‘Chief Surgeon Who?’

M*A*S*H: A writer’s view. #3 in the series.

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In the 1970s, American TV networks still jealously guarded their right (honoured by time but by nobody else) to broadcast episodes of shows in whatever order they pleased. Sometimes show-runners used this tradition in their own favour, working with the network to reserve a show already in the can and run it at a more dramatically appropriate time in the season. ‘Henry, Please Come Home’, though the second episode of M*A*S*H to be filmed, was the ninth one broadcast. This gave the characters time to establish themselves with the viewing public, and increased the surprise when Frank Burns was abruptly put in command of the 4077th.

Next, the M*A*S*H crew turned out several run-of-the-mill sitcom episodes. Hawkeye taps Frank for a pint of blood in his sleep; Hawkeye and Trapper trade Henry’s antique desk on the black market for medical supplies; Hawkeye does a hammy turn as a private eye. These stories could just as well have taken place in any of the old-fashioned military comedies that M*A*S*H was supposed to be in such strong reaction against – Sgt. Bilko or Gomer Pyle. Only the recurring O.R. scenes reminded us that the war was going on and people were dying. It is said that Alan Alda’s contract required at least one O.R. scene in every episode. He had been reluctant to sign on (though CBS had made him their first and only choice for the role of Hawkeye), because he feared that the show would inevitably devolve into yet another routine sitcom about hijinks in the service. It nearly happened. A march to the rear was called for: M*A*S*H needed to reconnect with its roots.

Larry Gelbart achieved this in fine style with another script adapted from an incident in the novel (and the film): ‘Chief Surgeon Who?’ The intervening episodes had allowed the actors to settle into their roles; now, for the first time, we see the structure of the cast – the three double acts – in full bloom. This episode marks several important milestones for the series all at once. Hawkeye definitely takes over as the lead character, giving the lie to the original idea that this was to be a show with an ensemble cast. The writers say their final farewell to MASH, the novel: this is the last script drawn from Richard Hooker’s book, except for a single scene five years later. It also marks the first appearance of a breakout character, later to become the first series regular not taken from the book or movie: the unforgettable Maxwell Q. Klinger.

For all these reasons, ‘Chief Surgeon Who?’ is worth studying in detail.

The show opens in the Swamp, with Trapper soaking his sore feet (in two bedpans) while Frank types a self-aggrandizing newsletter for his patients back in Indiana. Hawkeye responds to Frank’s needling with an outburst, the first and shortest of what will, over the years, become a traditional element of the show: the patented Hawkeye Humorous Rant. (In later years, the humorous rant would be largely supplanted by the Hawkeye Serious Anti-War Rant, much to the disappointment of the audience.)

          HAWKEYE
     (to Trapper)
Fix you a martini?

          FRANK
Haven’t you two anything better to do when you’re off duty than to lie around and swill gin?

          HAWKEYE
     (theatrically indignant)
Swill gin?! Sir, I have sipped, lapped, and taken gin intravenously, but I have never swilled!

HAWKEYE goes to the still to pour TRAPPER a drink.

          HAWKEYE
Actually, I’m pursuing my lifelong quest for the perfect, the absolutely driest martini to be found in this or any other world. And I think I may have hit upon the perfect formula.

          TRAPPER
Five to one?

          HAWKEYE
Not quite. You pour six jiggers of gin, and you drink it while staring at a picture of Lorenzo Schwartz, the inventor of vermouth.

Hawkeye takes a look at Frank’s letter home, mocking him for exaggerating his exploits. Frank replies with dudgeon:

          FRANK
I was building a pretty good practice for myself when I got called up, and I’ll be darned if I’ll let those people forget me while I’m over here.

          TRAPPER
Well, maybe you could bring the plague back home, Frank, just to get things started again.

          HAWKEYE
Or you could introduce jungle rot to Indiana.

          FRANK
You’re both jealous. I was in practice only three years, and I already had a $35,000 house and two cars!

Enter RADAR, running up to the outside of The Swamp.

          RADAR
     (through the mosquito netting)
Choppers!

          TRAPPER
How many?

          RADAR
Too many!

          TRAPPER
We just got through with two days of casualties.

          RADAR
Speak to the enemy, sir!

One of the most effective ways to keep a story moving quickly is to interrupt scenes before their natural conclusion. Cut the characters off in the middle of whatever they are doing, force them to go straight on to the next scene, and you can get rid of a lot of transitional fluff. In this case, Radar provides the interruption, followed by a quick cut to the operating room. In later episodes, the cut will be accomplished with still greater economy, a technique I hope to discuss another time.

Meanwhile, the surgeons are having another gruelling O.R. session. Frank’s stuffiness and ineptitude (and the Swampmen’s insensitivity) are on full display. Trapper refuses Frank’s help with a patient, insisting that he will wait for Hawkeye. Hawkeye compares Frank to a tree surgeon. Spearchucker Jones inadvertently piles on the last straw:

          SPEARCHUCKER
I’ve got a bad pancreatic injury here. Anything outside the skull, I’m dead.

          FRANK
Drain—

          HAWKEYE
     (talking over Frank)
Resect it!

          SPEARCHUCKER
Thanks, Hawkeye.

          FRANK
The book says drain it! Always!

          HAWKEYE
If you were a proctologist, I’d tell you what to do with that book. You’re a year behind on your journals.

The next cut takes us to Radar and Henry in the colonel’s office for a moment of plain comic relief. This duo operates very straightforwardly: Radar is always a step ahead of events, and Henry is generally two or three steps behind. After a bit of banter, Radar hands some paper to Henry.

          HENRY
Where do I sign?

          RADAR
Sir, I’d read that very carefully. It’s from Major Burns, he’s right outside in the hall.

          HENRY
Well, tell him I’m not in.

          RADAR
Yes, sir.

HENRY turns his back to the entrance and starts reading. RADAR heads for the door, but stops as FRANK comes in. RADAR and FRANK approach the desk behind HENRY’S back.

          RADAR
Sir?

          HENRY
     (still reading)
Frank Burns has to be the biggest horse’s patoot on this post.

          FRANK
You think so?

Burns has a long list of charges that he wants to press against Hawkeye: He’s insubordinate. He never salutes. He calls superior officers by their first name (‘Not allowed, Henry’, he says, breaking the rule himself). Worst of all, in the O.R., everybody looks to Pierce, a mere captain, for advice, instead of Major Burns. Henry calls for Radar, telling him to send for Captain Pierce – inevitably, at the exact moment when Hawkeye strolls in, wearing skivvies and a bathrobe.

          HENRY
Burns says the operating room is becoming impossible.

          HAWKEYE
He’s right, I agree. All that blood and everything, and those sick people? It’s terrible.

          BURNS
You know what I’m talking about, you’re trying to take over! You answer every question, call every shot.

          HAWKEYE
Well, you do it, I don’t care.

          BURNS
They don’t ask me the questions!

          HAWKEYE
Gee, I can’t understand that. You’ve got a $35,000 car and two houses.

Note the running gag about the price of Frank’s house.

Frank and Hawkeye continue to bicker. Finally, Henry has had enough. He decides to appoint a Chief Surgeon.

          FRANK
Now you’re talking.

          HENRY
He’ll be in charge of all surgical situations. In addition to his own work, he’ll assist each shift to help out with the really tough cases. The job’ll be a killer.

          FRANK
I can adjust.

          HENRY
I hope you can. I’m giving it to Pierce.

          HAWKEYE
Oh. Thanks.

          FRANK
What? You can’t! I won’t stand for it!

          HENRY
Frank, the one thing that’ll get you nowhere with me is impersonating my wife!

          FRANK
Well, what about rank?

          HAWKEYE
Can I help it if I’m not as rank as you?

Burns threatens to go over Henry’s head, and storms out. Next we see him in Hot Lips’ tent:

          FRANK
Margaret, something just awful has happened.

          MARGARET
And?

          FRANK
Colonel Blake’s appointed Pierce Chief Surgeon over me!

          MARGARET
He can’t! It’s against regulations! Doesn’t he know that?

          FRANK
He did! It is! And he does!

As Burns breaks down sobbing in his paramour’s arms, we cut to the mess tent, and preparations for the party to celebrate Hawkeye’s appointment. The route for Hawkeye’s triumphant entrance is being roped off with toilet paper. To the strains of an Elgar march on the gramophone, Hawkeye enters, crowned with a cowboy hat and robed in a red and blue cape, waving to the adoring crowd while Radar throws confetti. Mock pageantry will become a recurring joke with the Hawkeye–Trapper duo, and later with Hawkeye and B. J. Hunnicutt. This scene is an early example. Note how tension is maintained by intercutting the party scene with Frank and Hot Lips’ revenge:

          HAWKEYE
Thank you, thank you! You may all kiss my ring.

CUT TO:

MARGARET’S tent. FRANK is typing a letter while MARGARET stands behind him, rubbing his shoulders.

          FRANK
They’re gonna get theirs, boy!

          MARGARET
Type, Frank. Type.

CUT TO:

The mess tent.

          SEVERAL VOICES
Speech! Speech!

          HAWKEYE
Some men are born to greatness, others have it thrust upon them. And then there are those of us who got it both ways.

The VOICES cheer.

          HAWKEYE
Keep those crowds back behind the toilet paper!

CUT TO:

MARGARET’S tent. MARGARET is reading the first page of FRANK’S letter.

          MARGARET
Dear General Barker: I think I should call your attention, da de da de da. My qualifications as a doctor… $35,000!

That comedy writer’s standby, the Rule of Three, has been fulfilled; the running gag is complete. We will hear no more about Frank‘s house hereafter.

          FRANK
Hmm?

MARGARET embraces FRANK from behind while he continues typing.

          MARGARET
     (amorously)
Type. Type.

          FRANK
Margaret, when you touch me like that, I—

          MARGARET
Type. Type.

Frank and Hot Lips start making out, knocking the typewriter off the table and smashing it. Since they cannot finish the letter, they go to Colonel Blake’s office and call General Barker personally. Frank tries without success to persuade Barker that the situation is serious, then Hot Lips takes the phone. It appears that she knows the general rather intimately, and quickly talks him into coming to the 4077th ‘to take a good look at your new Chief Surgeon’. At that moment, the Chief Surgeon is enthroned in the mess tent, carrying his orb (a volleyball) and sceptre (a toilet plunger).

The second act opens with the arrival of General Barker. The general is short, rotund, and self-important – played by Sorrell Booke, better known as Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. Hot Lips greets him as he climbs out of his jeep, but their mutual come-ons are rather spoilt by the presence of Major Burns. Burns reports that there is a badly wounded patient lying in O.R., waiting to be operated on, and the new Chief Surgeon refuses to do anything with him.

          BARKER
Now, then. Just where, may I ask, is Chief Surgeon Pierce, with a patient waiting in surgery?

          FRANK
Well, sir… You wouldn’t believe this.

CUT TO:

The Swamp. Close angle on HAWKEYE, frowning and looking worried.

          HAWKEYE
I don’t like this at all. No, sir.

HAWKEYE picks up his poker hand as the camera ZOOMS OUT slowly to reveal TRAPPER, UGLY JOHN, and CPT. KAPLAN sitting with him around a card table.

The sight gag is followed up with a bit of by-play over the poker game – another frequent topic of humour for the Hawkeye–Trapper duo. Hawkeye deals the next hand just as the general comes into the tent.

          HAWKEYE
Ace bets a dollar blind.

TRAPPER, UGLY JOHN, and KAPLAN stand to attention and salute BARKER.

          HAWKEYE
That’s a lot of respect for one ace.

While the other players return to their game, Barker demands to know why Pierce isn’t operating on his patient.

          HAWKEYE
General, the man came in with a chest wound. I put a tube in him, and I’m watching him very carefully—

          BARKER
You call this watching?

          HAWKEYE
I get a bulletin every quarter hour from a nurse who is very devoted and a great kisser.

          BARKER
Well, just when do you intend to operate?

          HAWKEYE
Hopefully, never. But if I have to, I figure around 3 a.m. By that time he will have been given his blood, and his pulse and his pressure should be stabilized.

          BARKER
And until then, you’re going to do nothing.

          HAWKEYE
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m going to do something. I’m going to meet his five dollars and raise two more.

          BARKER
You’re not talking to some idiot desk jockey, Captain! I’m a doctor myself.

          HAWKEYE
Well, if you want to operate now, be my guest. I get the same pay whether I work or not.

          TRAPPER
Your two and two more.

          BARKER
     (bending down to look HAWKEYE right in the eye)
Pierce, you’re in very deep trouble.

          HAWKEYE
I don’t think so. I can beat a pair of twos.

          UGLY JOHN
Fold that.

          BARKER
     (drawing himself up)
This conduct is intolerable as a Chief Surgeon. I order you to begin that operation!

          HAWKEYE
General, either take the case yourself or join me at three o’clock. You’re making it impossible for me to concentrate on my poker, and if I don’t win this pot, I’ll never be able to send my sister a new truss.
     (to the other players, ignoring BARKER)
The last raise is mine.

          BARKER
You haven’t heard the last of this.

          HAWKEYE
I wasn’t listening to the first of it.

          BARKER
We’ll just wait until we hear what Colonel Blake has to say about it all!

The general storms out, falling over a trash can (never before or since seen outside the Swamp) for an extra laugh along the way.

The last scene further established Burns as a sanctimonious barrack-room lawyer, and Hot Lips as a lascivious suck-up. This scene gives full vent to Hawkeye’s contempt for military authority, on a scale that would land him in front of a court martial if he were anyone but a gifted surgeon. The fact that the others (after their initial brace and salute) ignore the general and continue their poker game is the key to the scene. Not only does it show that they share Hawkeye’s contempt (if not his bravado), it provides a continuous comic interplay between Barker’s threats and the even tenor of the game.

Now General Barker is treated to a lunatic nighttime tour of the 4077th. In rapid succession, he encounters a soldier with a nurse concealed under his poncho; Radar (still the slick operator and delinquent) in Henry’s office, drinking the colonel’s brandy and smoking the colonel’s cigars; and the first appearance of a new character, a one-joke walk-on part that somehow turned into thirteen years of steady work for Jamie Farr of Toledo, Ohio. The general is stopped by a corpsman on sentry duty – wearing the uniform of a WAC!

          KLINGER
Halt! Friend or foe?

          BARKER
I’m General Barker!

          KLINGER
How do I know you’re not one of them with a clever makeup job?

          BARKER
Corporal Klinger, isn’t it?

          KLINGER
Right.

          BARKER
Still trying to get out on a psycho, eh, Klinger? Well, I can tell you, it’ll take a lot more than this.

          KLINGER
Then I’ll just have to keep trying, Mary!

KLINGER turns and skips away.

This short scene marks the beginning of one career on M*A*S*H, and the sudden end of another. Gelbart wrote Klinger’s part with the intention that it should be played straight – a brillliantly original idea. Until then, men in dresses on television had been either in disguise, transvestites, or comedians playing female parts for slapstick comic effect – like Milton Berle or the members of Monty Python. Klinger was something new: a perfectly ordinary, masculine guy, a competent soldier, who just happened to be wearing a dress as part of a failed scam. The only thing crazy about Klinger was his consistent belief that his cross-dressing would make the Army think he was crazy.

The director, however, had other ideas. This was E. W. Swackhamer, a storied veteran of film and television. He read the scene conventionally, interpreting Klinger as a stock comedy transvestite, and told Jamie Farr to play it that way. They filmed the scene with Farr doing his best to act ‘swish’. It is said that Gelbart exploded when he saw the dailies. Not only was this interpretation contrary to his intentions, the scene as filmed just didn’t work. Gelbart set Swackhamer straight, and they were forced to reshoot the scene in pickup.

At the time, Jamie Farr was straightforwardly pleased. Instead of one day’s work, he was paid for two: an unexpected blessing for an obscure actor living from hand to mouth. He never imagined that his scene would turn out to be a show-stealer. When the episode aired, the viewing audience went crazy for Klinger. He was the most popular character in that week’s show, as the fan mail demonstrated. Gelbart and Reynolds were no fools. They took a part in another episode, written for a random corpsman, and assigned it to Klinger, and before the season was over they had worked in several more guest appearances for Jamie Farr. Eventually Farr became one of the regular cast, and Klinger found a place in television history.

E. W. Swackhamer, on the other hand, never worked on M*A*S*H again.

After that epochal encounter, General Barker walks into a tent where Spearchucker and Lt. Ginger Bayliss are playing strip dominoes. Ginger (a recurring character at the time, played by Odessa Cleveland) delivers one of the iconic lines of the series:

          BARKER
Nurse, is everybody around here crazy?

          GINGER
Everybody who’s sane is, sir.

Spearchucker directs Barker to Colonel Blake’s tent. En route, he blunders into Burns and Hot Lips, sneaking out of her tent. Burns is appropriately embarrassed:

          FRANK
Bet this looks funny.

          BARKER
Bet it doesn’t.

Finally the general finds Henry, who has just returned to his tent with a can of fresh-dug earthworms for fishing. He orders Henry to come with him and confront Hawkeye back at the Swamp, but by the time they get there, the Chief Surgeon is scrubbing up for surgery. Henry and Barker join him in the O.R. to observe. This time, the scene ends with a straightforward cut to the aftermath of the operation, as soon as the characters have had their say.

