M*A*S*H, season 1

FOUR STAR
-Requiem for a Lightweight
Marcia Strassman (WELCOME BACK KOTTER, HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS) is a newly-arrived nurse whom Margaret transfers out. Hawk and Trap want her back. Henry's price? An inter-company boxing match against Gen. Barker's (Sorrell Booke, THE DUKES OF HAZZARD) bruiser. Trapper, with ethered gloves, gets the girl. William Christopher's debut.
-Yankee Doodle Doctor
Hawk and Trap subvert a rah-rah documentary being made about the unit. The first indelible moment of the series, and the first time the show strongly veers from comedy for a moment, when Hawkeye stops clowning and tells how awful the war is. His Groucho routine is a gem.
-Tuttle
Hawk and Trap invent a heroic officer. A seamless slice of cathode ray perfection. James Sikking (HILL STREET BLUES) has a fun moment as payroll officer. Tuttle "dies" in a parachute accident.
-The Ringbanger
Pure wonderfulness as Leslie Nielsen plays a wounded gung-ho colonel who is anxious to get back to the front, where his troops suffer twice as many casualties as other units. Hawk and Trap mess with his mind, to keep him off the lines.
-Sometimes You Hear the Bullet
A little miracle happens here. This episode is so breathtaking, and so much seems to be happening, that it feels like a full-length film while you're in the middle of it. A goofball buddy of Hawkeye's (James T. Callahan, CHARLES IN CHARGE) has joined the infantry, to write a book entitled "You Never Hear the Bullet". Frank is in traction, Hawk's wooing of a willing nurse (Lynette Mettey) goes comically unconsummated, and Ronny Howard(!) plays an underage marine who joined up to get revenge on a girl who snubbed him. Hawkeye's friend is killed, and he turns young Howard in. When Henry tells Hawkeye about the two rules of war, it's one of M*A*S*H's most unforgettable moments.
-Dear Dad, Again
A show that has found its stride. Seamless wonderfulness. Hawkeye bets Trapper that he can eat in the mess tent naked, and no one will notice. A brilliant new surgeon, Captain Casey, has a secret.
-The Longjohn Flap
In the middle of a cold snap, Hawkeye has the only pair of thermal underwear in the camp. Trapper loses them in a poker game, then Radar gives the away for a lamb with jelly sauce, then the cook gives them to Frank as a bribe, then Frank...priceless.
-The Army-Navy Game
An unexploded bomb falls into the compound. Whose bomb? Can they defuse it? Who gets the short straw? Will Henry read the directions correctly?
NOTEWORTHY
-pilot ***
A little all over the place, but a gem. A different Father Mulcahy, an enlisted Bruno Kirby with no lines, and a fascinating extended opening credits sequence. Hawk and Trapper run a raffle to send Ho-Jon to college in America.
-To Market, to Market ***
The wonderful Jack Soo (BARNEY MILLER) stars as a black market kingpin whom Hawk and Trapper must get hydrocortisone from. The only thing he wants is Henry's antique oak desk.
-Chief Surgeon Who? ***
The debut of Klinger, and the first poker game of the series. We love Ugly John.
-The Moose ***
Hawk and Trap object to a sergeant's owning a Korean girl, a "moose". They win her away in a poker game, and try to teach her to be her own person. A luminous, delightful performance by Virginia Ann Lee.
-Cowboy **
Chopper pilot Cowboy tries to push Henry out of a helicopter, whom he blames for not being allowed to go home to patch up his shaky marriage. Some of the show's most memorable comedic moments ("A double dear John John!") are undercut by a painfully unenlightened attitude toward monogamy.
-Henry, Please Come Home ***
A captured moment in time, during the first season of a show that could have had no idea it was to be the greatest television show of all time. There was a freewheeling "hit or miss" quality in the early seasons. Later seasons were more technically perfect, but also more self-conscious. In this seamless episode, Henry is bumped up to a cushy job in Tokyo, and the Swamp rats scheme to get him back with a "sick" Radar. As they're crossing the compound with a too-soon gone Spearchucker and Ugly John, it would make a great "wild bunch/resevoir dogs" poster.
-Dear Dad ***
It's funny...history thinks of Alan Alda as the archetype of the post-feminist sensitive male. And of course people think Hawkeye when they think Alan. Yet through modern eyes, it's quite something to watch Hawk react to a bent-over nurse in the operating room with, "You ever thought of leaving your behind to science?" Watching him chopper into combat surgery as Santa (despite the fact that it doesn't sustain much scrutiny) is one of the most enduring images of the show. Plus William Katt (GREATEST AMERICAN HERO) in a foxhole!
-Edwina **
The nurses stage a sex embargo until one of the men dates Edwina. So bad that it's almost good.
-Ceasefire ***
It unrolls like a joyous parade (with an ending that shows how many sins a laugh track can cover), as word spreads about the end of the war. Hawkeye invents a fictitious wife, Henry can't tell Rader exactly when they'll get together after the war, and Margaret falls to pieces with Frank. Trapper is the only one who suspects the ceasefire is a phony.
-Showtime ***
A sweet finale, it captures the cynical unself-consciousness of the early years as Hawkeye and Trapper fall asleep watching a USO show.