M*A*S*H - Television Tropes & Idioms

The 4077th is a 1970s zone in 1950s Korea.

Think of The Brady Bunch Movie and how the Bradys were still stuck in the '70s during the '90s. Well, M*A*S*H is the same thing, but in reverse. It's the 1970s at the 4077th, but everywhere else it's still the 1950s.

Think about it. If people stayed at the 4077th long enough, they developed '70s sensibilities, '70s hairstyles and a supply of pop culture references that postdated the Korean War. For instance, patients regularly went into the camp with '50s views and left it converted to a '70s way of thinking. In the case of Frank Burns, he attempted to maintain his '50s views while constantly living in the '70s zone and naturally went mad. Also, consider B.J.'s look when he first arrived and how his look changed after he absorbed enough of the '70s atmosphere.

Meanwhile, military officials outside the '70s zone were totally baffled by the 4077th since they could only relate to its members with a '50s mindset. As for Dr. Freedman, he only started to fit in at the 4077th because he hung out there so much. Remember he was actually a bit of an ass when he was first introduced on the show.

Except Sidney reall wasn't that much of an ass, he got along well with Hawkeye, Trapper, and the rest of the crew, he's such a nice guy he can even be nice to Frank. At worst he was mildly surprised and privately amused at the shenanigans going on at the 4077th, which never really changes. The worst thing he did was he took Klinger's own schtick and turned it against him to get him to (temporarily) drop his request for a section eight, which was exactly what Henry wanted anyway because the fact of the matter is no matter how much trouble Klinger causes he's still a good soldier and medic who doesn't allow his antics to get in the way of his duties.

The 4077th is trapped in a Groundhog Day Loop

This explains why years keep repeating. It also provides an explanation for the above theory: the 4077th went through so many permutations that they advanced onwards to the 1970s, leaving the rest of the world back in the 1950s.

All the temporal continuity issues in M*A*S*H and any disfavored episodes can be attributed to Hawkeye's delusional mind.

Technically, this could go as far as it needs to, in order to fit the series into the time frame of the Korean War.

It also explains why the later episodes became more and more about him, as he descended further into self-absorbed madness.
It would also explain the increasing darkness and intensity of his breakdowns, from just making one up in a Season One episode to being bent and broken for good in the grand finale.
Or... He is in fact in a 1970s mental hospital, reliving distorted memories of his Korean War experiences. This would explain both the numerous anachronisms and the inconsistent timelooping.
- And the glimpse of the mental hospital we get in the last episode is actually the only thing that is real, it's an actual 1970's mental hospital. Sidney Freedman is Hawkeye's 1970's doctor, whom Hawkeye retroactively inserted into his memories as Sidney questioned him about them. The therapy was obviously unsuccessful, as instead of being released into normal life Hawkeye descends even further into hallucinatory madness and fantasizes that he has returned to the 4077th.
  - But in the end Sidney himself sends Hawkeye back, suggesting that even if it is a hallucination of his delusional mind he still has business there he must take care of before he can ever leave and move on with his life, most likely the repressed memory and the final operations he performed on people who very likely never made it. He had to confront the fact that he couldn't save everyone and the fact that peace doesn't mean people stop dying. Sidney leaves the O.R., realizing that this is something Hawkeye must confront alone if he's ever to have any kind of closure. In the end Hawkeye not only leaves the 4077th, but Korea, which would suggest that he's made his peace with all he expirienced there and can finall start to pursue a normal life.

It's all a psych test

After the war ended, the American government made a deal with Korea, or had them bug out to a neutral zone, because the group had been chosen as a test group to see how long a bunch of people could be kept in a hostile combat zone before they woyuld be more sad to leave than happy to go. The characters who were removed without being pronounced dead, such as Trapper John, had either figured it out or were throwing off the statistics. There were multiple groups subject to this test, and they happened to be one of the groups that were told the war was over after an extra 12 years, and had a bunch of stuff happen that would test the remains of their sanity (The "chicken" on the bus was a final way of hitting the most upbeat person where it would most hurt their spirit, and why do you think Father Mulcahey wasn't hit by any shrapnel, just a shock wave?) This is, of course, entirely justified by the idea that Anmerican governmentt agents are allowed to be sadistic psychologists, if it's in the name of "science" (or at least with a decent excuse).

