Characters / M*A*S*H – Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce

Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce

Played by: Alan Alda

Chief surgeon of the 4077th MASH, he was one of the few people assigned to the unit for the entire run of the show, and was billeted in what was officially the Bachelor Officer Quarters, but almost always known as "The Swamp". He hails from the fictional Crabapple Cove, Maine (Vermont in some early episodes), where his widowed father still lives.

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A-F

• The Ace: Generally considered the best all-around surgeon of the show. Occasionally Charles in later seasons would get the nod for his specialties, and even B.J. would show him up with a technique he didn't know. In one episode, he even conceded that B.J. be the one to perform a tricky surgery as he had the most experience with it (i.e.: reading about it in a medical journal).
• Actual Pacifist: Hates guns, bombs, war, and violence in general. The amount of fights he participates in over eleven seasons can be counted on one hand, and even then, such incidents were treated as a sign that all was not well. He even refused to fire back at North Korean soldiers when he and Col. Potter were pinned down in a ditch. Potter, naturally, calls him out on his bullheadedness in this specific situation, and convinces him to at least just fire into the air to scare them off.
  Hawkeye: Look, Colonel, I will treat their wounds, heal their wounds, bind their wounds, but I will not inflict their wounds!
• Adult Child: All the way through. He starts off Picture This crawling under the table, hooking onto B.J.'s leg and everyone having to calm him down because B.J. stole his socks, and Trapper's first instinct (and Henry's) when Hawkeye is manic or having a breakdown is to treat him like one of his kids. On a darker note, while he's great with flirting or charm — apparently been working on it his whole life — he can be unbearably naive, not understanding how someone could hurt him if he loved them.
• Aesop Amnesia: Played for drama, as Sidney, Henry, and Potter all tell him his need to be perfect is driving him insane, and at the end of "Fallen Idol", he takes the wrong lesson from his mistakes, not getting it was self pity that made him mess up and lash out, but Radar should idolise him and he never tries to assert personal boundaries again.
• Aggressive Submissive: Part of the comedy in-universe and out, but he flirts with everybody (except Colonel Potter) with a distinct "step on me" vibe.
  Margaret: If I didn't hate violence, I'd kick you.
  Hawkeye: Would you? With high heels?
• The Alcoholic: Hawkeye worries that he has a drinking problem when he finds out that his bar tab at the Officers' Club is over 150 drinks' worth, and that doesn't even include Rosie's Bar or his moonshine. He settles things by vowing he'll drink when he wants to, and not because he needs to.
• All-Loving Hero: Cynical, with a more sexual edge than most, but no matter how many times he's hurt or has had his heart broken, he falls deeply in love every time, and easily loves more than one person at a time. The finale has him deciding to use both his pain and his love, and be the town doctor who understands what his patients are going through, as he's had so much pain in his life.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • B.J. becomes this to Hawkeye, as it becomes apparent that as much of The Trickster Hawkeye thinks he is, B.J. is an even bigger one, albeit in a Beware the Nice Ones way.
  • For all his obnoxious personality, Dupree almost takes Hawkeye's place permanently because he's so good at surgery.
• Always Second Best: From the very first episode he's accepted that he's nobody's first choice, and is just there as a warm body for when you want to break off your engagement.
• Amazon Chaser: Emphasis on the chasing. He's into Meg Cratty when she calls out generals (if she were twenty years younger she'd go for it), knows what pegging is and partakes in it during Tokyo trips, wants Margaret to kick him in high heels, but it needs to be his idea. When Inga gently pushes him down on the bed he gets weird, but learns his lesson by the end.
• Ambiguously Bi: Flirted with every woman who crossed his path, but did the same with quite a few men, as well. It was passed off as a joke in canon, but he's virtually the only male character to do so and he does so frequently. According to Alan Alda, executives told them Hawkeye could only go near women's underwear, giving the impression that this trope was as much as they could get away with.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Canonically he's a gentile from Maine, but he's also the character who uses the most Yiddish words (correcting B.J. on the pronunciation of some of them) and is openly annoyed when Frank and B.J. (who silently apologizes) perv on Jewish women.^note Alan Alda has a Jewish wife, and a lot of Hawkeye comes from his real life.
• Attention Whore: A whole episode is devoted to him trying to deal with a concussion by yammering to a Korean family who can't understand him. He also explains that if he provokes people, performs for them, then he knows he exists, because otherwise he calls it like looking into a mirror and seeing nothing there. He literally and dehumanizingly calls himself a public service.
  Hawkeye: But enough about me, what do you think of me so far?
• Author Avatar: Compared to the movie and novels, where their Hawkeye is a reflection of Hornberger – macho, plays football and increasingly conservative – Alan Alda's Hawkeye is skinny, sensitive (when he's not being called out for bad behaviour), theatrical, increasingly liberal, and has no idea of sports.
• Author Filibuster: He's frequently used as a vehicle for these, especially in the later seasons.
• Beneath the Mask: What his final(e) breakdown does to him, even when he's back to functioning. He does the same thing he's done all series (egotism, the long lists, being an impulsive Sad Clown, talking fast) but instead of turning his anger sideways and making everything about himself an accessible joke, he's bitter, angry and makes everyone uncomfortable. A lot of early season episodes also have him act like his later season self if he's upset or breaking down, that Trapper and company aren't always fond of dealing with.
