O.R.
Elsig
Thought this might interest you. It was an oral foreword to a screening the
episode described.
Museum of Television & Radio -
M*A*S*H Retrospecitve - March 6, 2000
Every episode of every series has its own little history, most of them,
invariably, forgotten in the course of time.
But the one we're about to revisit, the episode we called 'O.R.,' stands out
very clear among the shambles of my memory.
Perverse as it may seem, by the second year of the series, the more difficult
and complex the idea, the more irresistible it became as a writing challenging.
Creating a medical mosaic, setting the episode completely inside the operating
room, allowed the late Laurence Marks and I to restate in simple, non-linear
terms, the keystone of the entire series: the way our characters, based on
real-life models, coped with the carnage that war brings to both the body and
the soul.
Secondly, even sweeter, the script was designed to take advantage of our
understanding with the CBS that in any given episode we were allowed to keep
the operating room a laugh-track-free-zone.
Canned laughter was, of course, the subject of a running, losing battle we
persisted in waging against the network.
By doing an entire episode in the operating room we were in the happy, unusual
position of having the last laugh by having none at all.
Now, if everyone's scrubbed up, let's get to the "O.R."
LG
Oh Jeez
Personally, I prefer no laugh track for the entire show and try my best to drown
it out when it's used. The writing is so witty and strong that it simply does not
need canned pushes in the right direction. And I've always felt laugh tracks were
rather Nazi-ish ... "Unt, you VILL laff ven vee tell you to laff unt you vill like
eet! LOL I rather like getting the jokes on my own and feeling my own laughter
rising up inside me and hearing it fill the room.
I'm glad you did get the last laugh ... and shared it with the rest of us!
JD
Peter Koenig
The introduction made me want to watch the episode again
so I dug out the tape. There are some memorable lines in this one
(Radar: "I fell asleep in the mess tent and two guys syphoned me!").
But...
One scene that always bugs me is the bit where Henry passes on using
his arthritis as a ticket home because his home practice is "routine"
and the war is a great opportunity for a doctor. That seemed very out
of character for Henry, who usually seems to want to get home as much
as everybody else. And when he finally does get discharged (later in
the same season as O.R.) there's no talk of missed medical
opportunities while he gets hammered, phones the wife and kids and
counts down the seconds until his chopper arrives. A very good
episode, but I think that one scene would have fit Col. Potter a
little better than Col. Blake. Thoughts?
Peter Koenig
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Brad
>
> One scene that always bugs me is the bit where Henry passes on using
> his arthritis as a ticket home because his home practice is "routine"
> and the war is a great opportunity for a doctor. That seemed very out
> of character for Henry, who usually seems to want to get home as much
> as everybody else. And when he finally does get discharged (later in
> the same season as O.R.) there's no talk of missed medical
> opportunities while he gets hammered, phones the wife and kids and
> counts down the seconds until his chopper arrives. A very good
> episode, but I think that one scene would have fit Col. Potter a
> little better than Col. Blake. Thoughts?
It's part of the dedication of these doctors to put the patients
before their own happiness. They long to go home, sure, but when they
know they can be more value at the 4077th, they stay there.
Hawkeye did this in "The Late Hawkeye Pierce". Being classed as
deceased by the army, he could have gone home, and his yearning to go
home is evident in the final scenes. But incoming wounded sees him
stay. Almost similarly, in "Goodbye Radar", Radar points out that
Hawkeye wouldn't stop operating with a bandaged finger. It would have
been easy for him to put his feet up for a few days while it healed.
I think Henry was a lot like that deep down. The episode "O.R." just
brings this out in his character. It was the perfect opportunity. And
it worked well in my opinion. Going home with an honorable discharge
is different from going home with a bit of arthritis. He could still
operate, and still do an excellent job. There was plenty of time for
the routine doctoring when he went home (even though, as we all know,
it didn't happen that way).
Brad
Elsig
>his arthritis as a ticket home because his home practice is "routine" and the
war is a great opportunity for a doctor. That seemed very out of character for
Henry, who usually seems to want to get home as much as everybody else. And
when he finally does get discharged (later in the same season as O.R.)
there's no talk of missed medical >opportunities while he gets hammered, phones
the wife and kids and counts down the seconds until his chopper arrives. A very
good episode, but I think that one scene would have fit Col. Potter a little
better than Col. Blake.
>
I take your point. But many doctors (I later learned - too later, I might
add), given the word that they were to be shipped out, felt more like staying
than going - felt such comraderie with the people they'd been through so much
with, had a very difficult time leaving what had turned into a second family
for them. It had nothing to do with practicing a different kind of medicine.
It was all about affection. This would have made for a very good episode.
Maybe if there's show business after death, we can do it yet.
LG