M*A*S*H – Season Eleven Collector’s Edition: The Final Season (1982 – 1983)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Episodes: B

 

 

After over a decade of being a top show, M*A*S*H. could have continued long past its prime like E.R., but Larry Gelbart and company decided the end of the road was near and Season Eleven (1982 – 1983) would be it.  To recap, Alan Alda headed the cast as sensitive funny guy “Hawkeye” Pierce and Mike Farrell as Captain B.J. Hunnicut stayed his last best friend at the 4077 to the end.  Loretta Swit’s “Hot Lips” Houlihan, Jamie Farr’s “Max” Klinger, David Ogden Stiers’ Major Winchester and Harry Morgan as Colonel Potter lasted until the end as well. 

 

We looked at the first ten seasons in a previous review, which you’ll find at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3634/M*A*S*H+(MASH)+Collector's+Editions+-+Seasons+One+-+Ten

 

 

The episodes here are as follows:

 

DVD 1:

Hey, Look Me Over

Trick or Treatment

Foreign Affairs

The Joker Is Wild

Who Knew?

Bombshells

Settling Debts

The Moon Is Not Blue

 

DVD 2:

Run For The Money

U.N.

The Night & The Music

Strange Bedfellows

Say No More

Friends and Enemies

Give & Take

 

DVD 3

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

 

These are the final 16 shows, including the final TV movie episode Goodbye, Farewell & Amen, which set ratings records only rivaled by telefilms like The Night Stalker and Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler, though some technically do not want to see it as a stand-alone TV movie, but an extended final episode.  Still, it remains one of the biggest TV broadcasts ever and all in all is the darkest show of all as Hawkeye is in a mental hospital after a nervous breakdown from a mysterious incident on a bus.

 

Again, the option of watching all the shows without a laugh track is here, though the final show has no laugh track available and rightly so.  Watching the show this time, I realized that it had become overly dark throughout.  The cast knew the laugh track thing was beyond obsolete, the critical success of Hill Street Blues vindicated their stance on the show and all had said and done just about everything they could.  Going out on top like this was the best thing they could to, showing a sense of integrity TV series rarely do anymore.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is still on the soft side here, even as compared to the previous ten sets, but the better prints and transfers remind us how well this show was shot.  In the lesser transfers, of which there are more than one would like to see, the image has color issues or is slightly hazy in a way it should not be, but that even looks better than copies we have seen on TV over the years.  The DeLuxe color is much in the mode of the feature film, with muted colors in a simple fashion, versus the crazy digital gutting out we see today.  The show continued to the end to use bits of footage from the feature film in its credits and maybe some episodes here and there.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is here in a few languages and two English versions.

 

The much-celebrated difference is that you can watch the show with its original, obnoxious laugh track that the makers never could convince CBS to drop, or new soundtracks minus the canned laughs that sound like they go back to 1940s radio broadcasts.  The ones with the laugh tracks show their age in their dated fidelity.  The great thing about the ones without the canned laughs is that they are much cleaner, clearer and because they were stored away properly, in better condition than you would expect.  The result is that sound effects sound better, dialogue is clearer in particular and that benefits the scene space and acting performances.  Music is also better, but it is too bad these could not be in simple stereo.  There are no extras on these sets, though many consider these better soundtracks to be the one extra they had wanted for years.  As far as this critic is concerned, it is the only way to watch the show.

 

There are no extras, which will surprise fans who know there is behind-the-scenes of the making of the final show.  Why that was omitted is a mystery.  Is Fox holding that prisoner for an After-M*A*S*H box?  We’ll see.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo