#I do not need much prompting to go on a tangent about anything MASH-related

[youngpettyqueen]

this is one of my favourite things ive ever been asked to do thank you

[cracks my knuckles] Hunnicutts Time

for some context: BJ and Peg are a married couple with an infant daughter, Erin

from very early on in BJ's run, its established that him and Peg write each other constantly. there are multiple instances where other characters receive 1 - 2 letters from home, while BJ receives 3 - 4 from Peg. she'll also write him on behalf of Erin, and even one time on behalf of their dog, Waggles. BJ also writes her a lot of letters, often seen writing them to her, and there's even an episode centred around him writing her a letter- "Dear Peg" (there are multiple episodes like this for most of the main cast throughout the series, Hawkeye has 3 of them for writing to his dad, but that's a tangent for another time cause ill go insane over Hawkeye and his dad)

as the series progresses, however, and BJ's character development starts to really kick off, these letters oftentimes go from a source of comfort to a source of anger. BJ's character development is fascinating to me, because he develops a lot of traits for the worse. he becomes progressively angrier and angrier, and it leads to him becoming meaner and more prone to lashing out easier. episodes centred around BJ lashing out in the later seasons are almost always entirely revolved around letters from Peg, usually set off by her bringing up some sort of mundane problem she's having at home

these things are mostly mundane. one time she had to clean out the gutters. another time, the kitchen flooded. one time a neighbour made a pass at her, and she thought it was funny. these are things BJ would've helped her with, or done for her, or laughed about with her, had he been home. but with him out in Korea and unable to help her, these instead just feed into that anger he's been steadily falling into, and he ends up spiralling

there's one instance where a letter really sends him off the deep end. Period of Adjustment, after Radar goes home and is met at the airport by Peg and Erin, Peg sends a letter to let everyone know Radar arrived safely. in the letter, she describes how Erin saw Radar and called him "daddy". this sends BJ into a spiral unlike anything we've seen of him before, and nothing like it ever happens again. he gets blackout drunk, hits the lowest point of despair and anger, and when Hawkeye tries to talk him down he lashes out at him, destroys the still in their tent, then decks Hawkeye so hard he sends him flying before he storms off to get more alcohol. when they find him in Colonel Potter's office after he's broken into his alcohol cabinet and raided it, he ends up breaking down in sobs while Hawkeye comforts him. his daughter called somebody else "daddy", he's missed her lifetime, her first milestones, its gut wrenching

do I blame Peg for telling him? no, absolutely not. she was probably thinking it was a sweet, silly moment he would laugh about. and thats where I just feel so sad for her, because she has absolutely no idea what the war is doing to BJ. the fact that she tells him this story tells me this is something he would've laughed about once upon a time. but that version of BJ doesnt exist anymore, and she has no idea. its tragic

she tells him about the mundane little things she has to fix, the gutters, the kitchen, because she fills pages and multiple letters with every little detail to send him. she's keeping him as involved with home as she possibly can. she's documenting Erin's lifetime for him, she's documenting her day to day life, she's giving him a slice of home because she knows he misses home and she wants to give as much of it to him as she can. and she has no idea that this has steadily gone from a source of comfort to a source of agony. BJ says himself that before the war, she could hardly get him involved with housework because it wasn't exciting (he's a man in the 1950s and it REALLY shows sometimes but im not going on that rant rn), but he also says now he cant wait to be home and do housework. now all he wants to do is fix the gutters. fix the kitchen. wash the dishes. anything so long as he can be home with his family

BJ is a layered character with fascinating flaws we get to see develop over the course of the series. again, it fascinates me, because he gets worse. he gets angrier, meaner, harder and harder to talk to. sometimes you feel for him, sometimes you dont. with Peg, we unfortunately dont have this level of development, because she's back home and we only see her in pictures, videos, and in BJ's dream in Dreams. what we know of her comes from BJ, and from her letters. ive seen people say Peg tells him these things to rile him up somehow, and I think thats such a bad reading of what's actually going on. I think Peg tells him all of these things thinking he's going to laugh, and I think it's fucking tragic cause she has no idea that it does the opposite. im sure, on some level, she knows he'll be different when he comes back, but she has no idea just how much he's changed. how angry he's gotten, how easily he spirals, how easily he lashes out. these are all traits he develops during the show, all things she would have no way of knowing about. and its tragic!

again, this is handled better in some episodes than it is in others, but at the end of the day its still a very sad and very real thing to witness. BJ goes to war and it chews him up and spits him back out damaged and bleeding, and all the while Peg is at home writing to a version of her husband who no longer exists

there is something very sad about Peg just wanting to tell BJ about her day to day life, the mundane things in the house that need to be fixed and the funny things that happen to her, all things he would've enjoyed hearing about or would've handled with her if he'd been there, and having absolutely no idea what effect these letters actually have on him