#but also this show has a lot of latent emotions for me entangled with memories i didnt remember til recently

[hballegro]

alright here's the essay under the cut.

entirely just my experience w/ MASH, almost no editing [just spelling mistakes and a few apostrophe misuses]. fair warning, my father was [is] an alcoholic and a horrible person, and i mention that a bit, so if thats something you're sensitive to, bewarned.

         My story with M*A*S*H begins a hundred years ago when I was somewhere between 5 and 8, old enough to watch television but not old enough to remember how old I was when I was doing it. The childhood I had was overall unremarkable, marred only by my pitiful excuse for a father that parented by either drinking or being hungover on the couch in between screaming at his children or beating his wife. Unfortunately, he is part of this story, but only accidentally. See, he used to do all that stuff in our unfinished basement, on an old ugly couch, hiding from his family all day. Then, eventually, he decided he liked the couch and television upstairs better, and plagued the family room for many years instead, putting whatever he wanted to watch on instead of letting his children watch cartoons. I ended up liking The Three Stooges quite a lot, less out of actually thinking it was fun and more out of it being the only thing he’d put on that I found remotely entertaining, so I was taking what I could get. We kept the old burned CDs he’d made of them after he moved out.

         Anyway. My mother had (and still has) a television in her room (it used to be their room, but she kicked him out) that she could avoid him with. Not wanting to be around the violent cesspool of a person on my couch, I’d sometimes crawl to her room, so as not to let him see me and have him make me come over and listen to some music or whatever he wanted. Old guitarist reliving his glory days or something, I couldn’t tell you. But anyway, I’d enter her room and sit down on her bed with her or on the floor, and we’d watch TV. More often than not, she’d put on MeTV, because she watched those old shows with her own father, and it was a bright spot in her memory that gave her some escapism too. There were a lot of shows on there, but I only really ever remembered things like Gilligan’s Island, ALF, Columbo, Bewitched, The Twilight Zone, and, of course, M*A*S*H.

         I liked the other shows, of course. I remember them fondly, especially Gilligan’s Island, maybe it was the catchy theme song with words I could learn. I didn’t like how brown and gross Columbo was, but my mom explained that that’s just how it looked back then. I thought the puppet on ALF was funny, and The Twilight Zone scared me, but I was still interested. I remember enough of Bewitched to remember the nose wiggle and constantly mix it up with I Dream of Jeannie for some reason. Really, anything was better than watching the same episode of Farscape again, which I’ve heard is actually a very good show, but my father kept forgetting that he’d already made me start watching it, and so every viewing session was just the pilot. That’s also the reason I never learned Spanish.

         But then I got to M*A*S*H. I won’t lie to you and say that, as a wizened 5-to-8-year-old, I could ‘tell something was special’ about this show. It was a show. It was a show that I remember looking at my mom during, and seeing her really happy. Later she told me, after watching it with me in present day, that she would watch it with her own father, before her parents got divorced. Her father more or less was not present in her life after the split, and that happened when she was 14-ish. The show started airing when she was the age I was when I watched it with her, and she and her father made a weekly thing of it. Neither of us at that age should have watched it, but for both of us, it was forming a little bright spot in our minds, a good dream with a parent when times were tough.

         I remember laughing, even if I didn’t get all the jokes. I remember thinking I liked the shade of red one of the characters wore, and also the shade of dark blue the same character wore sometimes. I remember one or both of my siblings being there sometimes, laughing along. One of my siblings told me recently that B.J. Hunnicutt and John ‘Trapper’ McIntyre, both filling roles as doubles partners for Benjamin Franklin ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce, had merged into the same person in their memory. I thought that was hilarious; how could they ever think those were the same person! B.J. Hunnicutt had a mustache! Imagine my surprise re-watching season 4’s opener, ‘Welcome to Korea’, featuring a clean-cut fresh-faced Mike Farrell, lacking the horse brush I had so clearly remembered him housing under his nose.

         But the rewatching, yes, the rewatching. It started innocently enough. Between breaks at college, far beyond my young-youth, the real youth people mean when they use that word, my mother opened it up on the tv and put it on. No matter what era you go to in our household, the TV was always going. Most of the time no one was watching it, sometimes blatantly, loudly, explosively chattering and guffawing and gasping with our own business and ignoring it entirely. It was background noise, we all needed it, so we always had it. But something a little strange happened; my mother was watching it, as she often did when she put something on in the evenings to massage her brain to bed after a long day at work. I was typing away at something on my laptop, like I am now, sitting on the couch with her, which I am also doing now (although she’s long gone to bed), and I looked up.

         I saw Hawkeye.

         It didn’t feel like a rush of emotion, it didn’t feel like something important was happening. That was just my old friend. Looking absolutely horrible with the haircut he was rocking in the pilot, but I remembered him. The pilot doesn’t open with the theme, as I recognized that as soon as it played, it opens with golf, a little vignette of the camp before the choppers come in with wounded. I saw Hawkeye, I saw his shirt, and it really was like when you see an old friend, one you can’t really remember what all you did with, or where you met, or even each other’s names anymore, but you know they mean something to you. You knew this person, and you liked them, you liked them enough that even though you forgot everything else, you remember the love that was there.

         And it was a very small thing that happened, and it didn’t happen with every episode, but I would pause my music. My own background noise to drown out everyone else’s background noise, blasting into my headphones. I’d pause my music, read the subtitles, hear them faintly through muffled ears, and laugh along. Smile when I’d see a smile, and a little more than half pay attention.

