The heat is on at the 4077, and the entire camp is going through a sleepless night because of the hot weather. Col. Potter finally decides to get a sleeping pill from the office safe (keeping them in his tent would be too tempting), only to find Klinger has disassembled the entire PA system as practice for a correspondence course in TV repair; the unamused CO gives him until morning to re-assemble it.
In the Swamp, B.J. is keeping Hawkeye awake by obsessively re-reading a letter from Peg in which she says the gutters need cleaning. When a wounded patient is brought in and needs immediate surgery after spending four hours in an ambulance that kept overheating, they volunteer to operate since they can't sleep anyway; Margaret does likewise since she is being kept awake by a horrible case of prickly heat on her backside and the 4077th is out of camphor menthol lotion. In OR, while B.J. explains why every solution Hawkeye proposes to the gutter problem is a bad idea, Margaret struggles to keep her affliction a secret from the two surgeons. Meanwhile, they tell Klinger to get Potter to call for an evac chopper in the morning, but the sleeping pill makes it hard to keep him on task.
In the mess tent, Charles is dealing with the heat-induced insomnia by working through three years of Winchester family tax documents that his father has rushed to him after the family CPA was arrested for financial crimes and the IRS decided to turn their attention to his clients; an eager-to-please Father Mulcahy provides him with (unwanted) assistance and lemonade. In the process, Charles is forced to rouse a sleepy Potter a second time to get carbon paper out of the safe, and just as he finally has everything sorted out to fill in the forms (including getting rid of Mulcahy with a request for more lemonade), Igor arrives to set up for breakfast and offers to cool off the major by turning on the tent fan... and blowing the papers everywhere.
When Margaret hears that there is a chopper on its way, she rouses Potter for a third time to ask him to request some camphor menthol lotion along with the chopper, but the ever loopier colonel gets distracted by reminiscences of his own case of "keister itch" in World War I - just as Klinger finally repairs the PA system, broadcasting their conversation to the entire camp. When she hears the gales of laughter coming from all sides, the enraged Margaret smashes the PA system again.
At breakfast the next morning, although Klinger has repaired the PA system again, the chopper hasn't arrived, so Margaret still can't sit down, and ribbing from Hawkeye and B.J., followed by the now well-rested Col. Potter saying "At ease, Margaret!" when he sees her standing up, doesn't help her mood.
Attention all personnel! To beat the heat, use the following tropes:
- Embarrassment Plot: Margaret's storyline involves her having an itchy rash on her butt, which she's eager to conceal from as many people as possible. Naturally, the episode ends with her telling Col. Potter about it while trying to get him to tell I-Corps to send some medicine (a difficult task, as he's zonked out from a sleeping pill), while Klinger accidentally broadcasts the conversation to the entire camp over the newly re-assembled PA system.Margaret: Sir, please try to understand, it's Margaret. I have a bad case of prickly heat. A severe irritation on my gluteus maximus.
Col. Potter: Oh, I get it. A bad case of keister itch.
Margaret: Well you could call it that, sir.
Col. Potter: I sure gotta sympathize with you on that one. Ain't nothing more bothersome than a case of the ol' fanny fungus. With all this heat, that cute little caboose of yours must be red as a beet.
Margaret: Oh, really, sir, I'd rather not talk about it.
Col. Potter: I don't know how bad off your wazoo is, but I'll bet it don't come close to the rump rots I had during the big war. We were pinned down near Chantilly, and I was stuck for a whole damn night in a wet fox hole. I'll never forget it. No matter how many times you change your skivvies, the fire on the ol' back porch just keeps burning. Must be hell for you to trying to sit or sleep...
Margaret: Wait a minute...Is this stupid P.A. on?! Klinger, you idiot! - Finagle's Law: B.J. is convinced this applies after his wife, Peg, tells him in a letter that the gutters need to be cleaned out. He's worried that she'll use the ladder, and because he forgot to tell her the third rung is broken, she'll fall and break her neck. Or, if she notices that the ladder is broken and goes to a neighbor for help, it'll be either the drunk (who will fall and break his neck) or the elderly man (who will have a heart attack and fall and break his neck). Or, if she decides to call a handyman instead, it'll be Carl, the hot repairman, who will seduce her. Or, if she handles it herself, she'll be totally self-sufficient and won't need B.J. anymore...
- Four Lines, All Waiting: B.J./Hawkeye, Winchester/Father Mulcahy, Margaret, and Klinger each have their own ways of coping with the sleepless night.