• Berserk Button:
  • The war — especially the draft — as a whole, as well as harming children and commanding officers who sacrifice soldiers' lives to win.
  • Despite how emotionally stunted he can be, and his own tendencies for sanctimony, he can't stand being talked down to. It's one of his main fears about everyone finding out that he's genuinely mentally ill.
• Beware the Nice and Silly Ones: Hawkeye is a nice guy under all the pranks, but harm children and it doesn't matter if you're in the same army; he'll get you.
• Big Brother Mentor: To Radar.
  • Big Brother Instinct: ...and he does not take it well if anything happens to Radar ("Fallen Idol") or if someone—like, say, Frank—mistreats him. Lampshaded (in Hawkeye's usual self-deprecating way) in "The Gun", when he describes Radar to Frank as "both the child and pet I never had."
    • In "The Bus" episode, Frank, Potter and even B.J. aren't too concerned about Radar's temporary disappearance, but Hawkeye flips out and wants to go off in the dark on his own to search for him.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Other characters call him out for being a Windmill Crusader, if he can't play god and fix things then he's as awful as the war, "Preventive Medicine" has him go against his ethics to get a general off duty but it all ending up being pointless, and it's foreshadowed as early as s2 that he was always going to have a bad end to his Sanity Slippage.
• Break the Cutie: He was already damaged before the series started, but the early seasons had a "kick the Hawkeye" ep each, with season four onwards really kicking that trope into gear. Mentioned in the show, as the stated reason he turns down the USO girl in season ten is that he's way too broken to ever be wide-eyed again.
• Break the Haughty: A trend from season four onwards (coming in snarky and loving the attention, five minutes later gets his heart broken) is if Hawkeye is happy or bragging about something at the start of an episode, he's going to get smacked around very soon.
• Broken Ace: Had multiple mental breakdowns over the course of the series, and it's generally implied he takes the sufferings of war to heart much more than the other characters.
  Hawkeye: I'm here to pull bodies out of a sausage grinder, if possible without going crazy. Period.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: As mentioned on the Main Page, it was pretty much impossible to fire surgeons when the army was in such desperate need of them. Hawkeye knew this. And took advantage of it.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Sure, he's an ace Deadpan Snarker, but when it comes to telling a regular joke, he's more miss than hit.
• The Casanova: And at one point called out on it by a nurse he hadn't hit on. Because he hadn't hit on her.
• Casual Kink:
  • The main theme of his constant sex jokes is a subby/bratty streak (when he's initiating it, when Inga decides to take charge he runs), like wanting Margaret to kick him in high heels. Hilariously the jokes that he likes a bit of pain started and kept going after his slapsticky date with Edwina.
  • "The Trial of Henry Blake" and "Rainbow Bridge" somehow managed to get pegging jokes ("behind every great man is a woman with a vibrator" and "batteries cost extra" when Hawk is talking about nights with Japanese hostesses) past the '70s censors.
  • Someone on the writing team realised they could make "Hawkeye wants to be pregnant and have (usually his friends) babies" jokes throughout the show and get away with it, showing both his subversion of being a man and his wanting to be secure in some way.
• Character Development: He grows increasingly more depressed and neurotic as the show progresses and the war begins to take its toll. On the other hand, he also shows his kinder, more compassionate side more often and treats the women he pursues with more respect. A good example is that his Family of Choice speech in "Chief Surgeon Who" is fake humble, and by "Who Knew" he can admit that he hides behind jokes because he's scared of overwhelming real feelings, but genuinely loves his friends like a family.
• Characterisation Click Moment: He started off in the pilot as a slightly nicer, more flamboyant version of the movie Hawkeye, but got more traits of his own as the series progressed (No Sense of Personal Space in "Requiem for a Lightweight", self-righteousness in "The Moose", subbiness in "Edwina", etc.) and clicked as Our Boy with the Guilt Complex in "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet".
• Character Filibuster: He's occasionally prone to these, particularly when his righteous indignation is roused or when he's in the mood to indulge in a bit of Word Salad Philosophy.
• Character Tics: He has a frequent, and vaguely disgusting, habit of sniffing his food prior to eating it. (B.J. even calls him out on it in one episode.) Also, when he's happy or laughing he takes every opportunity to physically lean into Trapper or B.J. Finally, there's that finger-waggle of a wave he does in place of a salute.
• The Charmer: Both as a compliment and an insult, he's called out all eleven seasons for thinking he can convince anyone to do anything, and succeeding a lot of the time.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He may be a womanizer but respects the nursing staff professionally, grows to respect and care deeply for Margaret, actually turn down a romance with a girl barely out of her teens in the USO episode (a Pet the Dog moment), and seems to have been humbled by his encounters with Kelly and Inga. He also won't seduce a nurse he thinks is married (although nurses dating or engaged to someone are still fair game), though it turns out she just wears a ring to fend off attention she doesn't want.
  Hawkeye: You're not married? Move over, lieutenant.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: He has a minor Heroic BSoD in Blood Brothers where he has to tell a patient they have leukaemia, and because he can't blame it on the war he automatically blames himself for not being able to do anything.
• Claustrophobia: He suffers from it, as revealed in the "C*A*V*E" episode. It's heavily implied that it comes from nearly getting drowned as a child, something revealed two seasons later.
