Margaret's longtime friend, Captain Helen Whitfield, has been transferred to the 4077th for her last few weeks in Korea before she returns to a Stateside post. After taking Margaret to the cleaners in a game of gin, Whitfield excuses herself to write a letter to her brother, but when a batch of wounded arrive the next day, the other nurses are puzzled by how groggy Whitfield seems, and in OR, Klinger has to stop her from giving Col. Potter a unit of AB- instead of the AB+ he requested.
Just as the OR session seems to be over, Hawkeye and B.J. exchange a conspiratorial look, and a chest patient is brought in; Charles immediately insists on performing the operation, but no sooner has the patient been put on a table than Hawkeye undoes the string on Charles' trousers, and the embarrassed "patient" (a plant by the two captains) beats a hasty retreat. However, no-one finds the prank funny, and B.J. politely excuses himself instead of admitting his part in the joke. Hawkeye becomes a pariah, not helped by Charles taking the moral high ground by refusing to retaliate, so he tells B.J. that he'll play a prank on himself, thus leading the camp to think Charles has got his revenge and restoring Hawkeye's reputation. Unfortunately, the prank backfires when the glue-covered chair Hawkeye sets up for himself in the Officers' Club ends up stuck to Charles' trousers instead, further stoking the rest of the camp's anger at Hawkeye. As Klinger enters the supply room in search of a new pair of trousers, he finds a very drunk Whitfield alone with a mostly empty bottle of scotch.
Connecting the dots to the "wrong blood" incident in OR, Klinger tells Col. Potter about Whitfield's apparent alcoholism. Potter decides to talk to Margaret, and though she is initially furious at the allegations, she insists that there's no merit to them. However, she then confronts Whitfield, who has a history of heavy drinking and lied to Margaret about being on the wagon when she was posted to the 4077th. Margaret says she has no choice but to re-assign Whitfield to the lab instead of OR until she returns to the States.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye tries to recruit Klinger's help in setting up a "revenge" self-prank after B.J. bows out... only for the confused clerk to reveal that B.J. was the one who asked him to switch the glue-covered chairs so that Charles would get pantsed again. So Hawkeye tells Charles everything, and they get back at their tentmate in style by stripping him while he sleeps, nailing his blanket to his cot, and putting it in the nurses' tent, then faking an "Incoming wounded!" announcement to get him out in front of a whole crowd, including a camera-toting Charles.
Margaret keeps her word about monitoring Whitfield, but she discovers the difficult way just how bad her friend's drinking had become when she has a delirium tremens-induced freak-out in the mess tent. In The Tag, she reads a letter to Potter and Klinger about Whitfield's experiences in a support group back in the States, while Hawkeye and Charles laugh over the photos of the nude B.J. - some of which they've posted to the bulletin board...
Attention, all personnel! Major Winchester requires a new pair of trousers and the following tropes:
- AB Negative: The mistake that first clues Klinger in to Whitfield's alcoholism involves her nearly giving Col. Potter a unit of type AB- blood instead of AB+. However, a patient with type AB+ blood will suffer no ill effects from receiving type AB- blood - or any blood, as type AB+ is the universal receiver. The bigger concern would be using a difficult to obtain blood type when they don't need to.
- The Alcoholic: When Margaret confronts Whitfield, we learn that she has been a heavy drinker for years but told Margaret that she was on the wagon. She tries to brush off Klinger finding her drunk in the supply room as a one-off, but Margaret knows better and puts her under constant supervision. Sure enough, a few days without a drink and she starts suffering from delirium tremens.
- Batman Gambit: The initial OR prank involves bringing in a fake patient with a supposed chest wound and counting on Charles' vanity about his skill with thoracic surgery leading to him insisting on operating on the new patient, thereby leaving himself vulnerable to having his trousers dropped. Sure enough, he falls for the bait.
- Blunt "No": When Hawkeye confronts B.J. over ducking out of admitting responsibility for planning the OR prank, he asks, "Are you going to come clean or not?" "Not!", B.J. says flatly.
- Could Say It, But...: Hawkeye is chagrined to discover that even Father Mulcahy has turned on him after he pantsed Charles in OR; the priest says that he is giving Hawkeye the Silent Treatment, though if he weren't, he'd call him a "goon" and a "blockheaded bozo" - but, as a man of God, he's above namecalling.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Hawkeye splits his sides laughing after pantsing Charles, but no-one else finds it remotely funny; Charles himself is livid that Hawkeye would violate the sanctity of OR for a cheap gag, Potter says he has "pole-vaulted" over the fine line between wit and imbecility,note and Margaret snarls, "Trust Pierce to do something so tasteless!"
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: With no clothes and his blanket nailed to his cot, B.J. has no choice but to hold a pillow over himself as he slips out of bed and exits the nurses' tent. As he squirms in front of the crowd gathered to witness his embarrassment, Whitfield asks him if she can have her pillow back; he refuses.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: When she and Margaret first knew each other, Whitfield regularly got stinking drunk at parties, to the point of having to take three-day weekends. Margaret tells her that she can't do that in a MASH unit by the front lines, with new wounded arriving almost daily.
