B.J. helps a soldier with a morphine addiction through withdrawal, while Father Mulcahy and Klinger retrieve stolen penicillin from a black market drop and Hawkeye has a run-in with a British major who seems eager to rush his wounded troops back into combat.
Attention, all personnel! Father Mulcahy and Corporal Klinger have located the stolen penicillin as well as the following tropes:
- Compressed Vice: Private Johnson's addiction to morphine is cured after only one night of withdrawal.
- Confessional: Mulcahy learns about where the missing penicillin was hidden from a soldier giving his confession, and has to figure out a way to get it back without violating the rule of secrecy.
- Continuity Snarl: At the beginning of the episode, Potter mentions that the wounded English soldiers are from the Gloustershire Regiment. However, the Gloucestershire Regiment had already been almost wiped out in the Battle of the Imjin River, which was mentioned in the P.A. announcement towards the end of the Season 4 episode "Smilin' Jack". Possibly a case of We Have Reserves.
- Drugs Are Bad: B.J. is determined to break Private Johnson's addiction.
- I Am Very British: Major Ross and the rest of the Glocestershire Regiment are this through and through, from the vocabulary to the football rivalries.
- I Have This Friend: Father Mulcahy has to be very careful to discuss the stolen penicillin without breaking the seal of the confessional.
- Karmic Thief: Mulcahy and Klinger are stealing the camp's own penicillin back from the black market after it was stolen from them.
- Loophole Abuse: Mulcahy can't tell anyone where the stolen penicillin is, but there's no rule against going to get it himself.
- The Neidermeyer: The British major puts on this persona in his first appearance, objecting when told his men would need time to recover. This turns out to be a front, as he knew they would interpret him being overly concerned and sympathetic as a sign that their condition was serious. By acting like their wounds were minor, he is telling them that they will recover.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Hawkeye immediately regrets rejecting Father Mulcahy's offer of help when a patient is in trouble, thinking he was offering to give last rites.Hawkeye: Not yet, Father. He's still got a chance.
- Hawkeye later does it again when he barges in on the British Major the second time, interrupting a group session of reading letters from home to accuse the Major of being an unfeeling bastard.
- "Open!" Says Me: Black marketeers were foiled by the new lock on the supply room door, so they broke it down instead.
- Pun-Based Title: From the expression "tea and sympathy".
- Serious Business: Major Ross' reaction to Hawkeye's informing him about the connection between tea and peritonitis reinforces the perception of tea as this to the British.Ross: If it was anything but tea...