• Condescending Compassion: The big downside to his liberalism is that at least three times he thinks he can either save a Korean from their situation or be an emotional distraction, not getting that as much as he's a great doctor and trying and means well, they know more about their own pain than he ever can, and he's part of the military establishment that hurts them. By season nine he knows this full well and uses it as a reason to hate himself.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • Downplayed, as he's a Sad Clown and making jokes about trauma is how he deals, but he also goes too far with the rape jokes about himself and talking about having sex while going through puberty, and doesn't seem to cotton on that everyone seems to find them [in-universe] Dude, Not Funny!. He mostly stops doing it after "Bless You Hawkeye".
  • Lampshaded double in "Lil", as he's convinced that B.J. is hiding some trauma behind his name, and when he tells a burying the lede story about his dad finding him in bed with a girl at fourteen, Winchester and Margaret are sick of many references, both offscreen and on, to his "dismal puberty".
  • In an example more trying to convince himself, he makes jokes about being captured and tortured (and in some cases, raped) by the enemy when he's close to being in danger, because admitting he's terrified would be far worse. Frank complains that he's always like that, implying he makes worse jokes offscreen.
  • Still in making light of his dismal puberty, in "Fallen Idol" B.J. is sensible and warns Hawkeye to not make Radar rush in to losing his virginity. Hawkeye responds with Radar's over twelve years old, so it's not rushing.
• The Confidant: He probably hears more confessions onscreen (from the main cast and guest stars) than Mulcahy does. It does help that he has a lot of issues and probably can speak from personal experiences.
• Confirmed Bachelor: As jealous as he gets of wives and families, Hawkeye more than once refers to marriage as an illness and calls himself an eternal bachelor. He goes heavily on the virginal/unspoiled imagery in "The More I See You", to which Carlye kindly points out that he's trying too hard.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: B.J. definitely wasn't the only one weirdly clingy, as Hawkeye is lowkey resentful of B.J.'s friend in "Last Laugh", does one of his usual spirals when he thinks B.J. isn't sharing his real name and even when he's extolling the virtues of sluttiness in "Who Knew", admits to being jealous of B.J.'s family.
• Crying Wolf:
  • Hawkeye's unrepentant reputation for causing trouble and trolling others means he's not always trusted. In "I Hate a Mystery", a series of robberies occur in the 4077, and the stolen items are found in his foot locker. Precisely nobody in the camp believes him when he claims to be innocent. To display what his reputation's like, nobody thinks he's stealing out of greed, but believe he's playing some sort of elaborate practical joke.
  • A cut episode had a scene where Potter assumed he only wanted to help a nurse because he wants to sleep with her. A slightly hurt Hawkeye tells him that's below the belt, and Potter replies it's all he pays attention to.
• Cynicism Catalyst: While B.J. is a great Living Emotional Crutch, and he definitely wasn't having fun seasons 1-3 either, the twofer of Henry dying and Trapper leaving seems to break something in him, by the "Late Captain Pierce" just wanting to rest.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He has Trauma-Induced Amnesia, so we find out some of the shit he went through with him: at six, his loved cousin Billy groomed him with dirty magazines, and at seven, pushed him into the water, saying he was so clumsy and if it weren't for Billy he'd be dead. He changes the memory that Billy only saved him. At 10, his mother is dying and they try to protect him, but he ends up not being able to say goodbye to her, a lifelong trauma that keeps happening to him. He knows he's mentally ill by 18, announces casually that he was raped by a stewardess and lost his virginity young, and Carlye, who he was clingy with, also leaves without saying goodbye.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: When B.J. asks why he's so interested in women who dress in olive drab, he makes a joke that it's because his mom was scared by an army recruitment poster.
• Deadpan Snarker: A great deal of the time.
• Death Seeker: For a man who hates death and is labelled in a grudge match with it, he sure does like making suicide jokes. For the most part, he's exhausted and just wants to rest, having a passive death wish with no self preservation more than mindfully killing himself.
• Defiled Forever: In Check Up, when they're disgusted by real gin compared to the swill they usually have, he makes a joke that his taste buds have been raped and he can only have garbage booze for the rest of his life. Even Trapper looks affronted at that one.
• Despair Event Horizon: After eleven seasons of trauma compressed into three never-ending years, he finally broke completely when he inadvertently caused a mother to smother her own baby. Thinking B.J. was yet another person to abandon him (when in reality he only had five minutes to get on a chopper) didn't help either.
• Determinator: He will always put caring for his patients over himself and not let anything slow him down be it illness, sleep deprivation, risk of capture, death, his own fears, or an Obstructive Bureaucrat.
• Determined Defeatist: The man is a Cosmic Plaything and Sad Clown who believes the future has been cancelled, but even though he keeps getting broken, he doesn't give up no matter how much he wants to.
• Dismissing a Compliment: He automatically assumes that if you're nice to him you want to sleep with him, and when Potter calls him a good person in "Hepatitis", looks like he's going to cry.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Or grenades, mines, bombs, anti-aircraft artillery, ammo dumps, tanks, the Korean War, or war in general; basically he has nothing but hate for anything made specifically to kill another man, which makes sense given his being an Actual Pacifist. He is not hesitant to take this up with top brass or anyone supporting said war.
  Hawkeye: Guns and bombs and antipersonnel mines have more power to take life than we have to preserve it.
