After difficulties with a patient, Sidney Freedman seeks refuge at the 4077th, writing a letter to Sigmund Freud about how the camp is able to stay sane in the middle of carnage.
Attention, attention all personnel! Dr. Freedman has noted the following tropes in his letter. Given who he's writing it to, though, they'll all tie back to sex in some way:
- All Psychology Is Freudian: A given considering who Sidney's writing to. Also mentioned in-episode:Mulcahy: Oh, I had the most extraordinary dream. I was a cardinal in Rome, and the pope had a bad cold.
Hawkeye: What do you suppose that means, Sidney? You're the skull jockey.
Sidney: Well, Freud said every dream is a wish. - Anger Born of Worry: After an ambulance crashes just outside the compound, Colonel Potter furiously orders for O’Donnell, the driver responsible, to go to his office to be reprimanded after his speeding antics have put himself and the patients in danger again. Radar tells him it’s too late for that as O’Donnell died instantly in the crash. Potter stands there, fighting back tears.
- Berserk Button: Margaret freaks out when she catches sight of an athletic supporter in the Swamp while she's talking to Sidney.
- Butt-Monkey: Frank, more so than usual. He is often the target of the mad joker.
- Character Focus: The episode can best be described as Alda's thesis on all the MASH characters, and has beats that echo on for the rest of the series.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Frank mocks Sidney for not being able to cure his own depression.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Hawkeye meets a shot-down bomber pilot with a cavalier approach to the war, having an off-base home with his wife in Japan and seeing the war as something that only lasts a few minutes a day. Hawkeye has him help bring a patient into the OR, where Col. Potter is operating on an eight year-old girl who was wounded when her village was bombed.
- Death Notification: Radar has to write one for his own friend in his role as Col. Potter's clerk.
- Despair Event Horizon: A patient of Sidney's kept hearing voices telling him to kill himself. One night after Sidney left, he listened to them, pushing Sidney dangerously close to his own.
- Disease by Any Other Name: More references to Hawkeye being bipolar, with Sidney calling his personality "split: two for one" and "depression turned sideways is Hawkeye".
- Failed a Spot Check: Before committing suicide, Sidney's patient starts acting cheerful, a sign that he had made his choice. Sidney spent the rest of the episode berating himself for missing it.
- Foreshadowing:
- Margaret confides to Sidney her fiancee Donald had a celebration without her, and with another woman. This won't be the last time Margaret and Donald's relationship is shown to be less than it seems.
- Sidney can't figure out B.J., saying there must be a volcano under there somewhere, giving more credence to Beej's growing anger.
- Funny Background Event: Even before B.J. is revealed to be the prankster, he can be seen smirking in anticipation just before Frank sits down on the sawn-off bench and later when Margaret grabs the salt shaker from Radar to open it.
- He's Dead, Jim: Radar reports the loss of the ambulance driver O’Donnell in this way.
- Heroic BSoD: The 4077 staff note that Sidney must be in the middle of one of these when they point out he came for the poker game and stayed for two weeks. They're not wrong.
- Heroic Second Wind: Sidney picks himself up by the end of the episode.Sidney: It's like spring at MASH. If you can't find it, and you can't feel it, you just go ahead and make it. Deep in here, I'm coaxing a little bud to grow. In the meantime, I'm going back to work.
- Hypocritical Humor: One minute, Margaret is insisting to Sidney that she doesn't let the stress of her everyday life get to her; the next, she's getting upset at seeing an athletic supporter visible in the Swamp, calling Hawkeye and B.J. disgusting, and insisting Sidney cover it up - and when he does and apologizes for getting her upset, she insists she's not upset.
- Innocently Insensitive: The bomber pilot goes on about how easy the war is for him to Hawkeye, whose army boots are coated in dried blood from the OR. Needless to say, Hawkeye doesn't take it well.
- After the ambulance flipped, Potter comes out hollering for the driver to report for a butt-chewing over his carelessness, not knowing that the driver died in the crash.
- Ironic Echo: Sidney uses the same language for B.J (rage volcano) as Hawkeye did for Trapper in "Check Up".
- Large Ham: Hawkeye’s comical visit to the post-op after Sidney introduces him in his letter.Hawkeye: Good evening, ladies and germs. I’m sorry I’m late but my watch stopped. It had to, it’s been running fast all week.
- Late to the Punchline: Colonel Potter gets confused in one scene when Radar starts roaring with laughter and he wonders what’s happened that’s so hilarious. He does not yet realise that he’s just been pranked with the old "ink on the binocular" gag.
- Not So Above It All:
- The anonymous prankster is revealed to be B.J.
- Sidney himself when he joins in on the prank to get Frank to dive into a foxhole full of water by shouting "Air raid!"
- Margaret insists that she can hold herself together despite the carnage and misery around her, but she snaps at the sight of an athletic supporter.
- Oh, Crap!: Radar, when he witnesses the violent overturning of an ambulance just offscreen.
- Orphaned Punchline: When the episode is
Edited for Syndication. While treating patients after an ambulance rolls over, Klinger speaks to Margaret in a foreign language. This is a Call-Back to an earlier scene (typically cut out) in which Klinger pretends to have been hit by a chopper blade and only speaks in Arabic. - Out-of-Character Alert: Hawkeye and B.J. come across Sidney’s letter to Sigmund and they get worried about his state of mind.
- Voiceover Letter: Sidney narrates a fanciful letter to Sigmund Freud.
- "You!" Exclamation: Sidney's stunned reaction to B.J. being the practical joker plaguing the camp.
