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In a superior TV comedy series, familiarity breeds regeneration. The actors become wedded to their characters and, like fond spouses, exchange idiosyncrasies. The writers learn more about the actors and incorporate the nuances into the story lines. M*A*S*H had another advantage, although at the time it must have seemed a daunting challenge. Four of the first season's eight regular cast members eventually left the show, and with each replacement the circle of community became tighter. In his rubber-limbed way, Stevenson's Colonel Blake had been as much a MASH misfit as Frank Burns: a suburban doctor reluctant to command, with a fisherman's wily patience and a heart of puppy chow. When Stevenson departed after the third season (his character was reported killed in an airplane crash in the Sea of Japan), Harry Morgan as Colonel Sherman Potter took over. A cavalryman in the first World War who turned medic and was Regular Army to his jodhpurs, Potter became the stern but sentimental father figure every MASHman needed 7,000 miles from home. Similarly, B.J. Hunnicut was an idealistic Marin County version of Trapper John, and Winchester, however smug he might appear to be about his old-money Bostonian lineage, was a Persian pussycat compared with Frank Burns. Each of these characters and actors fed the M*A*S*H organism without disrupting it. Each helped keep the show alive and healthy without breaking the circle.
After 251 episodes, 104 hours of enriching entertainment, M*A*S*H is preparing to complete the circle in a blaze of hype and hush-hush. In this week's episode (the last to be filmed), the 4077 troop buries a time capsule in anticipation of the war's end. For next week's 2½-hour finale, the company is maintaining a who-shot-J.R.-style secrecy in hope of snagging the highest single-show rating ever. "It's a very simple story," says Alda, who directed and helped write the final show. "The war comes to an end, and the stories of the lives of these people in this place are resolved." There are hints that Klinger will get married and Hawkeye will come close to a nervous breakdown. Beyond that, speculation turns to fancy. Will Radar or Frank or Trapper or even a resurrected Henry Blake return, in person or in flashback? Will everyone survive the armistice? Or will, as one waggish M*A*S*H watcher suggests, the 4077 be told that they have been literally in Korea for these eleven years, that it is now 1963 and time to re-up for Viet Nam?