• Dogged Nice Guy: As decent confidant as he can actually be, he's also willing to put on the sensitive softboy act to get others into bed with him. He's usually called out and humiliated for it, especially in episodes written by Alan Alda.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: His main fear in "Hawk's Nightmare" is everyone realizing he's as crazy as he thinks as he is, and the more breakdowns he has, the more annoyed he gets with more people treating him softly or acting like the only conclusion for him is to end up in an asylum (he knows). When he's actually in there and everyone is talking to him like he's five, he's actively vicious, intentionally making them feel even more awkward.
• Disease by Any Other Name: He made the "MD: manic depressive" jokes before Futurama did, makes constant jokes generally about anything he's hurting about, the stick tower is "a little casual mania to help me relax", is hypersexual, has a Motor Mouth and psychotic tendencies,^note a deleted scene had Winchester make a crack about how he needed ECT to be semi-sane, and even Alda seems to believe he was broken pre-series, just could cope better in the early seasons and didn't change much. Seemingly the only reason why they didn't say "bipolar" in show was because the term didn't exist yet in that time period.
• Drama Queen: By the middle seasons, they gave up on trying to pretend this version of Hawkeye would know anything about sports, and leaned into him being into a theater kid despite being from the small town of Crabapple Cove, Maine.
• Drinking on Duty: Frequently.
  • In "The Consultant", he calls someone else out on it, who then points out that Hawkeye keeps a still in his tent.
  • In "Fallen Idol" he gets called out on it himself by Radar and by Potter. Potter expresses disbelief that a surgeon of Hawkeye's skill and professionalism would do such a thing.
• Emotional Regression: Sleep deprivation in "Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde" eventually makes him pass the tiredly enjoying everyone wanting to put him to bed stage and head directly into ten year old's logic, pleading with pilots not to go up anymore and for Frank to tell him what the war's about. Seems to be a common thing with him, his Doting Parent dad apparently feeling like has to treat his son like a ten year old when he doesn't want him to worry.
• Ethical Slut: Played straight in earlier seasons, where even though he sleeps with the nurses and flirts with men, he doesn't touch married women. Played with in later seasons, as he's still slutty (exchanging prospects of sex for charity in the second to last episode), but it's used to mock him more, nurses are far more likely to turn him down and he uses a nurse who he dated's death as an excuse to hate himself for being too casual.
• Even the Guys Want Him: One of the male party goers in "Chief Surgeon Who" grabs his ass (Hawkeye spins around and looks very amused), and it's implied more than once that it's not just the female staff who think he's attractive/charming. As for guys he likes, he mentioned Cary Grant as an example of peak male attractiveness at least twice.
• Everyone Has Standards: He flirts with Radar plenty of times, but only to annoy him (and will stop if Radar needs him for something), never to start anything.
• Extreme Doormat: The fiery headstrong man from season one gradually gets revealed to have not been lying when he says he can't say no to anyone, sobbing because he doesn't know why someone he loved would hurt him and thinking he shouldn't have boundaries, and by season eleven, has no energy to even fight the symbols of the war anymore.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride, like most of the other surgeons. He needs to be good at his job, especially later in the series, if only to justify his being in Korea. A patient developing complications noticeably gets to him.
• Foreshadowing: Early seasons nonchalantly hinted at the fact that Hawkeye wasn't going to keep his sanity during the war, and that it may have already eroded more than he even realized. True to form, the longer he's in the war, the more his issues become apparent, eventually it results in a mental break.
• Friend to All Children: He was always soft for kids and babies and outright squeed at first when Margaret tells him she's pregnant. The finale manages an ending kick to his Trauma Conga Line, making him responsible (or feeling so) for a dead baby, thus making him scared of children.
• Freudian Excuse: Apparently getting drowned by your best friend (who was laughing as he pushed you into the water and acted like it was your fault) and a few years later, not being told that your mom is dying, makes you a Sad Clown with a Guilt Complex and abandonment issues.

• Functional Addict: The only reason why Hawkeye's many breakdowns doesn't get him Klinger's sought after section eight is because he can still function and do his job, even as he gets worse throughout the series.

G-L

• Guilt Complex: Has a tendency to beat himself up and make the situation worse, like blaming himself for missing Trapper by ten minutes lasting the whole series, or a nurse that he dated getting killed obviously means he's too casual, or sending Radar off to Seoul sets off that whole Humiliation Conga episode in motion. He makes it clear in several later episodes that he hates himself as much as he hates the war, and telling a mother to keep her baby quiet and her killing them makes him cross the Despair Event Horizon. He was even like this as a child, Billy telling him that the attempted drowning was his fault, and Mail Call Three has him blame himself for his dad being alone because he didn't like a woman his dad dated after his mom died.
  Hawkeye: I'm so neurotic, anything you say, you've got a good chance of striking guilt.
• Has a Type: Really Gets Around, but he mostly seems to like repressed blondes who want to feel needed and love kids. When he sees that Kyung Soon has a positive attitude despite all she goes through and looks after eight different families, he instantly falls in love and idealises her.
• Hates Being Alone: Shown more after Trapper leaves, but he laps up any attention that's given to him, admits to being clingy with Carlye in "The More I See You", sulks that everyone else is too busy to spend time with him in "Stars and Stripes", and when he moves out of the Swamp in "Picture This", is desperate for people to come over.
• Hates Small Talk: He's a dramatic Sad Clown so he's no good at it, and trying it with Radar in "Fallen Idol" makes him look like he wants to die.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Frequently, both when he goes on leave or is just vacationing between OR sessions.