          HAWKEYE
Okay, General, now I’m going to sandbag you. You think we’re ready to get out of this chest yet?

          BARKER
Obviously you don’t.

          HAWKEYE
Give the man a cigar.

          TRAPPER
The general or the patient?

          HAWKEYE
See, Dad, we haven’t found any small holes in the lung yet, only large ones. I think he’s got one in his lingula that we won’t find unless we look for it. I’ve seen some bubbles I can’t account for.
     (to the scrub nurse)
Give me some – gimme some suction.

HAWKEYE gropes around in the patient’s chest cavity (just out of angle).

          HAWKEYE
There it is.

          BARKER
I’m impressed.

          HAWKEYE
So am I. Let’s oversew the lung.

CUT TO:

Exterior, the compound outside the O.R. door. HAWKEYE, HENRY and BARKER are coming out of the hospital.

          HENRY
Well, sir. What do you think of my Chief Surgeon now?

          BARKER
You know, I’m not very good at apologies, Pierce, but – forgive a rusty old doctor.

          HAWKEYE
I think you‘re very good at apologies, General.

HAWKEYE and BARKER shake hands.

          HENRY
Sir, Major Burns is probably going to continue to complain to you about the promotion.

          BARKER
May I make a suggestion about Major Burns?

          HENRY
Yes, sir.

          BARKER
Give him a high colonic and send him on a ten-mile hike.

          TRAPPER
With full pack.

          BARKER
Good touch.

The order of things is restored: the orchestra finishes the passage, so to speak, back on the tonic note. General Barker now sees eye to eye with the Swampmen, and recognizes Burns for the officious whiner that he is. But since this is M*A*S*H, we can’t finish the act quite so harmoniously. A certain loony corporal makes one more appearance to end with a laugh.

          KLINGER
Halt!

          HENRY
Klinger!

          KLINGER
Who goes there?

          BARKER
The man’s naked!

          HAWKEYE
Aw, come on, Klinger, put on a dress or something.

          TRAPPER
At least a slip.

In the tag, we are back in the O.R., where Burns humbles himself to ask Hawkeye for a hand with a resection.

          HAWKEYE
I’m ready, Doctor. We’ll split the fee, right?

          FRANK
Right!

If you want an instructive case study in the difference of style between the TV series and the film, watch this episode back to back with the corresponding scene from the movie, in which Trapper John is named Chief Surgeon. Robert Altman had every advantage: an all-star cast, more supporting actors, a bigger budget, and (by no means least) the freedom of the large screen, where he could do almost anything he liked without running afoul of a TV network’s Pecksniffian wowsers. Altman makes a major production out of the mock coronation, with the nurses singing an obscene parody of ‘Hail to the Chief’ while corpsmen carry Trapper around the tent on his throne. He demands tribute from his new subjects in the form of sex, singling out the scandalized Hot Lips. The scene is wilder, more Bacchanalian, truer to the book – and a great deal less funny.

This is so, I believe, because the movie does not do Gelbart’s superb job of supporting the comedy with serious conflict. Humour, at bottom, is often a form of rebellion against excessive solemnity; an answer to pain. The pain in Altman’s scene is offscreen, and the letter typed by Frank and Hot Lips never bears fruit in action. The action is swift and direct in Gelbart’s version, in the form of General Barker, who may be short and roly-poly, but is a real threat because of his exalted rank. Instead of letting the Swampmen have their way, the Army pushes back – hard – and makes them earn their fun. In the process, we get a good sound helping of medical technique, not in the form of an extraneous infodump, but well harnessed in the service of the story. (Walter Dishell, the show’s medical consultant, earned every penny of his pay for this episode.)

For the first time in the series, the comedy is perfectly integrated with the serious wartime drama of wounded men and surgical heroics. M*A*S*H at its best is a sort of trick circus rider, standing bareback on the galloping horses of comedy and drama, riding them both in beautiful and precise synchronization. Inferior episodes tended to let one horse fall behind the other, or have them run off in different directions, with woeful effects for the rider. Some of the early episodes have the rider on the comedy horse alone, with the other running alongside merely for show; in later years, the show had the opposite fault. But the seamless and apparently effortless joining of drama and comedy is what makes M*A*S*H memorable and endlessly re-watchable, and we will seldom see it done better than in ‘Chief Surgeon Who?’

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