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Life With Father is So Good goddamn, and such a Hawk/Trap manifesto

you got the flirting, you got the married couple jokes, you got the pitch perfect chemistry as always

and you also got an episode where everyone talks over each other and fails to listen and understand each other constantly, to the point where it’s the clear theme in each of the other subplots (Bris, Henry’s wife, Mulcahy’s sister), in which Hawkeye and Trapper are pointedly on the exact same wavelength instead in contrast.

like, okay:

The episode starts with no one able to understand the Korean woman due to her accent. Henry spends the episode crowing about and then bemoaning his wife’s letter with no one paying attention to him. Mulcahy also spends half the episode fretting about his sister with no one really listening to him either. Both of them are too wrapped up in their problems to notice anything else. There’s a scene where they talk over each other and completely miss what the other is saying. Frank and Margaret start the episode disagreeing about the Korean woman and end it yelling at each other. Henry gets his wife on the phone but they get cut off after she admits to the affair without any conclusion or catharsis or understanding between them. Mulcahy also gets cut off from the rabbi during the Bris ceremony and is unable to continue. etc etc

And, delightfully enough, you can draw a minor parallel between the Korean mother and her husband and Hawkeye and Trapper in terms of mutual understanding in contrast to every other character.

Her note said that her husband is the one who requested the ceremony be done and his name is Jacobson, meaning either they met as two Jewish people or the mother is a convert - or it’s an interfaith marriage but I think that would require disregarding that Jewish heritage is matrilineal? I’m no expert here, but the point is that based solely on the information the episode gives us we know the husband is Jewish while we don’t know anything directly about the wife’s faith. And she clearly connects with her husband through his/their faith to the extent that she is able to perform the ceremony he requested herself. Basically it’s demonstrating a connection through love and mutual understanding that excludes everyone else around them, in deliberate ironic parallel to no one being able to understand her English at the start. She struggles to make herself understood to everyone else, but the scene where she speaks Hebrew shows that she and her husband are able to understand each other perfectly.

Which is the very pointed vibe with Hawkeye and Trapper throughout the entire episode lol. Even beyond stuff like the cute married couple joke where they treat the pony like a pregnancy, throughout the episode they’re in their own little world together, excluding others and demonstrating a nearly psychic level of mutual understanding. Like eg out of nowhere Hawkeye says, “Prince,” and Trapper instantly replies back with, “Lightning,” knowing it’s a prospective pony name. “For a second I thought you were gonna say ‘hunky dory’” ��It crossed my mind.” Their mutual obsession with the contest that they focus on together to the exclusion of everyone else’s problems around them. Playing poker together and ignoring Henry. Hawkeye rejecting Mulcahy’s help with the contest in mock defensiveness after automatically and seamlessly including Trapper. Trapper getting distracted from tossing the football back and forth with the offscreen guy during his banter with Hawkeye, leading to the football being thrown directly into their tent. And obviously Trapper ditching the celebration afterwards to go horseback riding alone with Hawkeye <3

idk how much of this is deliberate, as far as couple parallels go it’s less on the nose than, say, Ain’t Love Grand lol, but it sure is thematically appropriate and extremely fun to watch. And even if you see the parallel as a bit of a stretch (though as the satisfyingly ironic cap to the theme of miscommunication which Hawkeye and Trapper pointedly defied idt it is), it’s still a delight to watch everyone in the episode ignoring and misunderstanding each other except Hawkeye and Trapper.

(You could also say that Henry reading between the lines and realizing his wife has had an affair is another example of understanding that adds to the parallels, though imo it’s a little iffier due to their unsatisfying phone conversation.)

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This wounded guy looks just like jerry seinfeld am i going crazy

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golden age Batman didn't give a single shit

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“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?"

isn't it kind of crazy that mulcahy is enlisted. he isn't even drafted. do you think he enlisted because he's such a man of action that he saw where he was going to be the most needed and went, both entering the most hypermasculine space possible after being abused growing up about how he isn't man enough & risking life and limb, while hanging onto his softness and decency. a move that he keeps echoing throughout the show when he does stuff like stare down the soldier with the gun or deal with the black market to get supplies & echoing his people's devotion to continuing to secretly preach in the hills on rocks under threat of death by english priest-hunters. isn't it kind of crazy how he gets there and is basically the acting chief mourner as the sole person around for miles who is responsible for giving every dying soldier's last rites and spiritually processing the dead. isn't it kind of crazy to enlist as a psychopomp. isn't it kind of crazy how he does that and is so insistent with continuing to be helpful and assists in OR so much that the surgeons trust him to take over in triage or stand in for a nurse when there aren't enough hands to go around. isnt it kind of crazy that he does all that and still doesn't think he's useful

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Happy pride month from Henry, he doesn’t care if you’re a f—

I accidentally drew this really close to the golden ratio lol

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What M*A*S*H episode are you watching right now?

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“it’s circus work.” not to me. not if it’s my monkeys.

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jokes to make after failure that aren’t self-deprecating:

I’m the best to ever do it

Nobody saw that (best if said loudly)

No one’s ever done it like me

I could be President/they should make me President

Behold, a mere fraction of my power!

The public wants to be me soooooo bad

I’m an expert in (thing you just failed at)

How could this have happened to god’s favorite princess?

Nothing ibuprofen and a glass of water cant fix

I’m being sabotaged

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War really is hell… Klinger was doing all that shit to get back to TOLEDO??

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so i started mash the other day. army doctors from a fifty year old show is something that can actually be so gender,

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Words to live by

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Dogs of the 4077th M*A*S*H

Episodes:

S01E07 "Bananas, Crackers and Nuts" S02E19 "Operation Noselift" S03E13 "Mad Dogs and Servicemen" S04E18 "Hawkeye" S05E08 "Mulcahy's War" S06E19 "Images" S08E7 "Nurse Doctor" S09E02 "Letters" S10E03 "Rumor at the Top"

Bonus:

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terrific trapper, handsome hawkeye, bogus bj

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Radar and the Lamb

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My favorite MASH thing is when they have to do field surgery with even less resources, sanitation, and time than they have at the unit. Charles longing to be back at the 4077 as he stabs a guy in the chest with a pocketknife to alleviate pressure on his collapsed lung. Hawkeye dipping bloodied hands in an almost empty basin of alcohol for half a second between patients at the aid station and knowing it doesn’t do any good. Father Mulcahy being talked through a tracheotomy over the phone. Margaret delivering a baby on a dirt floor. It just raises the stakes and shows how much these people both need and want to help, no matter what.

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propaganda i am not falling for:

always moving on. some goodbyes need to rot a little. some griefs need to be held in the mouth like a stone.

beauty defined by algorithms. beauty exists in crow feet and smile lines

pretending to be chill. i’m not chill. i care deeply and inconveniently. i read into things. i write poems about eye contact

beige apartments with no soul. give me bookshelves and incense and loud art

sneaky links and unclear intentions. i want devotion. and also clarity

treating books as decor. read them. dog-ear them. argue with them in the margins