• Heroic BSoD: At least five major breakdowns in eleven seasons, each one worse than the last, culminating in the final episode where he's hospitalized after losing it over a smothered infant. He's prone to smaller ones whenever he loses a patient.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: To some extent, in the early seasons. He was never outright evil by any stretch, but he could certainly play very mean tricks on anyone who got in his way, through the truly cruel ones were reserved for people who had earned it in some way.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: To the point where he outright refuses to see that he's a good person, which anyone else can see despite all the vices. No wonder he's Sidney's favourite patient, and even his friends can be shocked about how far down he can go.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Best friends and very close with his fellow army doctor Trapper.
  • After Trapper gets to go home, he bonds with his replacement B.J.
• Hospital Hottie: He knows it full well. Quite a few nurses in later seasons find him hot and charming before his personality turns them off, and he's had at least four men give him a smack on the rear.
• Holier Than Thou: Mr. "Jiminy Cricket of Korea" is forced to deal with his own self righteousness during "In Love and War", immediately dismissing Kyung Soon because she drives a fancy car, but having to face up to the fact that he's part of the war machine no matter how much he snarks at it.
• Hypocrite: Frequently drinks on duty and performs surgery while hungover, yet complains about another character doing the same thing. He's called out on it.
  Borelli: You have a great many gifts, doctor. It's a pity you can't count compassion as one of them.
  • Potter gives him a What the Hell, Hero? in "The Grim Reaper", saying he rails against violence yet shoves a colonel he's mad at. As Hawkeye responds, he's already put himself over his own knee.
  • Also called out for it during "In Love and War", where even though he's made himself a moral defender of Korean people, he still gets bratty and dickish when he thinks Kyung Soon is rich.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: As proud as he is of his skills, Trapper leaving without a note did a number on him. When it seems to have happened again in the finale with B.J., he asks Margaret if it's the war that stinks or him. He's also called out multiple times on his god complex, of which makes his self loathing worse. If he can't save everyone and fix everything then he must be as bad as the war itself.
• Innocent Inaccurate: Loretta Swit talked about how for all Hawkeye's really getting around, he has a child's view of boundaries (both in his own and other's) and is really just an overgrown kid looking for a cuddle. In the show itself this comes out most when he's having a breakdown, regressed so not having full control of his mouth, and still thinks people caring means they want to sleep with him.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He can always be relied upon for a good mince or jokes casting himself in the female or submissive role. While a lot of it is to piss off overly military men, he's incapable of fixing things, is bad at sports, loves musical theatre, and the eponymous gay soldier in "George" feels it's safe to come out to him after he does a good job of painting a nurse's toenails.
• Ironic Nickname: Hawkeye Does Not Like Guns, but he's nicknamed after a famous fictional sharpshooter from The Last of the Mohicans.
• It Runs in the Family: Eleven seasons of being called bi in every form except the word itself, and he mentions an unmarried sheep farmer (all used as code for being gay) uncle who lives in Suffolk.
• It's All About Me: If Hawkeye has a major flaw, it's this. He's extremely self-centered and he even hijacks giving a eulogy to tell everyone how he feels about them and how they make him feel. "Commander Pierce" has literally everyone call him out on suddenly being by the book (and everyone else taking on the role of heroic wise-ass), but he's too wrapped up in self-pity and ego to back down until the end.
• I Was Young and Needed the Money: When B.J. tells him he would have made a great chambermaid in "The Kids", he admits that he worked his way through pre-med by being a maid in a resort hotel. Of course, being Hawkeye he words it like he was prostituting himself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Has set up embarrassing assault situations to get his way, frequently got called out for his self-righteousness, sanctimony and egotism, even in the later seasons could be a coercive lech at worst and had a rep for sleeping around at best, was sexist in multiple episodes and racist for the times. But he also had serious esteem and abandonment issues, was put through the emotional wringer, was often a confidant for any character (including a gay soldier), a brilliant surgeon who took being able to care for people very seriously, his main beef for the war was just not wanting anyone to die, learned his sexism lessons and he and Margaret went from insulting each other to a genuine friendship with some teasing.
• KidAnova: He's made jokes about losing his virginity at eleven years old (at most), and when he's trying to get B.J. to tell him his "real name", tells him about the time he slept with a girl when he was fourteen (though he focuses on being caught smoking) and his dad was steaming angry. Taken seriously, as the other characters sound quite disgusted.
• Kick the Morality Pet: When he gets drunk enough in "Fallen Idol" that Winchester has to finish for him and then goes ballistic on Radar, for which he gets called on it by pretty much everybody.
• Large Ham: Note this is referring to character moments. A good example appears in "Adam's Ribs", where Hawkeye leads, hammily, a revolt in the mess tent over the lack of variety in the chow line, culminating with him doing what can only be described as pole-dancing.

• Legally Dead: The Army mistakenly declares him this due to a File Mixup in "The Late Captain Pierce".
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: Both parents. Not Love Interests Trapper and B.J. try to do what his dad does, be the chill blue oni to Hawkeye's manic red, and his mom was a neurotic, protective blonde.
  Hawkeye: [to Radar] Find a girl that reminds you of your father and let nature take its course.
• Living Emotional Crutch:
  • Thanks Trapper for being able to look after him, had to be with Carlye every hour or else he got ill, will never be able to shake B.J (and doesn't want to), and loves his dad more than he could anyone else.
