After MASH

OK,choose your three favorite characters from MASH. Now scratch them from your memory as you watch After MASH,one of the biggest disappointments as well as one of the worst TV shows of all time. I saw this recently on FX,and I'm surprised that they showed it,but you get a sinking feeling you got upon realizing that a new episode of MASH would focus on either Klinger,Radar or Father Mulcahy? Well,with After MASH you had a two-out-of-three chance of being let down and this follow up to one of the most successful series of all time,which spawned from it could be so disastrous by all means,and it shows here. Klinger(Jamie Farr),Radar(Gary Burghoff),and Father Mulcahy(William Christopher)joined Colonel Potter(Harry Morgan) in a Missouri hospital after the Korean War to heal the sick,annoy the bureaucrats,give longwinded speeches and actually make Larry Linville glad he left the 4077th as early as he did. To make matters worst,several episodes were directed by Harry Morgan as well as fellow MASH alumnus Mike Ferrell,and Alan Alda.

The producers were trying to hold on to it but it was time for the series to die since in my opinion after the huge success of the first one,why try to hold on to something that won't last.....Let it go guys. That is what CBS did when they pull the plug on the series when the network axed it in December of 1984. The series did however survived its entire one season run at 30 episodes where some TV executive at CBS had the not-so-bright-idea of taking the show from its Monday night time slot(where the old M*A*S*H series was)and moving it to Tuesday nights opposite NBC's "The A-Team" which clobbered it in the ratings. However,the show that replaced it on that powerhouse Monday night timeslot was "Newhart".

My memory of this is that is simply didn't work that well. I wanted it to be better than it was-Potter, Father M and Klinger were all great characters, and they tossed in Radar too after a while. But ya can't go home again, as they like to say-and on TV, it is true.

Perhaps better writing woulda given this a better chance.

When watching this, if you are able (as it hasn't really been repeated or given any release), people often make huge mistakes. They compare it to the wrong things. Is this M.A.S.H? no. can't be. A lot of people will tell you that M.A.S.H. wasn't even M.A.S.H. and that the Potter episodes are much worse then the Blake episodes or whatever. the Show changed over time to make something which was good as a whole.

After M.A.S.H. kinda has the same issues. set a few months after they got home, the show reunites Col. Sherman T. Potter, Maxwell Q. Klinger and Father Francis Mulcahy, well as Soon-Lee Klinger and keeps them completely well in character while changing the setting from the middle of a war, where there job was to patch and ship them out, to a Veterans hospital where sometimes the ones they saved, still have a long way to go.

Starting off, Potter finds retired life too dull and after having problems back in private practice, found a good place and winds up Chief of Staff in the Veterans hospital, where he finds an old War Buddy from his Unit back when he was a Sgt (Bob Scannell, played by Patrick Cranshaw). After Klinger found trouble set himself up home after finding Soon-lee's parents, and his family not accepting a Korean daughter-in-law, He ends up helping out Potter and becomes his Sectary, but has to learn you can't just pull some of the same tricks as in the Army. Then Father Mulcahy joins after having a major depression when it was found out he was deaf. After a minor operation, part of his hearing is restored and he works at the Hospital.

New Characters include the Hospital Administrator Micheal D'Angelo (John Chappell) who is more interesting in his public image then the patients, Alma Cox (Brandis Kemp), his Sectary and in charge Admin who hates everyone bar her love, D'Angelo, while wanting everything to go via the book and has a grudge against the loose altitude of Klinger.

When the show starts, it also features Alma's Assistant Bonnie Hornback (Wendy Schaal) who fancys Klinger, and Dr Gene Pfeiffer (Jay o. Sanders), the local resident who is always over tired and with a lack of money leading him to try to get food wherever he can. over time, these characters disappear into the background before being completely removed, with Pfeiffer being replaced with Dr Boyer (Davie Ackroyd) a former frontline medico in Korea who lost his leg and has a big chip on his shoulder.

While the show was good, it didn't quite get the crowds they wanted and they tried to push it closer to Mash.. but sadly, they didn't seam to know how to do that and after Klinger had a few run ins while trying to get money to support his wife and soon to be born child, he ends up back in court where he decides to pretend to be insane. Some say this means he is 'Back in a dress', but doesn't wear a dress much, but wares a range of outfits where he has to prove to them he was insane, but got better. The Hospital Admin is changed and some characters come and go. Season two was very much NOT helped by the Network deciding to put the show opposite the A-team, believing (falsely) it could beat it in a war. Leaving a batch of episodes unaired and even some unfilmed.