- Hypocrite: When Col. Potter tries to talk to Margaret about Klinger's allegations of Whitfield's alcoholism, Margaret goes off like a rocket, accusing him of applying a sexist double standard and pointing out that Hawkeye and B.J. get drunk all the time and no-one criticises them for it, and even Potter himself sometimes retreats to his tent on all fours after a drinking spree. Potter, for his part, acknowledges her point but rebuts that her drinking heavily in private (while presenting the image of someone who doesn't drink) and making a mistake in O.R. hints at a more serious problem.
- I Have This Friend: Conflicted over what to do about what he knows about Whitfield, Klinger starts by telling Col. Potter that he has a friend at a MASH in Toledo (Potter snarks that he's heard the fighting's bad there) who knows something troubling about someone in the unit, but he doesn't want to be a stool pigeon. Potter isn't fooled for a minute and tells Klinger that he needs to know if someone at the camp has a potentially serious problem.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: When Margaret and Whitfield are playing gin in the opening scene, Whitfield excuses herself by saying she needs to write a letter to her brother. The next night, in the Officers' Club, she once again excuses herself from a conversation with Margaret by saying she needs to write a letter to her brother; when Margaret says she wrote to him the previous night, Whitfield claims she said she was writing to her father, and when Margaret points out that Whitfield will be in the States before her letter, Whitfield simply says she hopes not, as her brother is collecting her at the airport. Both of these are transparent excuses for her to drink without Margaret seeing her.
- Ironic Echo: After Charles gets pantsed in OR, the "patient" on his table sits up and, embarrassed, mutters, "He made me do it!" while pointing to Hawkeye. When B.J. is lured out of the nurses' tent wearing only a pillow by a fake announcement of incoming wounded, the PA announcer says, "Sorry, Captain Hunnicutt, they made me do it!"
- Laser-Guided Karma: The pranks B.J. orchestrates, once with Hawkeye and once behind his back, both involve Charles being left without trousers in front of a crowd of people. So Hawkeye and Charles conspire to leave B.J. without any clothes in front of a crowd of people and a camera.
- Naked People Are Funny:
- This is the motivation for Hawkeye and B.J.'s original prank on Charles in OR, and after untying Charles' drawstring so that his pants fall to his ankles, Hawkeye laughs himself silly. No-one else does.
- By contrast, when B.J. wakes up in the nurses' tent with no clothes and his blanket nailed to his cot, he is forced to hold a pillow over his "swimsuit area" as he responds to a (fake) report of incoming wounded, whereupon he is greeted by a laughing and cheering crowd of spectators. Hawkeye and Charles later share laughs over the pictures Charles snapped of their unfortunate bunkmate.
- Off the Wagon: When Margaret confronts Whitfield over being found drunk in the supply room despite having claimed to be off the booze when she arrived at the 4077th, Whitfield tries to shrug it off as having fallen off the wagon for a night. Margaret sees through the lie immediately.
- Oh, Crap!: When Hawkeye sits down at a table in the Officers' Club with B.J. and Charles, he initially feigns this expression because he thinks he is about to be stuck to his chair... and then gets a genuine version when he realises Charles is stuck to his chair instead, as he knows this is only going to further stoke the rest of the camp's anger at him.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When asked about Whitfield, Margaret goes into histrionics unseen since Henry Blake departed, being incredibly insubordinate to Potter in the process. This is an early indicator that she is lying to him about Whitfield's drinking habits.
- Pink Elephants: After being forced to dry out for several days, Whitfield goes into the mess tent and hallucinates some sort of animals crawling out of her food, screaming and dropping her tray as she tries to brush the imaginary creatures off of her body.
- Produce Pelting: Pretzels rather than vegetables, but after Hawkeye appears to set up Charles to be pantsed for the second time, the rest of the patrons begin hurling bar snacks at him in disgust.
- Scenery Censor: When Hawkeye unties Charles' drawstring in OR, we are prevented from seeing the area between his stomach and thighs by a strategically placed tray of surgical instruments.
- Silent Treatment: In Father Mulcahy's one scene in the episode, he tells Hawkeye that, after hearing about the prank he played on Charles, he has decided not to speak to him.
- Tranquil Fury: Hawkeye has to do some fast talking when Charles almost sits in the chair he thinks is covered with glue... so that when Charles sits in the chair that actually is covered with glue, he seethes with quiet rage as he says he understands why Hawkeye was so insistent that he sit in that chair.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: In her letter to Margaret, Whitfield says she has joined a support group, adding that learning that there are other people struggling with alcohol abuse has helped her to confront her own demons. Potter notes that the hardest step toward getting help for drinking is admitting you have a problem.
