The characters are strong.  The stories are good and we are never long between laughs.  It’s serious to the core, but above all, entertaining.  I guess that’s it for me.  It’s fun that occasionally beings a tear and makes a point.  

I’ll never forget the last episode.  We watched it in the Congregational Church Manse in Dover Foxcroft, Maine.  The minister and I were friends and we made a party of it. He brought our a six-pack of Bass Ale and snacks.  At the time we felt that there would be re-runs into the sunset.  Sure enough, the sun is setting and we still have MASH. 

I am also a Trekie – The Second Gen.  I love it when they are all bouncing around in their harness free chairs hurdling through space at multiples of the speed of light.  It’s like a well crafted fairy tale.  You know stuff like that does not happen but you want to believe it.  So for a moment logic and reason are suspended for the fun of it. 

In the spirit of honoring old productions: I recently watched North By Northwest, the movie that is supposed to have made Cary Grant a bankable star.  Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau  round out a stellar cast that despite 50 years of movie making evolution held my attention throughout.  It seemed that story was important then, more so than now.  Some if it even seemed amateurish by present standards but that was acting as it was then.  It was Ok if it seemed that an actor was actually acting.  And it was also Hitchcock.  That’s always good.

I know –  some would say this thing with re-runs has more to do with age than anything else.  But you don’t have to be old to appreciate MASH.  It helps to have been a contemporary in the fifties.  It helps to be fed up with gratuitous sex, bloody violence and this pseudo-reality thing.  Spit!  Spit!

After a while, I figured out the real reason I love re-runs.  I’m a re-run myself.  I enjoy it.  Sometimes I forget just how much fun the story was.  

Jerry Henderson