Alternately, it's not the 70s at all: it's actually a test being done in the future, far enough ahead that they don't actually know the difference between '70s culture and '50s culture. They were (will be) using different sets of clones with the same sets of memories, and the same "title" for each character- Hawkeye for the happy-go-lucky manic-notdepressive surgeon, TJ for his Put On A Bus partner and BJ for his replacement, Burns for the belligerent thinks-he-knows-it-all, Hulihan for the snarky love interest. Two of the same O'Reilly series clones (Radar) happened to be used for the groups of the movie and the television series.

MASH and The X Files are set in the same continuity, and either Bill Mulder or the CSM was Major Flagg (Ed Winter's character) from M*A*S*H

This theory depends on how much of the Cigarette Smoking Man's back story (as shown in "Musings of a CSM") we accept. The theory depends on the similar characteristics and back stories of X-Files characters Bill Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM) and M*A*S*H's Colonel Flagg. Bill Mulder was an agent of the Cigarette Smoking Man who worked with the Conspiracy. If we accept CSM's early back story from "Musings," we also have the fact that both CSM and Bill Mulder knew each other when they served in the Army in the late fifties/early sixties. Earlier in his career as an Mi B, Bill Mulder had hunted communists in the State Department. Flagg was a mysterious military Mi B who impersonated other officers, carried out secretive and sometimes self-contradictory missions, spoke in hyperbole and threats, and was obsessed with hunting communists. He came with loads of fake I Ds, so we can safely guess that Flagg wasn't his real name. It was either (Bill) Mulder or the nameless CSM.

Also, it is common knowledge that M*A*S*H and The X Files take place in the same universe.

Further similarities between the X-Files and M*A*S*H include:

Paranormal activity: both shows frequently featured near-death experiences, one episode of M*A*S*H featured the disembodied, self-aware ghost of a dead soldier and suggested the existence of an afterlife. Father Mulcahy often pulls off miracles. And Klinger once ATE A JEEP. The 4077th is located in the Korean version of the Bermuda Triangle where the camp is unstuck in time, fluctuating between the fifties and the seventies, for eleven years throughout a two-year long war.
Don't forget Radar's ability to hear things long before anyone else could and how he knew what everyone was going to say before they said it, even to the point that they would have to come up with something else to try to trick him.

Colonel Flagg is actually Stephen King's Flagg

Problem is, his usual methods of sowing chaos for The Red King only work on people who take themselves too seriously, like the weaker minds in The Stand and The Dark Tower, or Frank Burns. He was forced to resort to the oft-cited temporal whammy on the medics, but it left his form in the MASH universe in a state of growing increasingly caricature-like. Like faith for those in The Stand, and like ka for those in The Dark Tower, the 4077th's sense of humor broke the Walkin' Dude's power there. Hawkeye and the bunch are, if you will, Fun Slingers.

Colonel Flagg is Rick Flagg Senior.

He was secretly evaluating Pierce for recruitment in the 1950s Suicide Squad.

Klinger doesn't want to get out on a Section 8. He just wants to be the center of attention.

With all the talented people in the unit, Klinger needed a gimmick to get attention. Compared to the doctors, nurses, and even Radar who was a gifted clerk with a kind of clarivoyance, Klinger could have faded into the background if he didn't have something to get everyone's attention, so he started wearing dresses and pretended he was trying to get out for being crazy. Any time one of his stunts came close to working, Klinger would sabotage himself. When Radar left, Klinger became the clerk and suddenly everybody needed him. With his need for attention satisfied by his job, he was able to stop wearing dresses and stopped pretended to try to get out of the Army.

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