After MASH

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.

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.

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".

I don't think the series 'After M*A*S*H' was made to 'cling onto M*A*S*H's former glory' thats just bull. I think that people wanted a continuing story. They wanted to know what did happen when they returned. We know nothing compares to the original M*A*S*H but sometimes people just want an ending. And not just an ending of the 'war'.

More than half of the original M.A.S.H. cast was doing other projects when this sequel aired. As previous commenters have mentioned the jokes were stale, and the antics appeared staged. The episode I remember was that Klinger was back in the U.S. and married to his Korean wife. Klinger got in some scuffle and the ending scene showed him in jail with the overprinted statement "Stay tuned will return in 6 months." I thought at the time, "why the h@** should I wait 6 months to see how Klinger gets out jail". If the producers thought they could bulid the public suspense by waiting 6 months, they lost!