A well-known news writer known as Clayton "Blood and Guts" Kibbie (due to his writing exciting, occasionally violent stories about adventures around the globe) comes to visit the 4077th. He charms everyone there with his travels and compliments... until Hawkeye learns that he's also a propagandist who's glorifying the war and making it seem like a big adventure. Meanwhile, BJ rebuilds a motorcycle.
Attention, all personnel! Tropes found in this episode appear to be glorified:
- Continuity Nod: BJ's love of motorcycles (seen in episodes such as "The Yalu Brick Road") is again referenced, as he spends most of this episode rebuilding a crashed motorcycle gifted to him by a wounded soldier.
- Good Samaritan: The soldier who was injured in a motorcycle crash (and is the first patient to be helped by Kibbee's blood drive) was found unconscious on the side of the road by another American soldier, who collected the soldier and the bike before driving both to the first MASH unit he could find.
- Impossibly Mundane Explanation: Inverted; Kibbee was expecting the soldier injured in a motorcycle accident to tell an exciting tale about dodging enemy bullets and narrowly avoiding capture. Turns out, the kid volunteered for a very safe courier mission along a secured road because he wanted to try out his new motorcycle. He only got hurt because he, evidently, didn't know how to ride a motorcycle.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Clayton Kibbee is an Expy of writer Ernest Hemingway, who was also a famous writer who acted as a war correspondent.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: Kibbee simply refuses to believe that the lives of the doctors and nurses on the front lines, or that the missions taken by American soldiers, could ever be mundane or boring. This leads to him exaggerate (even make up) the stories he's told.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Hawkeye and BJ find the injured and hungover Kibbee with glass shards in his butt and a wrecked motorcycle, Hawkeye gives him a glorious one that seemed to hurt the writer more than the butt wound.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Kibbee has exaggerated and glorified what the war is really like, and it's implied he's done this for other "exciting events" he's written on. That said, his good publicity is earned; he's a great writer, a charming man, and he went out of his way to start a blood drive in the U.S. and bring said donations with him (both as an exciting story angle and because hospitals are always in need of blood donations).
