More questions from the Buffalo-area blogger Kelly Sedinger. You can still Ask Roger Anything.
If you watched MASH, were you a Colonel Henry Blake or a Colonel Sherman Potter guy?
I watched MASH religiously every week for 11 seasons, on five different nights. In fact, for the first eight years, I’d often watch the reruns. But the last three were generally weaker, sometimes regurgitating plot devices. Moreover, the chronology was all over the place.
I thought that the show should have ended after Radar departed. Klinger became the company clerk and lost the dresses, but I never bought him in the new role.
Blake was a funnier guy, which made Abyssinia, Henry all the more potent. Potter, though, was more substantial. The Old Soldiers episode may have been my favorite; I learned the word tontine. So I’ll opt for Potter.
BTW, I was bemused when Harry Morgan was cast in the role. I watched him on a sitcom called December Bride (1954-1959; I must have seen it in syndication) and its spinoff, Pete and Gladys (1960-1962). He appeared in various series before starring in the return of Dragnet (1967-1970). Then he was a doctor on a western called Hec Ramsey (1972-1974).
What was confusing was that in 1974, the year before he became Potter, Morgan played on MASH Maj. Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele, a loony officer who wanted to move the camp closer to the front.
Oh, and BTW, Winchester over Burns, BJ over Trapper John (because Trapper and Hawkeye were too similar), and Margaret over Hot Lips.
Choppers
And this might seem random, but a helicopter just flew over my house. We get helicopters flying over ALL the time. Are there lots of helicopters where you are? What’s the common “white noise” of your neighborhood?
Actually, planes and helicopters DO fly over our house a lot. The choppers are traveling to and from Albany Medical Center, which is a Level One trauma center, the only one actually in northeast New York State; the hospital in Burlington, VT is the nearest, followed by ones in Westchester County and Syracuse.
About 50 years ago, a plane crashed in the city of Albany, and in fact in my neighborhood, about a mile away as the crow flies. After 9/11, of course, there were no planes in the skies for about a week, so when the first plane flew over my house again, it actually startled me.