Product Description

Korea, 1950. They were a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) unit stationed three miles from the front. Incoming helicopters full of wounded brought the horrors of war to them daily and sometimes bullets flew right outside the operating room door. Occasional hilarity and constant hijinks were all that kept them sane.

Loosely based on real-life MASH unit 8055, life at the 4077 revolved around the day-to-day routines of Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce, Captain "Trapper" McIntyre, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, Major Margaret Houlihan, Major Franklin Burns and Corporal "Radar" O’Reilly. Through these characters, viewers traveled beyond the long hours and the horrors of the operating room to a place where friendships were forged, laughter was found and drinks were served.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10587 in DVD
• Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
• Released on: 2002-01-08
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 612 minutes

Amazon.com
Like the TV incarnation of The Odd Couple, the M*A*S*H series has supplanted the original film in the public's consciousness. Legendary comedy writer Larry Gelbart (Your Show of Shows) deserves a medal for developing Robert Altman's bloody, funny 1970 classic for television with much of its anti-establishment spirit intact. These 24 first-season episodes--bracingly less politically correct than the shows in the final seasons--chart the program's sometimes bumpy evolution as it tried to remain true to the film's anarchic spirit while finding its own voice. The most memorable episodes include "The Pilot," which establishes the characters in broad strokes; "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet," in which a friend of Hawkeye's (Alan Alda) dies on the operating table (look for "Ronny" Howard as an underage soldier); "Cowboy," in which someone is trying to kill clueless commander Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson); and the pivotal "Dear Dad," the first of what would be a series of multistory episodes in which Hawkeye writes to his father about life at the 4077th. It is interesting to note film characters who made early exits from the series, including Timothy Brown's Spearchucker and Karen Philipp's Lt. Dish (George Morgan, who plays Father Mulcahy in the pilot, we hardly knew ye). Klinger (Jamie Farr), bucking for his Section 8 discharge, doesn't appear until the fifth episode, "Chief Surgeon Who?" And Gary Burghoff's Radar is a much more wily and savvy partner in crime to "Yankee Doodle Doctors" Hawkeye and Trapper John (Wayne Rogers) than in later seasons. In its 11-year run, M*A*S*H earned 14 Emmy Awards, and it remains one of TV's most beloved series. Though it is a staple of syndication, the episodes are presented here uncut, probably for the first time since their original broadcast. For M*A*S*H devotees, this three-disc set is just what the doctor ordered. --Donald Liebenson

Customer Reviews

A great series, but no extras?
I'm not going to go into too many details about the series. If you're reading this, you probably already know who the characters are, what the show is about, etc.

The first season (24 episodes) is packaged on three DVDs with eight episodes per disc. The episodes are presented in airdate order. The video quality is quite good for film material from the 70s -- far better than the All in the Family DVDs. The audio is good as well.

As others have pointed out, this DVD set comes with no extras. The only modification that I make when watching this series is to turn off the laugh track. M*A*S*H was such a thought-provoking series that sometimes the canned laughter was a distraction; yet funny enough that I didn't need to be told when to laugh.

For the material itself, I give it five stars (I'd even go higher). For the audio/video quality, four stars and for the lack of extras only one star. Overall, four stars. For this price, the lack of extras is acceptable.

In the beginning, when M*A*S*H was just a situation comedy
In 1972 America was still involved in the war in an unpopular war in Vietnam, which created an environment in which an antiwar comedy like "M*A*S*H" could thrive. The show was set during the Korean War, but the Vietnam sub-text was obvious from the very beginning. However, what we forget when looking back at the first season of "M*A*S*H" was that it was a traditional situation comedy in the beginning and that it was not, from the start, the great show that it became when it hit full stride. Larry Gelbart gets a lot of credit for creating the series and writing the pilot and the "Dear Dad" episode, but that first season Laurence Marks wrote almost as many episodes. This is of some importance because Marks had been one of the chief writers on "Hogan's Heroes," and there is a sense in which many of these early episodes are more reminiscent of that odd World War II sit-com set in a Nazi P.O.W. camp than "M*A*S*H" in its prime (the show was known as "Hawkeye's Heroes" in some quarters during that first season). Of course, the television series was also burdened with toning down the blood and sex from the Robert Altman movie on which it was based. By this point the original novel by "Richard Hooker" (pen name of Dr. Richard Hornberger) was pretty much completely forgotten except for the names and the places. Today, when you think of "M*A*S*H" you think of Alan Alda, who clearly dominated the show from the beginnig in front of the camera and would have a greater effect behind it as the series progressed.

