It has been a long weekend, with visiting family and many many things to do and games to play. If any of you need recommendations for board games, try 'Takenoko' or 'Navegador', with 'Fluxx' and 'Citadels' being very solid card games to tie up any time left over.
While entertaining I set to thinking about various things and about the commentary we had just recorded for the pilot episode of 'Lois and Clark' for Film Bin, and then after that I got to thinking about how shows are affected by their creators leaving and major cast changes, as that initially wonderful show was between the first and second seasons. One good example of a creator's voluntary departure is from 'M*A*S*H', and is the fourth season closer 'The Interview'. The showrunner Larry Gelbart was leaving and the whole season had been about change, both with some replacement cast and with experiments in one-off format changes and the finale would prove to be a doozie and a natural end to his era as showrunner.
After 'The Interview', M*A*S*H would never be the same but would still scale greater heights of popularity and indeed morph into an entirely different kind of show, a 'dramedy' of the first order. While I have far less appreciation for that incarnation than the first few seasons it has a lot of merit, but not the sheer dexterity of wit that Gelbart pushed into it every week with the help of that first primal set of characters.
'The Interview' is really the ultimate format breaker, a black and white episode of a 1970s colour comedy series composed of segments of the interviews conducted by a journalist visiting the 4077th mobile army surgical hospital. And there are very few jokes. It's an essential summing up of the whole series to date, the quirks of the characters, and the realities of the situation they are all trapped in. For the record, it's still very funny, drawing from the deep wells of character-based comedy made possible by a spectacular cast, the pinnacle of the 'M*A*S*H' comedy iceberg.
Every character gets a moment in 'The Interview' except for Houlihan, the chief nurse. The actress was away so we only get the menfolk, but what a lot we get from them. First we get the last bravura performance of the second Larry (Linville) as the moronic and lunatic Frank Burns, whose character wouldn't survive well without Gelbart. We get the core honesty of BJ Hunnicut and the reasons why Hawkeye often behaves the way he does. We see the fundamental dignity and honesty at the core of Colonel Potter and the homespun gentle natures of the wonderful enlisted men Radar and Klinger. In the writing and the audacity of the format change the real impression is of a poignant signoff for Larry Gelbart, whose pen made it all possible and whose imprint made the show great. That man could write, and perhaps the only equivalent influence I can think of right now is Aaron Sorkin's tenure at 'The West Wing'.
There was another reason this kind of blog post came to mind: There has been a short season of watching Ron Howard movies for Film Bin in the hopes of doing a summing up podcast, and the striking thing about his films is that the influence of Ron Howard is almost entirely absent. He's the most invisible director you can find, seemingly adding or taking nothing away from the movies he makes. Ron Howard movies live and die by the stories and casts; He himself will always be competent, workmanlike, self-effacing and predictable. It's almost sickening. I would much rather a creative presence you can feel, one that adds a distinctive flavour all of his own, even if it's not a flavour I favour. Larry Gelbart did that, and helped make a television legend. He is sadly missed, more so now than ever as he has passed away in the last few years.
'M*A*S*H' is an awesome show. Everyone should try to see it, just be aware that it was many things over its 11 year run, and that it's early comedic glory was down in no small part to a man called Larry.
O.
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