Cheap M*A*S*H - Season Four (Collector's Edition) (DVD) (Alan Alda) Price

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Customer Reviews of M*A*S*H - Season Four (Collector's Edition)

Changes in Characters and Tone, but Not in Quality
M*A*S*H the series: Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda), BJ Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell), Radar (Gary Burghoff), Klinger (Jamie Farr), Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan), Hot Lips Houlihan (Loretta Swit), Father Mulcahy (William Christopher), and Frank Burns (Larry Linville) are the core of a great cast telling the story of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, just a few miles from the front in the Korean War, trying to stay sane in an insane situation. Great irreverent comedy.

This VHS set: This is a three-tape set giving you the 24 episodes of the entire fourth season. McLean Stevenson is out and Harry Morgan is in; Wayne Rogers left and Mike Farrell came; more drama and seriousness were injected. The increased level of serious drama reminds me more of the original movie, which was very funny and VERY serious. I've been watching the reruns on late-night TV for years, and did not realize how much had been edited out of those (to squeeze in more commercials). Now, these tapes bring us the episodes uncut. It's fun watching them and going, "Hey, I don't remember that!" A good buy; a good set of tapes to have on the shelf for rainy (or snowy) days.

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The best thing that ever happened to the 4077th
MASH is my favorite television show of all time, and the changes that came with Season Four are the reasons why. The first three
seasons of MASH are my least favorite, although they did contain
some classic and memorable episodes. Replacing the prepetually
clueless Colonel Henry Blake with regular-army Colonel Sherman Potter was brilliant. Harry Morgan's Colonel Potter was a much more three-dimensional character, and he possessed some great
qualities: compassion, home-spun wisdom, kindness and more overall depth. Replacing Wayne Rogers' smart-mouthed and irritating Captain Trapper John McIntyre with Mike Farell's sweet and devoted family-man Captain B.J. Hunnicut was a welcome change for me. Trapper John is and always has been my very least favorite MASH cast member. B.J. was a much more likeable character, but he still proved to be the perfect "partner in crime" for Hawkeye, as they became best friends. The final change did not come until Season Seven, when the idiotic, annoying, one-dimensional Major Frank Burns, played effectively by Larry Linville, went off the deep end and was replaced by the
aristocratic, arrogant and highly skilled Major Charles Emerson Winchester, brilliantly portrayed by David Ogden Stiers. Only then is the 4077th's "changing of the guard" complete. From Season Four on, MASH was a show that posessed tremendous heart & warmth. Before that, producers tried too hard to make the show just like the movie version (which I loathe & despise, by the way)...a black comedy with irreverance and idiotic practical jokes and slapstick at the foreground. The show matured and began to focus on "serious" episodes, which I have always preferred over the "funny" episodes. Yet no other show has ever been so adept at perfectly balancing comedy and drama seamlessly within the same episode. MASH simultaneously made you laugh hysterically and pulled at your heartstrings with gut-wrenching poignancy. MASH was also the only televsion show I have ever seen where old characters were replaced by new characters who were FAR superior to the old ones...that move usually proves to be the kiss of death for a popular and successful show. Not so with Season Four and on at the MASH 4077th. Those welcome changes made it the greatest show in television history.

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Ahhh Memories!
I'm one of the die-hards who liked Trapper and Henry better than B.J. and Potter. I suppose that, in my opinion, they were nearer to portraying the insanity of the movie. Potter was more like a real officer than Henry (who was more like the Colonel in the movie) and B.J. lacked the slap-stick of Trapper. Remember, MASH was a stab at the military and was never meant to be taken seriously. Still, this has to rank up there as one of the best series ever produced. Henry Morgan was great, and irreplaceable, in Dragnet; but comes in a distant second to McLean Stevenson (again, this is my opinion) in MASH. Trapper John was such a major part of the movie that it makes no sense to abandon him in the series without so much as a good-bye to Hawkeye (yet they did). Oh well, I'm not a politically-correct person so I guess this shouldn't make sense to me.