- Heat Wave: Despite the episode's title, there's a lot of sweating going on.
- Hopeless with Tech: Klinger declares he's going to break in to TV and electronics repair when he's finally free of the Army. He decides to learn how the parts work by completely disassembling the PA system in the middle of the night, but finds it's much harder to put back together than it was to take apart. He finally manages to put it back together in the end...just in time to accidentally broadcast an embarrassing conversation between Margaret and Col. Potter to the entire camp.
- In a broader sense, he declares that "due to good old American know-how, there'll be busted sets by the millions!"
- Insomnia Episode: No one in the camp can sleep because of the heat.
- Is This Thing Still On?: Margaret's rather embarrassing situation gets broadcast to the entire camp after the PA system is inadvertently left on.
- Not So Above It All: Father Mulchaey's reaction to Klinger's inadvertent broadcast of the above conversation between Potter and Margaret over the camp's PA.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Klinger when he realizes Margaret is going to break the PA system after it's taken him all night to fix it.Klinger: Major, wait! - oh, no! Please don't! It took me three hours to fix that- [SMASH] [static]
- Charles is only half listening to Igor when he arrives to set up for breakfast, so he is unable to react to the private's offer to switch on the mess tent's electric fan until it has already started blowing his carefully sorted piles of paper everywhere. First Charles, then Igor get looks of horror as the tax form snowstorm gets under way.
- Klinger when he realizes Margaret is going to break the PA system after it's taken him all night to fix it.
- Recruiters Always Lie:Hawkeye: They said "join the army and see the world", so here I am in Korea, removing Chinese metal from an American soldier in a Turkish bath.
- Rule of Three: When B.J. is ranting about why his neighbours can't clear the gutters for Peg, Hawkeye twice asks Jo Ann, the nurse assisting the surgery, for a clamp, and then switches gears:B.J.: You wanna know about our neighbours!?
Hawkeye: No.
B.J.: On the one side, there's Eddie Hoffman, who's bagged most of the time. If he got on the ladder he'd fall right off on his face and then get up and slap a million dollar lawsuit on me.
Hawkeye: Clamp.
B.J.: Or, Peg could ask our other neighbour, Old Man Wallerstein, he's maybe 83...
Hawkeye: Clamp.
B.J.: He'd be only too happy to go up and have a heart attack...
Hawkeye: Butterfly net. - Running Gag: Col. Potter has taken a sleeping pill and must not be disturbed, so, of course, Klinger, then Charles, then Margaret each need him to talk to I-Corps while he's semi-conscious and not at all coherent.
- Shaped Like Itself: When Winchester is describing to Father Mulcahy what happened with his family's taxes:Winchester: As of last Tuesday, our CPA is a certified public enemy. Having been incarcerated on five counts of fraud, two counts of embezzlement, and countless counts concerning accounts for which he cannot... account.
- Shout-Out: When Charles is given a well-used piece of carbon paper he complains it looks as if it has gone through the Calgary Stampede.
- The Tag: The morning after, while Margaret is standing in the mess tent, waiting for the chopper that's bringing her medicine, Col. Potter comes in, acting well rested. When he sees Margaret, he tells her, "At ease," and she responds with a Death Glare.
- Tension-Cutting Laughter: Once the rest of the camp hears Margaret's embarrassing conversation with Potter, they forget their own troubles and start laughing (B.J. and Hawkeye almost fall on the shower floor because they're laughing so hard).
- What the Hell, Hero?: When Winchester insults Klinger and then asks for carbon paper, Klinger calls him out on it. Unlike most times, Winchester actually apologizes, citing the heat and the stress he's under for his behavior.
- White-Collar Crime: The Winchesters' CPA has been convicted of embezzlement, so Charles needs to finish the family taxes as soon as possible because the IRS has taken a keen interest in the Winchester affairs. Of course, Charles could get an extension on his personal filing due to being away for military service, but he's also the only person the rest of his family trusts with their taxes and they aren't entitled to an extension on those grounds.
- In an additional downplayed example, it's implied Charles is also trying to juggle the numbers to minimize the family's overall tax burden. As an (eventually) understanding Mulcahy puts it, "The family that pays together stays together."
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Charles has nearly finished his portion of his family's taxes, when Igor comes in to prepare breakfast and turns on a fan that scatters Charles' piles of papers everywhere.