         I went back to college, life went on, we only got maybe to the beginning of season two, but my mom didn’t continue without me. She waited, and eventually, I came home for the summer, summer of 2024.

         She put it on again, and the same thing happened. But this time, I way more than half paid attention. I really paid attention. By the time we got to Abyssinia, Henry, I completely paused whatever I was doing when it was on and sat, laptop open, head at a 45 degree angle to watch the TV. I’d still futz around during commercial breaks, but I waited for the commercial breaks to do anything now. More and more it warmed my heart, to see all these old friends I’d forgot about, drag them all out of the closet, finally see B.J. Hunnicutt with that stupid mustache again for the first time in over 15 years at least—it was all so amazing. I was laughing at this show that came out over 20 years before I was even born. My parents hadn’t even met yet when this thing ended. Then, of course, because of the way my brain unfortunately works, it is now all I can think about it, to the point I’ve convinced several people to watch it just by virtue of never-shutting-the-hell-up.

         And then? I finally got to see all my friends go home.

         I remember the night I watched the finale with my mother. We’d gotten to the penultimate episode, and we’d paused. It was near 8ish, near my mother’s bedtime, and she and I both agreed we could not handle the finale that night, it was too much. And so we put on something, My Name is Earl, anything to make noise, something funny, something light. That’s how the next several days went; do we feel like we can handle the end? No. Tonight? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe after dinner? It was a long day.

         But then, after dishes had been cleared and we were both sitting quietly, the sun had already gone down, and she proposes we watch it.

         So we did.

         I don’t cry at things anymore. I used to cry all the time as a kid, scraped knee, called an idiot by a sibling, way too much crying even for a kid. I got it out of my system, apparently, because now I’m an adult and I have trouble with making tears, and when they do come, they sneak up on me. The last time I remember crying was at my grandmother’s funeral, months ago, and before that, I have no idea. I get misty-eyed, sure, but nothing makes me boohoo.

         The same held for the finale. Contrasted heavily by my mother, the woman that regularly cries at especially-touching commercials, shedding a few for every other scene (the bus revelation, the final meal, Charles’s music adventure finale, the wedding dress, every single goodbye, and of course the big one at the end), I was mostly quiet. I remember it ending, and thinking, well, that was about the best finale I’d ever seen. I also thought about how I’d seen strikingly few finales, and that I ought to see more series through til the end. I spoke with my mother a bit about it, we had some good moments from the program tossed back and forth, and she went to bed.

         Then I took a shower, and after I got out, the floodgates busted. I was boohooing alright, blubbering too, but I couldn’t point to why. Sure, there were moments in the episode worthy of tears, but this was full sobbing, aching and pitiful and messy. I just left it as something not to worry about, and went on. Since then, on my own, I’ve rewatched select episodes, watched the finale (again) with the sibling that confused Trapper and B.J., done three paintings of stills from the show, made a miniature version of the signpost for my mom, and started writing again for the express purpose of doing things with these characters, and I’ve only now put a fine point on it. It’s a threefold answer of why I fell apart leaving the shower after watching an episode of television that aired 40 years ago.

         The first is simple; I have got it in my head that I need to be alright for everyone. If I’m happy, then everything is okay. I think it’s a relic from what made me stop crying, this need to tell everyone, “Hey, I’m the crybaby, so if I’m okay, then really, everything is okay!” My tears are (were) meant to be shed in private. They were my own cross to bear, especially for places like the bathroom where I could get privacy, as I shared a room with a sibling growing up. This is something I’m getting better about.

         The second answer is very warm; I finished M*A*S*H with my mom. I remember my grandfather, though he wasn’t too present in my life, and I loved him. He passed when I was young, but I was old enough to remember him, and his death date is near my birthday. My birthday is actually near a lot of either death-dates or birthdays of people that are now dead that my mom loved very much, so I am constantly reminded that my birth is the only good thing that happens to her that month. Finishing the show with her was special. We did it. It’s a tradition now. I don’t plan to have kids, but the future may be strange. At the very least, I know at least one sibling does, so I’ll just have to make sure their kids watch it, too. I don’t have anything of my grandfather’s, his family wasn’t kind to mine  and took pretty much everything when he died, but now I have this show. And I have this with my mother. It keeps my heart warm.

         And lastly, the thing responsible for the most boohooing, is that, like I said; I got to see my friends go home.

         I didn’t really think about it hard, but these were my little friends. I couldn’t remember them, but I remembered that I loved them. That they were something that made me happy, and made my very sad mother happy when I was little. They were funny, they were going through a very bad time and they were still being nice to each other and doing their best. They laughed, cried, cried some more, laughed some more. They drank, but in a safer way than what I knew of it at home, so it felt okay. They hugged, they fought, they loved each other. Then they were locked away in a little memory in my heart, and they sat there for over a decade, nearly two. And then those lovely people that made my life a little bit better finally, finally,

         Got to go home.

         A catharsis.

         Everything isn’t perfect, but all of us are somewhere better now. We have new problems. We have old scars. But the big bad is over. A little part of me healed. It was okay, finally. They got home. It’s okay.

         And if I can pick up a show from the 70’s about the 50’s that’s also still about the 70’s and the Vietnam war about all war that’s also about love and family and surgery with a cast that’s almost all gone now that so painfully soldered its place in my heart that watching the end of it all put me in a puddle on the floor of my bathroom at 11 at night, if I can wait 15 years and still manage to rouse these old soldiers and send them home, a little cracked but finally safe,

         I think B.J. Hunnicutt can drive those 3,000 miles to a little place in Maine to see his best friend.