  • It comes up a lot in eleven seasons that he's one for the entire camp, whether it's Henry calling him the heart of the place, "Fallen Idol", or B.J. saying that if it weren't for him, they'd all lose it. He takes on the role, complete with people lashing out at him by accident, and it wears him down slowly.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: He has a few single episode interests who he instantly loves and either has to lose or he fucks up with. Way back in season two it was suggested to be a war-only thing and that he just likes the idea, but he has abandonment trauma and bad ways of coping from way before Korea.
• Love Martyr: As shitty as he can be to his casual partners, all his serious relationships (including B.J. and Trapper) has him put himself in the punching bag position and feeling like he shouldn't have boundaries, coming from Billy hurting him and saying thank you despite nearly being killed, and he comes to expect everyone leaving him eventually or some kind of violence against him, so he'll deprecate and flirt to beat them to the punch.
• Lovable Coward: He sometimes affects this persona, usually for comic effect. It's really a front, though; when the chips are down he's capable of great bravery and heroism, and his aversion to combat is more about fear of hurting or killing others (see Actual Pacifist above).

M-R

• Madonna-Whore Complex: Gender-Inverted Trope, as others see him as both The Heart who can fix all the problems, and spend eleven seasons calling him a whore in any way that gets past the censors. Best seen as "Fallen Idol" as he's called a mother multiple times and a camp swallower about five minutes later.
• Married to the Job: His first serious relationship ended because his girlfriend could tell that, really, he would always think of the patients first and her second, and she couldn't accept that. She reappears in one episode and, after they attempt to pick things up again, spells it out to him that this is why she left in the first place.
• Martyr Without a Cause: As early as season two he was torturing himself over having to stop the war, and his dream in season eight is how even before Korea, people demand things from him and he just gives himself away.
  Hawkeye: If I thought I could make it go away just by closing my eyes don't you think I'd try?
• Medium Awareness: Out of all the characters, he's the one who seems to come the closest to being aware he's in a TV show, from "war isn't a movie" in season one, to "this whole thing is a conspiracy to drive me crazy" in season eleven.
• Military Maverick: An extreme version. The only way to make Hawkeye do something military is to point a gun at him or tell him there's a storm on the way. Alda even rebuffed the "overly liberal" accusation by saying Hawkeye was essentially a libertarian who wanted any kind of government to leave him alone.
• Military Moonshiner: A rare officer example, and very much NOT a secret. Upon finding out, Colonel Potter made a suggestion or two on how to improve the product. Both Potter and Blake would occasionally come by to have some.
• Missing Mom: Although Hawkeye's mother is referenced in a couple very early episodes, his father is eventually established as a widower. Similarly, Hawkeye goes from having a sister in Vermont during Season 1 to being an only child.
• Motor Mouth:
  • Occasionally, as when delivering a Character Filibuster. It also tends to crop up whenever he's stressed (or just plain bored), and is pretty clearly a coping mechanism. It's especially severe in "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", when Hawkeye is confined to a mental ward.
  • In "Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde", he still talks and thinks fast, but thanks to sleep deprivation, stumbles over the words. The more he goes without sleep the worse he gets and it makes him even more upset.
    Mulcahy: You do have a way with words.
    Hawkeye: (flashing a boyish grin): Yeah, I talk real good.
• Mr. Vice Guy: He's learned to be a better person by the series finale, but he's still an alcoholic, "incurably" easy, had to figure out how to respect women other than being an Amazon Chaser, mentally unstable (even before Korea), self-righteous, self-absorbed, and prone to lashing out when hurting. Alan Alda specifically said that Hawkeye wasn't much of a heroic main lead, but at least was well-rounded.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction after Radar, who he'd urged to drive to Seoul and find a woman to bed, returns as one of a load of wounded.
• Named After Somebody Famous: While it's not acknowledged in-universe, his full legal name is clearly a mash-up (no pun intended) of Benjamin Franklin and Franklin Pierce.
  • Though a drunken B.J. does acknowledge it once:
    Benjamin Hawkeye Franklin Pierce, named after an Indian, a president, and a stove.
• New Old Flame: Carlye, his old girlfriend from surgical residency in Boston, who gets assigned to the 4077th as a nurse in "The More I See You".
• Non-Action Guy: Aside from when Frank pisses him off, he has no clue how to fight. A mess tent blow up ends up with him on his back flailing his legs at Trapper trying to kick him.
• No Sense of Personal Space: With everybody else around to flirt with, comfort, or make uncomfy (depending on whether he knows they're homophobic or not), he and Trapper (and later he and B.J.) can't seem to go a scene together without grabbing each other or touching hands or clinging shirts.
• Not So Above It All: As much as he hates the military, he's willing to use his rank and issue orders when he's desperate or in a particularly shitty mood. The stress goes to his head in "Commander Pierce", and he becomes so annoyingly officious that at one point Margaret tells him that she wishes Frank Burns could see him. Played for tragedy in the series finale, as it's his well-intentioned but unthinking order that makes a mother suffocate her crying child.
• Obfuscating Insanity:
  • He tries to get Frank to approve him for R&R by employing this in "Bananas, Crackers, and Nuts". It's brought up in the episode that he's genuinely not well, which he admits, but is exaggerating to get what he wants.
