willing to see Hawkeye raped? Huh.
** It was B.J. and Hawkeye that were making the rape joke:
---> '''Frank''': I understand okay. Death...or worse.\\
'''Hawkeye''' (to B.J.): Besides my life, Frank wants my virginity.\\
'''B.J.''': We all do.\\
'''Hawkeye''': If only I'd known.
** On the other hand, knowing how gung-ho Frank is, he might just mean a dishonorable discharge, which to him would be a FateWorseThanDeath.
*** Whatever he meant by "or worse", he certainly wasn't bothered by the idea of having Hawkeye ''hanged to death'' either.
* Sitting between FridgeHorror and FridgeBrilliance; remembering events like "The Novocaine Mutiny" may be why, in season 5's "The Colonel's Horse", Hawkeye suggests that Colonel Potter should have Frank, who has recently been even worse than usual due to Margaret's engagement, "stood up and shot."
* Whenever Hawkeye replaces Frank's gun with a toy or a gun shaped lighter, he immediately pulls the trigger when unholstering it, thinking it is a real gun. We all know Frank [[ArtisticLicenseGunSafety failed gun safety]] and RuleOfFunny notwithstanding, he's pointing it at someone '''every''' time. In ''Five O'Clock Charlie'', when he 'arrests' Henry and Pierce for sabotaging his [=AA=] gun, he points the toy popgun at Trapper and pulls the trigger, [[RuleOfFunny if only done for the 'bang' flag to pop out]]. When he builds a small sandbag bunker in the Swamp and is woken up in the middle of the night, he points the lighter in Hawkeye and [=B.J.=]'s direction. Again, this was done so the lighter would light, but still. In either time, had he had a real gun and done that, he would have [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace shot Pierce in the face]]
** In fairness, a real loaded pistol is heavier than a lighter/toy gun. It's possible that Burns pulled the trigger after realizing he'd been pranked. Then again, this is [[TheNeidermeyer Frank]] we're talking about....
*** When Margaret went missing (she actually helped a Korean mother give birth and Klinger didn't tell anyone), Burns shoots Hunnicutt in the leg while trying to lower the hammer of his pistol ([[AllOrNothingReloads even though the gun couldn't have been loaded since he doesn't rack the slide after inserting a magazine in an empty pistol]]). Another instance is his [[http://www.imfdb.org/w/images/0/05/MASHtv-star1.jpg cleaning an unstripped and potentially loaded weapon.]]
*** And then there's the time (in "Love and Marriage") he accidentally shoots out the light while the others are playing poker. They yell at him to stop waving it around, and he smugly dismisses their concerns right before setting it off. And in "The Gun," he steals a wounded colonel's gun, and while trying to return it, shoots himself. He's clearly a menace who should never ever be allowed to handle a gun, so it's not hard to imagine that he ''would'' have pulled the trigger those other times if the toys had been real guns.
* In the pilot, while trying to think of ways to raise money for Ho Jon's tuition at Hawkeye's alma mater, Hawkeye suggests selling Spearchucker Jones. [[UnfortunateImplications Spearchucker was the only black doctor.]] [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome He then disappears five episodes later with no explanation.]] So, did Hawkeye really sell Spearchucker into slavery?
** In reality, it was a double-dose of research failure. They cast the role of Spearchucker based on the character from the movie, then were informed that there were no black surgeons in Korea. After cutting the role from the series, they were informed that there actually ''were'' a few black surgeons in Korea.
*** That's the [[WatsonianVersusDoylist Doylist explanation, what about the Watsonian]]?
*** If we're being honest, the most logical [[WatsonianVersusDoylist Watsonian explanation]] is simply that Spearchucker was either transferred to another unit or sent home. Hawkeye got up to a lot of antics that were either ethically or legally dubious but given his tendency to chew out anyone who put even a hint of racial bigotry on display (even if it's a South Korean soldier guarding a North Korean woman), going to the length of actually selling a bunkmate seems far out of his league...
*** The Doylist explanation is that Fox needed to cut costs (notice at nearly the same time the characters of Ho Jon, Ugly John, Lt. Dish, and Nurse [=McCarthy=] also disappeared. The "no black surgeons" was an excuse because they knew that they couldn't keep getting away with a character whose name was a racial slur.
** Jones was only transferred to the 4077th in the first place because the unit needed a ringer for a football game. It's possible that the transfer was never intended to be a long-term one, and he simply returned to his previous posting.
* Hawkeye and Trapper John accidentally caused Henry's death by convincing him to return to command of the 4077th. Had they not done so, he would have completed his military service in Tokyo and never been on the plane he died in.
** A later episode has Hawkeye point out that Henry is getting arthritis due to his age - a medical discharge for Henry, his ticket out - but Henry objects, saying he could do more good at the 4077th. It's questionable whether he would have been discharged at his post in Tokyo, but had he taken Hawkeye's advice there, he would have been home long before then.
* Hawkeye probably caused Wendell to be sent to prison. Wendell confessed to identity theft - he stole his brother's identification to enlist and Hawkeye reveals this to the [=MPs=] and has Wendell put under guard. Hawkeye then gives him the Purple Heart stolen from Frank, putting Wendell in possession of stolen property that Frank and Margaret would certainly report, worsening Wendell's situation as he would also have no explanation as to why he has a Purple Heart when his record would show he was hospitalised for appendicitis, an ineligible non-combat caused wound.
** This episode plays fast and loose with the rules for the Purple Heart. The criterion is not that the injury occur in a combat zone; it must be due to hostile action. Neither Frank nor Wendell would receive a Purple Heart in this episode if it were done realistically.
*** In Frank's case, he also twisted a non-combat injury (throwing his back out dancing with Margaret) into a Purple Heart, so the fact that he cheated his way into it makes the theft a little more sympathetic. And Hawkeye gave Wendell the Purple Heart because the kid was so obsessed with getting one to impress a girl back home.
* Not sure whether this is Fridge Brilliance or Horror, but Radar's BigEater tendencies and his ability to stomach the mess tent's food is probably a result of growing up poor on a farm in Iowa. It's mentioned that it was just him, his mom, and his uncle working the farm, so there may not have been much food to go around.
** Relates to the episode where Canadian patients praise the quality of the food and say they've not eaten this well in a long time - and explain that their field kitchens and rations are [[HollywoodCuisine provided by the British]].
* Think of what the reaction might have been when Henry's wife found out that her husband was killed ''while on his way back home.''
* In "Mulcahy's War," we meet Corporal Cupcake, a war dog. He's sent to the evac hospital with his handler after his stay at the 4077, and Radar gets a chuckle from the idea of Cupcake soon outranking him. But what Radar doesn't realize is that up until after the Vietnamese War, war dogs weren't retired; they were euthanized. In fact, once a war dog deployed, it never came home.
* In the finale, when Winchester is examining the wounded P.O.W. before he realizes who it is, Kellye can be seen looking back and forth between the patient and the doctor with a worried look on her face, obviously having recognized the prisoner and trying to think of a way to soften the blow. For someone as compassionate as Nurse Kellye was shown to be, this must have been horrible.
* The pilot has Hawkeye and Trapper raising money to get Ho-Jon to college. He appears in a few further episodes, then [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome mysteriously vanishes.]] In the episode "Ping Pong," Hawkeye makes a throwaway joke about their houseboy being drafted two years ago. Did Ho-Jon get drafted? Or rather, "drafted," as we get multiple mentions about how South Korean draft boards were essentially kidnappings.