Why did M*A*S*H end
Lukáš Lancz:
I need to ask, why did B.J. grow a mustache?
Mike Farrell:
I don’t know why that is so much interest, but I hear that question a lot. Simple fact is that I’ve got a call from Alan before we started one season, the producer’s thing that you and I are too much alike. We are trying to figure out the way create a difference beside fact that BJ was married and Hawkeye is womanizer and all that. And he said how would you feel to grow a mustache? And I said: I do not have any problem growing mustache. Ok so let’s try that, so I grew mustache and we had fun with it. We made jokes about it, we had a thing about com com com, at the end of the one season we shaved off half of it as practical joke. It was a way to try and create distinct difference between two of us and I thought ok why not?
Lukáš Lancz:
In Last episode Goodbye, Farewell and Amen those tears and hugs were about something more than we saw on TV…
Mike Farrell:
Result of our conversation Alan and I had when we were doing particular show near the end of the 10th season of the show, my 7th I said how long do you anticipated doing this? And he said you know I always felt 10 years and it should be over. I said: wouldn’t it be great if we could have an end of the episode when the war is over? – I don’t want to say I came up with all these ideas, we as a group came up with that.
What we said was: television series are canceled periodically for all kinds of reasons and what we don’t want to just go on till some network executive says oh how I had enough of this and turns this off. And we don’t want that after doing 10 years of episodes, 7 for me, the writers were scratching their heads, banging their heads against the wall trying to figure how do we keep doing this and what new something we can come up with, another turn, twist in circumstance to a keep the show alive.
None of us wanted it to become what happens sometimes with show that goes for a very long time is that they become stale, they become sort of copies of themselves. And we don’t want that to happen. We sat down with the rest of the company – other actors and we had long talk about it. There was some disagreement, Harry (Morgan) particularly he said: you will never have another experience like this, why end it now? But we all finally came to an agreement and said we want to tell the studio and the network that we not only don’t want to do the show anymore, but we want and end to the war episode where we get to say goodbye to each other as characters and we got to say goodbye and thank you to the audience.
Alan came up with that genius idea of goodbye in rocks as he pulled away in helicopter. And when we told the studio, I’m sure they had heart failure…they wanted to show to keep going because it was making them lots lots lots of money… One executive came down to the sat and he said look, we can agree to the end of the show if that what you guys want, but there can’t be no end war episode. And we said why not? And he said: do you remember Fugitive, we said yes sure we know …
He said well: at the end of series when David Janssen decided he wanted not to do it anymore, he decided he wanted to have an end of the series where he found one arm man, he proved his innocence and it was over.
We said yeah? He said: it killed the show in syndication (reruns after the show will go off the air) – studios make lot of money selling shows in syndication and it killed to have end of his journey know to them – people didn’t watched episode anymore.
So, he said you can’t have end of the war episode, because in David Janses case (Fugitives) it killed the show in syndication.
We looked at each other and looked at him and I said: it may surprise you to know this, but most people know that Korean war ended. He looked at us and everybody smiled at him and he got up and walked out of the room. They came back no no no, you can’t do half hour episode that ends the war. But if you will come back for abbreviated season – 12 episodes we will let you make 2 hours movie that does what you wanted to. And as you know it turned out to be 2.5-hour movie and the reason they let us do it is because they held it back, they wouldn’t show that for a long time, because they were afraid the audience will stop watching MASH once they knew that war ended and we got to home. It always makes me laugh to think about this poor fool who thought that was gonna be end of the show for them. And as you said when it did air, the audience was, it skyrocketed and our ratings have been very good and sometimes sensational but suddenly they were earth shattering. No TV show has ever duplicated that. I guess the football games, the Super Bowl gets more audience. But who cares.
Lukáš Lancz:
There is even one story and I think it was in NY city the water level at some point went down, because all the people used toilet at the same time…
Mike Farrell:
Alan found that factoid somewhere and he came and told us all about it and we all laughed, all went to restroom at the same time
Laughs
Lukáš Lancz:
MASH speaks for itself, it’s like almost 50 years from when it started and almost 40 years from last episode and we are sitting here speaking about MASH and Im one the young generation who is still in love with this show, saw it so many time that I know the lines by myself. So that’s speak by itself, that you’ve created something special which will never ever be repeated…
Mike Farrell:
I’m not in position to be objective about it because I was part of it. A just can’t imagine, I’ve been in good shows since that time and I produce couple of very good show and we had some fun, but the particular chemistry that resulted in the people together doing this show that was about the war and saving lives if you can and putting yourself in danger... It was set of circumstances and group of people that heaven sent and it will never be repeated.
Lukáš Lancz:
Still, if you should pick some pieces why do you think is still even after 50 years it’s appealing to young generation. Because for us it is something you have never experienced, its something imaginary – Korean war, you never dealt with such a things but still you find something that is attractive for you...
Mike Farrell:
I think its magical ingredient that Gene Reynold and Larry Gelbart and Alan – the creators of the show found and Gene put it into words very well one time when he said – it’s the perfect existential situation – he said, as you suggest, not everybody goes to war, not everybody puts on uniform, not everyone has all of these experience. But everybody understands having to do something that is sacrifice, everybody understands sometimes having to be away from loved ones, everybody understand to be called to sacrifice time, some energy, something in your life…
There were those elements in the show that are universal, everybody identifies – some people identify with characters, some identify with the situation, some people just feel kingship to those folks Hawkeye, BJ, Klinger, father Mulcahy and for some people Radar is the innocent wonderful kind of childlike character that identify with in situation that was overwhelming to him.
Some people thing of father Mulcahy as this sweet good religious decent man who represents everything good about being dedicated to a particular faith. Women goes crazy for Hawkeye. There are elements in the show that appeal on a very individual level to people and sometimes it’s just the show it’s a kind of magic that happened on the show, that people are enhanced by.
Whatever it is, we were embraced by people the world over and continue as you suggested, today new generations – I can tell you I’ve get letter virtually every day, sometimes just simple request for autograph or something. But very often I hear from people who say I watched this show with father, sometimes with my grandfather or my mother or grandmother or whole family and now I’m watching it with my grandchildren. And I think oh my god we transcended generations and people still feel as strongly as they did 40 years ago.
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