  • There's also a trend in the first half of the series where he's showy and accessibly eccentric to hide the fact that he's not doing great, ending at "Hawk's Nightmare" when he worries at Sidney that people finally know he's as crazy as he thinks he is.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His full name is Benjamin Franklin Pierce, but he is always referred to as Hawkeye, a nickname given to him by his father (whose favorite book was The Last of the Mohicans).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • If he ever salutes you, you have earned it.
  • Sometimes he's too stressed or tired (or in the case of Where There's A Will, tired and assuming he's nothing compared to Peg and Erin) to flirt back with someone else, and joking about being The Tease aside, seems to genuinely think that's the only thing people want from him.
  • Will never carry a gun... unless when he's degraded himself enough in "For Want Of A Boot" that he wants one so he can blow his brains out.
  • The stress of actually having to run the place (instead of swanning around like in "Officer Of The Day") makes him a quasi-Frank Burns, something that amuses Margaret.
• The Ophelia: Trauma that runs way deeper and long before the war, thinks being a Lust Object is both fun and a lot of what he's good for, and gets regular references to drowning.
• Past Experience Nightmare: Everyone in the camp has nightmares, it's part and parcel of the war, but the subconscious memory in "Bless You, Hawkeye" gets foregrounded in "Hawk's Nightmare", where he dreams of his boyhood friends getting into horrific accidents (and, when he phones to check on them, they don't even seem to particularly care about him in turn), and "Dreams", where he envisions himself helpless—and armless—on a rowboat. It's a running theme throughout the show, from Season 2 to the finale, that he can't turn off his brain even when he sleeps.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Has his moments. He generally doesn't like slurs and discrimination, but still happy in season one to use homophobia as a weapon against Frank and say slurs like "fairy".
• Precision F-Strike: In "The Interview". While the offending word is naturally bleeped out, it can clearly be seen on Alda's lips as he speaks.
  "I may care about things more than I ever have before, because there's so much more to care about here. On the other hand, I really don't give a shit what happens, 'cause it just doesn't matter anymore."
  • Not to mention his calling Lt. Park a "son of a bitch" as he's taking his prisoner away for presumed Jack Bauer-style interrogation in "Guerrilla My Dreams". This was actually the first (un-bleeped) use of the b-word on U.S. network television.
  • Not exactly clear which curse word he was going to use, but in "Welcome to Korea" upon being confronted with a Korean man who was using his daughters to check for mines in a field, him asking Radar what the Korean translation of a particular word was blotted out by the explosion of a mine.
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: While Alan Alda aged 11 years during the show, from the character's perspective, he grew grey hair in just two years. Considering the setting, it's not surprising.
• Pretty Boy: Lessened a bit after Alan Alda (approaching fifty when the series ended) went a bit grey, but the creators found their Hawkeye when they wanted someone attractive who could also pull off manic and flamboyant and saw Alda in a theatre production. He didn't even have to audition.
• Pungeon Master: Cracking puns and witticisms is basically what he does, to the point that one late-series episode is his getting into a bet with B.J. to refrain from doing so for 24 hours, something he finds almost physically painful.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: The show got a lot of mileage out of Alan Alda's ability to make his blue eyes big and distressed.
• Rape as Backstory: His need for everyone wanting him, thinking that's all he's worth and always has been, fucks him up several times, with a lot of (treated as in-universe as Dude, Not Funny!) jokes alluding to being groomed. "Who Knew" has him thinking the problem is that he's too casual, but he at least accepts that part of himself in GFA.
• Reluctant Psycho: A case of a character acting like The Mad Hatter to cover up his worries of genuinely being crazy and not lovable enough. The main theme of his Sad Clown jokes are what's hurting him, whether it's trauma as a kid or as an adult, and he gets frustrated with how many people across eleven seasons tell him if he keeps it up he'll end up in a padded room.
• Really Gets Around: He flirts with everyone like breathing. Not really talked about in earlier seasons, but in the later ones there's a few remarks on how easy he is and Margaret gets a standing ovation for telling him off assuming everyone wants him.
  Nurse: I'd like something weak.
  Hawkeye: How about me? I can't say no to anybody.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to B.J.'s Blue. Conversely, Trapper was usually pictured as more impulsive and emotion-driven than Hawkeye.
• Refuge in Audacity: Most of his pranks. He even mentions in the episode "The Interview" that he loves doing something crazy just to see the looks in people's eyes when their jaws drop in disbelief.
• Rightly Self-Righteous: He's right about War Is Hell, but even B.J. gets sick of him when his sanctimony is worse ten times over because he's not drinking.

S-Z

• Sad Clown: He explicitly states in canon that he uses humor to deal with the horrors of war, and in one episode where B.J. is deemed funnier than him, it seems to wreck his self esteem.
  Hawkeye: Joking about it is the only way of opening my mouth without screaming.
  • Trapper called him out on it too, when Frank banned alcohol and they were steadily getting more pissed off with each other.
  Trapper: Always the shot, always the needle. Mr Glib, never at a loss for words.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • The finale has him under observation due to losing it after seeing one death too many, with his recovery process taking time and him having made up some memories to cope with the events.
  • In season one he complains about Korea making him lose what's left of his mind, responds several times in the early seasons that why wouldn't he be going crazy with the situation he's in, and Potter's certain by season five that he's heading for a bad breakdown, with Henry and Trapper already concerned by season two. In the finale he mentions that his dad was already worrying about him as a kid.