"M*A*S*H" is one of the 10 best sitcoms of all time, and while I will gladly give the series 5 stars for its entire run, it is simply not that good that first season. Several episodes, such as "Requiem for a Lightweight," are easily dismissed as standard military comedies on a par with "Gomer Pyle." Alan Alda was always embarrassed in particular by "Major Fred C. Dobbs," where Hawkeye and Trapper are forced to actually keep Frank from leaving. There were a few worthwhile attempts to deal specifically with the Korean War, such as "The Moose" and "Cease-Fire," but only sporadic attempts to rail against the insanity of war, most notably at the end of "Yankee Doodle Doctor." The pivotal episode for the series, written by Carl Kleinschmitt, is "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet." You can say that the idea of a television Dramedy, the perfect blending of drama and comedy in a series, can be traced to this specific episode. In it, an old friend of Hawkeye's dies on the operating table. For one of the few times in a television sitcom, a sympathetic and charming character died. One CBS executive literally demanded of Gelbart and director Gene Reynolds, "What are you doing? Is this a comedy or a tragedy?" The pair stuck by their guns and because of that episode M*A*S*H was able to deal with both the dark and the light side of life, which set the foundation for the series' best episodes.

M*A*S*H was hampered in its early years by the character of Frank Burns, another character in a long tradition of comic characters who are incompetent at some important function. Frank is an incompetent surgeon (versus Ted Baxter the inept news anchor and Howard Borden the incompetent airplane navigator). There is a sense in which the greatness of M*A*S*H is defined by the major transformations of "Hot Lips" into Margaret and Winchester into Charles, neither of which is possible until Frank is out of the picture. In the fall of 1972 M*A*S*H aired on Sunday nights at 8:00 EST in between "Anna and the King" and "The Sandy Duncan Show." However, someone at CBS decided it was good enough to give it the choice spot behind "All in the Family" the following year, and the rest, as someone once said, is television history. Final Note: One of the nicest things about this DVD is that the episodes are UNCUT. For example, in syndication, the end of the second act of "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" is used as the tag scene. Pay attention to the difference when you see the entire thing.

Of course, if you are going to watch the entire thing then you need to start with the first season. All television shows evolve and that is certainly the case with "M*A*S*H," as Radar O'Reilly becomes more innocent as the show progresses and Klinger and Father Mulcahy are worked into the ensemble. I think part of the fun of going through this first season on DVD is the anticipation of what lies ahead. After all, you have to understand the initial antipathy between Margaret and Hawkeye to fully appreciate the longest kiss in television history that comes in the grand finale.

FIRST SEASON EPISODES: (1) "M*A*S*H-The Pilot," (2) "Henry, Please Come Home," (3) "To Market, To Market," (4) "Germ Warfare," (5) "The Moose," (6) "I Hate A Mystery," (7) "Chief Surgeon Who?" (8) Requiem for a Lightweight," (9) "Cowboy," (10) "Yankee Doodle Doctor," (11) Bananas, Crackers and Nuts," (12) "Edwina," (13) "Dear Dad," (14) "Love Story," (15) "Tuttle," (16) "The Ringbanger," (17) "Dear Dad...Again," (18) "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet," (19) "The Long John Flap," (20) "Major Fred C. Dobbs," (21) "Sticky Wicket," (22) "The Army-Navy Game," (23) "Cease-Fire," and (24) "Showtime."

Fox got it right!!
This first season DVD set is wonderful - The greatest 'bonus feature' the creators of this DVD series has given us is the option to play the dialogue straight without the laugh soundtrack. According to Alan Alda, the cast and crew never liked the canned laughter but CBS insisted on it. The people involved with the show felt the audience did'nt need to be told what was funny or when to laugh. Now you can watch these pristine quality episodes as they were intended - Without the laugh track (but for those who prefer it, the laugh soundtrack is also an option).
M * A * S * H Season 2 DVD is set to be released in May 2002. We're finally getting a DVD collection with the quality it deserves! THANKS!! (Let's hope more classic shows are on the way...)