MASH Minute

Who needs a guest when we have such a charming story about Donald Sutherland’s dad watching MASH for the first time? After dropping Ho Jon off for his medical exam, Hawkeye returns to the Jeep to wait. He recaptures our hearts with his goofy antics, heartfelt line readings, and a lot of adorableness as he’s suddenly interviewed by a reporter driving by. Everything about this is fantastic and we have to give Altman his due; as Megan says, this minute is “annoyingly good”.

Christy Porter of Indiana Jones Minute is used to protagonists who make it up as they go along, but this is out of control: did you know this was supposed to be Houlihan’s last scene? But Altman didn’t yell cut when expected, so Kellerman just kept going and… the rest is movie history. We put more thought into her character arc than probably anyone who made this movie did, realize that Leslie is the only grown up in this camp, and are unsettled by a chillaxed Henry Blake. After a transition that doesn’t transition, we find ourselves in a busy city street, having apparently moved on from the shower scene with literally no consequences!

Margaret Houlihan has had it with these finks, bastards, and twerps. She bursts into Henry Blake’s tent and has one of the best meltdowns ever captured on film. Christy Porter wants to know if she’s ever been this mad before in her life; Tierney does some script consulting; Megan has strong opinions about who should and shouldn’t read audio books. Get ready to ride the emotional rollercoaster of Houlihan’s speech AND the realization that perhaps Henry is more of a dog than we thought possible.

Today Megan, Tierney, and guest Christy Porter tackle THE shower minute aka the cruelest minute of the entire thing aka the nudey part. We talk about both the onscreen trio of scumbags who lift the side of the shower tent so the entire camp can see Houlihan naked and the behind-the-scenes filming of this scene. Piecing together interviews with Sally Kellerman, Robert Altman, and Gary Burghoff, we’ve come up with one perfect piece of advice: guys, if your plan to help a woman be more comfortable naked in public is to also get naked, don’t help.

Beer and binoculars. Nuns and nurses. Intimate Matters and matters of intimacy. Today Sally Kellerman starts blowing our minds with how good her acting is in this scene and Prof. Christy Porter blows our minds by sharing the best worst idea a Catholic high school drama club ever had. We also ask some really tough questions. How do you balance the idea of a powerful female who just isn’t liked from the pervasive misogyny in our culture? Are these other women complicit? What’s the best way to combat “The Matilda Effect”? Did Mulcahy just take a shower with a dog? Everybody’s in bathrobes and we just want to share a lousy cup of coffee.

The bro-fest by the river continues as Duke stakes $20 on his belief that Houlihan dyes her hair. Bandini volunteers to find out, but there’s going to be a much more elaborate plan than that! Liz Whitaker points out the possibility that Trapper’s protestations are not in earnest. After playing with an inflation calculator, we change scenes and embrace the return of the real heroes of the movie: Ho Jon the bartender and Radar the quick-thinker.

After Radar the Vampire saves the day, we leave the OR to watch the boys bro out by the river. Thanks to a real-life helicopter crash, Altman got a really cool set for this scene. We compare the real crash to the one they discuss in universe, and Tierney has a horrible realization about all the jokes the TV show made regarding Margaret’s roots. Liz Whitaker keeps us guessing: is this bad acting or drunk acting… or both? And it took over an hour into the film, but Megan finally gets a chance to unleash her inner Top Gear Geek and compare James May’s Liberty shirts to Trapper John’s paisley boxers.

MASH Minute is on vacation. How often do you get to go to Japan with your clubs? We'll be back to our normal Monday-Friday release schedule on October 7th. That is all!

This minute is more surgery and Megan, Tierney, and Liz Whitaker are here with the world’s finest medical advice. We know so much about keeping calm in high pressure situations. And surgeons’ emotional temperaments. And how patients can be like chicken. And decision making. And what flavor anesthesia to get. We would be such good doctors. Ok, that’s a lie and we all know it. But we also know that Trapper’s “compliment” to Houlihan doesn’t add up, that Ugly John is cool as a cucumber, and that spurting is a very good technical term. The minute ends on a cliffhanger as Hawkeye and Trapper argue over how to treat a patient.

This one’s for you, babe. Megan and Tierney are joined by Liz Whitaker of Mean Girls Minute to talk about… surgery and having blood drawn. Very different type of movie. The heroes of this minute are the closed captioner and Radar the Vampire. Meanwhile, Trapper operates on a prisoner of war and tries out his best dad jokes. We discuss the importance of admitting when you don’t know what you’re doing and also the importance of admitting when you did something wrong. There are several stories of woe about donating blood; just a heads up in case you aren’t into phlebotomy.