• Sarcasm Failure: Is generally ironic and caustic about most things, but when he taps into his compassionate side (for a friend or a patient) he instantly becomes incredibly serious. O.O.C. Is Serious Business in "Fallen Idol", as he's drowned his sorrows and rushed out of surgery to throw up. He tries to make a pithy comment, but trails off and gives up, unable to think of anything for once.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: One of the prime examples of this trope.
• Secular Hero: In one episode Father Mulcahy fondly refers to him as "that crazy agnostic".
• Sensei for Scoundrels: Is this for Radar in at least one episode, and for more than one guest star in others. Is the cause for grief in "Fallen Idol", as Hawkeye's own hypersexuality makes him tell Radar to get it over with and bang someone, Radar gets hurt and Hawkeye drowns in self loathing.
• Sex God: Maybe the only thing he has full unwavering self esteem on is that he's hot and great at sex (to his credit, the nurses mention that he has the best hands and he's good at... tongue twisting). The Alan Alda written episode "Inga" opens with a speech on how he's sex itself.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Shows a little of this from time to time. A lot of it in the episode where heavy fighting and many casualties results in double and triple shifts and severe sleep deprivation for the entire company.
• Signature Laugh: His hyena-like cackle is always easy to pick out.
• Sleeps with Everyone but You: He flirts with just about every other nurse in the camp, but he completely ignores resident Nurse Kellye due to her size. In the last season premiere "Hey, Look Me Over", she calls him out on this and accuses him of avoiding her on purpose. Later, after secretly watching her, he sees her in a new light, but by then it's too late because she's moved on.
• Starving Student: Hawkeye makes mention of being completely broke during his residency, "fighting the cat for scraps", which explains why so many of his fond memories include food.
• Stepford Snarker: A classic example, but often crossing into Snark Knight territory as well.
• Talkative Loon: You can make a case for him always being like this, but he doesn't even bother to try and do his usual fun performance of insanity in the mental hospital at the finale, instead angrily raving about being the best surgeon held hostage and motor mouthing on full blast.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Tall, handsome, dark-haired and incredibly snarky. Apparently his self-righteous snark translates, as even the Korean cleaning women consider him "tall, dark hair, snotty attitude".
• The Tease: He loves to rub his exploits (whether it's exploiting B.J.'s Trapper jealousy, his own ~degeneracy~ to Frank or Flagg or nearly any visiting officer, or just having fun with the nurses) in everyone's faces. It sets him up for a few Break the Haughty episodes, and it's also a coping method, but it's also just how he has fun.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • According to Alan Alda, Hawkeye didn't change much over the series, just the constant trauma wore his defenses down until he couldn't use any of them anymore.
  • He also had one as a 7-12 year old child, with Billy nearly drowning him and changing the memory, his mom dying and not getting to say goodbye, blaming himself for not liking a woman his dad was dating two years later and in the midst of all that, losing his virginity.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: "Bless You Hawkeye" and "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" both have him make up memories because the truth was too painful. Dissociating, either to cope or it just happening, also happens a lot with him, especially in episodes written or improvised by Alda.
• The Trickster: Especially in the early seasons, Hawkeye would often pull complicated tricks (which would often grow more and more complex as the episode went on) to get something out of the Army, his friends, his enemies, or anyone else he happened to come across. Usually he used these for the greater good, trying to make life bearable for those affected by the war, but of course sometimes he'd just do it for entertainment. Later in the series this aspect of Hawkeye somewhat faded: he'd still sometimes play pranks on other characters (and they would play ones on him, as well), but these were usually for fun; the role Hawkeye's schemes played in solving major plot elements was greatly reduced.
• Unreliable Narrator: He's a Martyr Without a Cause suffering from self-loathing and Trauma-Induced Amnesia, and admits to just making up shit about himself, which among other things may explain why his previously-mentioned mom and sister disappear between seasons 3 and 4. During the "Hawkeye" episode he states that he had "a good kidhood and knew where [he] stood in those days", a line that's just begging to be – and eventually is – proven wrong.
• Vanity Is Feminine: The only other man who spends maybe more time looking at a mirror and obsessing over how he looks is Klinger.
• What You Are in the Dark: Having a concussion and an audience who don't understand him lets Hawkeye ramble at length about great boys who beat the crap out of him, the best food, medical school, girls who let him touch their slips, and the insecurity that he's only kidding himself about being loved.
• Windmill Crusader: While there were plenty of episodes where he's right and there's a shitty general to take out, there are multiple later season episodes where he's called out on being manic against imaginary enemies, or people only letting it happen so he can get it out of his system and not end up in the funny farm.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Gets this in the endings of "Bananas, Crackers, and Nuts" and "Adam's Ribs" when incoming wounded ruining his (and Trapper)'s R&R plans and his finally getting his hands on the titular ribs, respectively.
  • One before the series starts, in that he had an exhausting time in Boston (a lot of great experiences, medically, personally and food-wise, but being a starving student who worked until he burned out, had humiliating jobs that he compares to prostitution and was heartbroken after Carlye left him with no goodbye), gets back to his dad and Maine... then he gets drafted. No wonder by the finale he gives up surgery for good.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Charles called him "Hawkeye" once in the series, to break him out of a Heroic BSoD.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Margaret does this intentionally, telling Hawkeye in "Commander Pierce" that Frank Burns would be proud of him.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: He admits to B.J. that he's scared of his own mind attacking him, and he's got reason to feel frustrated, as once a season his body decides to fuck him over because he's extra stressed about something.

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