#i'd be all for an episode where he psychologically terrorizes his friends because he's bored and his usual outlet frank is gone

[marley-manson]

it's very funny to me that when Mash got super into characters manipulating their friends to prank them as subplot fodder, Hawkeye's like the only one who never gets a plot like this.

Hawkeye, champion gaslighter and manipulator extraordinaire of the first three seasons, a dude who invented a whole person to defraud the military out of thousands of dollars, a dude who gaslighted a colonel into early retirement, and a dude who took out two(2) healthy appendixes, among plenty of other schemes, never uses his frankly legendary skills for evil

you get plots where Charles or BJ pit their friends against each other for ther own amusement, where the entire rest of the cast works together to drive Hawkeye into a fit of paranoia, Potter terrorizing our faves with a grand manipulation scheme in one episode, and plenty more where BJ works to turn the camp against Hawkeye for fun, but I can't think of a single subplot where Hawkeye does anything similar to anyone who isn't an antagonist.

he has a few revenge pranks on BJ in the episode tags, but these are basic straightforward ones that don't involve gaslighting or manipulation, just shaving half his moustache or letting him wake up naked in the nurse's tent. His pranks in April Fools were straightforward and boring as far as I remember without rewatching. Bombshells could almost qualify except convincing everyone Marilyn Monroe was coming was a total accident, Hawkeye just made an offhand joke that snowballed.

I think the closest he comes is the revenge prank he, BJ, and Margaret pull on Charles in An Eye For a Tooth to make him feel guilty, and he's only one of three people involved in that.

And lol I think the reason is because later Mash prefers Hawkeye to be a pathetic victim rather than an impressive mastermind, but it sure has the accidental side effect of making him come across as a much better friend. Like we know he has the chops to make BJ a social pariah in revenge after an episode like Bottom's Up, but he'll stick to something lighthearted because he reserves those schemes for psychiatrists trying to section him, or colonels trying to get people killed, or Frank.