It's easy to see why people compare it to Mash, as a Spin-off, it's trying to take some of the love for the show and bring it to a new one, but this show successfully takes old characters and puts them into a new setting.. However the new characters weren't always used to the best and the settings weren't always the best and people didn't get it as much of a chance as it needed and it would be a shame it see it never released to the public.

Some notable episodes often feel, like M.A.S.H. before it, don't quite go as far as they could do when they have to deal with after combat issues like Downwinders, left behind shrapnel, missing limbs and more.

To be fair, I didn't see a lot of this show. Probably because it wasn't as good as the original M*A*S*H, but I seem to recall them moving it around on the weekly schedule. Some shows just aren't worth the trouble of following around every week. But I really did try at first, so it wasn't all bad. Maybe I just kept expecting it to improve, but I can't give this show a 1. In all honesty, I can't give it any more than a 2 either.

It wasn't MASH (I'm not going to type those stupid *'s every time). And it was trying to be MASH without putting forth any effort, like it would just magically happen. Well guess what? No magic. The best I can do here is to compare it to other shows.

Trapper John, M.D. was a much better show by far. However, they should have called it B.J. Hunnicut, M.D. because Pernell Roberts looked exactly like an older BJ, but nothing at all like Trapper John. Keep everything else the same, just change his name and the name of the show. Presto! After MASH wasn't the only sequel to completely bomb and dishonor the original. Archie Bunker's Place was a lame follow-up to All In The Family. It had no heart, no conflict, no depth – all of the things that made All In the Family so memorable. Likewise, MASH was funny because the doctors were reacting to the impossible absurdity of war. Remove the war and you remove the drive for 99% of the humor. Potter can't yell at Klinger for wearing a dress, because Klinger isn't wearing a dress, because he's not trying to get kicked out of the Army, because he's already out of the Army, because the war is over. (breathe) All of the jokes became forced because there was no motivation for anything. The least motivated was the viewer, to stay around and watch the show.

And from what I remember, the whole show seemed to be Potter, Klinger, and Mulcahy just standing there unnaturally, facing the audience like a trio of Vaudeville performers. It was reminiscent of Good Times, where they spent 90% of the show standing behind that couch and talking to the audience, trying to make it look like they were having natural conversation. They weren't. And it felt even less natural on After MASH.

Another random tidbit I recall is that the people who made MASH never got any royalties from the spin-off. The studio used the absurd excuse that After MASH was really a spin-off of the movie MASH (which they owned) and not the TV series. Nice try, but Mulcahy was the only one of the three in the movie, and he was never deaf. I guess studio execs will do anything for a buck. Anything other than make a worthwhile sequel, that is.

MASH was one of the most popular TV shows of all time, and the members of the 4077th became well known and beloved characters to the entire country.

After more than a decade, people did want to know what happened to all of them after the war. Did Klinger find Soon-Lee's family? How did Radar fare back on the farm? Did Mulcahy get his hearing back? It would have made a fine TV movie, or maybe even a miniseries to have a big reunion of the 4077th stateside after the war (like they talked about doing a few times during the series). See that Klinger found his wife's family and they moved back to the US, only to face racism and discrimination, and is down on his luck as a petty crook trying to make ends meet. Show that Radar's farm had failed and and moved away to join the police in St. Louis. Show that Col. Potter now runs a Veteran's Hospital, and that Hawkeye went home to Maine and a small-town practice. Show that Mulcahy's hearing has been largely restored through surgery. It could have been a huge hit just to see them all later, as a epilogue to the whole story of MASH.

Instead, we got AfterMASH, which took the basic idea of "what happened next" and ran it into the ground. We got three familiar characters: Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy, a brief introduction on how they got there, and then try to replicate MASH stateside. Create a whole new set of young mischievous doctors for Potter to keep an eye on, a whole new bossy administrator to yell at Klinger, and then find thin reasons for constant guest appearances by former MASH cast. It kept trying to be essentially a stateside remake of MASH, with some of the same characters, but the chemistry wasn't there. If not for the MASH name I doubt it would have even lasted as long as it did.