MASH: Henry Blake's Final Episode Aired 50 Years Ago Today

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https://www.remindmagazine.com/artic...-blake-killed/

'M*A*S*H's Most Shocking Episode Aired 50 Years Ago ... The last one, that “Lt. Col. Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan.

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A post shared by on Jan 01, 2022 at 12:00pm PDT

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March 18, 1975: "M*A*S*H" Kills Off Henry Blake

March 18, 1975. 50 years ago: The TV show M*A*S*H closes its 3rd season -- meaning it had now run for as long as the Korean War, which it depicted, had.

Early in an episode titled "Abysinnia, Henry," U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, M.D., commanding officer of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, played by McLean Stevenson, finds out that he has been discharged. (Henry had been known to say goodbye by saying, "Abysinnia," the former name of the African nation of Ethiopia, as a corruption of "I'll be seeing you.")

But at the end of the episode, during a surgery session, the camp's company clerk, Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff) came in, and said, needing to pause due to the weight of the words, "I have a message: Lieutenant Colonel... Henry Blake's plane... was shot down... over the Sea of Japan... It spun in... There weren't no survivors."

Radar took it harder than anyone else. Having lost his father before he was old enough to remember him, he looked up to Henry, who became like a father to him. But even the show's meanest characters, Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, the head nurse (Loretta Swit), and Major Frank Burns, the "Do as I say, not as I do" second-in-command and now temporary C.O., were broken up over it.

This was the 1st time that an American TV show had actually said that a main character had died. Previously, when an actor died, either the character was played by someone else, or written out of the series and not mentioned again. The same thing was done when an actor simply left the show.

But when Stevenson left M*A*S*H after 3 seasons, wanting to do other things, the producers and writers killed Henry off. They had the announcement right there in the script.

Americans had seen on their TVs that a President, and other beloved figures, had been murdered; that the scenes of wounded soldiers they were seeing in Vietnam were real; that there really were riots by protestors, and beatings, even shootings, by police and national guardsmen at political demonstrations; that a President had committed crimes, and that he was resigning rather than face impeachment over it.

But they had never been told that a TV character that they liked, played by a person who, then, was very much alive, was dead -- and just as he was going home from a war, too.

This was a year and a half before a dispute with the showrunners led to John Amos being fired from Good Times, and his character, James Evans Sr., being written out as dead in a car crash; 11 years before Officer Joe Coffey (Ed Marinaro) was gunned down on Hill Street Blues; 12 years before Valerie Harper was fired from Valerie over a salary dispute, resulting in the title character being killed off and the show being retooled as The Hogan Family; 16 years before Gary Shepherd (Peter Horton) was killed off on thirtysomething; 23 years before the death of Detective Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) on NYPD Blue; 26 years before an offscreen car crash killed Dolores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten) on The West Wing; and 36 years before Game of Thrones showed that no character was safe by killing off what appeared to be its lead character, Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean).

With every such death, once the initial shock wears off, the surprise becomes less. Nothing will ever top the surprise of Radar saying of Henry's plane, "There weren't no survivors."

Whatever happened between Stevenson and the showrunners, this was unjust. People still complain about it, half a century later.

The thing is, Henry wasn't the main character of M*A*S*H. Nor was his replacement as C.O., Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan). Nor was the Chief Surgeon, Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce (Alan Alda). The show's main character was war. Not even the Korean War per se, but war itself.

And, as one of America's greatest generals, William Tecumseh Sherman, taught us, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." Or, as he told the graduating class of a military academy, "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell." There's a reason the writers showed the cast in the operating room at least once an episode.

Two seasons, our time, and, I suppose, a few months, their time, after Henry's death, in an episode titled "The General's Practitioner," premiering on February 15, 1977, Hawkeye put it in even starker terms:

• Frank: Everybody knows that war is Hell.
  
• Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell): Remember: You heard it here last.
  
• Hawkeye: War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell, and, of the two, war is a lot worse.
  
• Father Francis Mulcahy, the camp chaplain (William Christopher): How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
  
• Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me: Who goes to Hell?
  
• Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.
  
• Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. But war is chock-full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

What better way to show that war is Hell, or worse, than by having it kill a beloved character?

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MASH's Biggest Shock Death Was Spoiled Months In Advance (But Absolutely Nobody Noticed)

The death of Henry Blake on MASH was a landmark TV moment, but one that had been spoiled months before it aired; luckily, nobody noticed.

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The Saddest Sitcom Episode Of All Time Aired 50 Years Ago & It's Still Absolutely Devastating

MASH's season 3 finale, "Abyssinia, Henry," aired 50 years ago and the episode has lost none of its power to leave viewers shocked and devastated.

[Duster76]

Wait a second, is this true:

"This was the 1st time that an American TV show had actually said that a main character had died. Previously, when an actor died, either the character was played by someone else, or written out of the series and not mentioned again. The same thing was done when an actor simply left the show".

There is the case of Sara Karr on the Edge of Night in 1961, she was the female lead character who was hit by a car or bus (not sure) saving her young daughter in the process. She died on screen, the audience at the time was in shock. The CBS switchboard was inundated with calls to such an extent that the actress Teal Ames had to film an explanation for the audience which was run by CBS.

Now of course the argument could be made that a daytime series does meet the criteria, OK, but what about Make Room for Daddy (The Danny Thomas Show). In that series in 1956 the actress playing the female lead (Jean Hagen) wanted off the show, the decision was made to have the character killed off between seasons 3 and 4, with season 4 starting a few months after the death of Margaret Williams (Jean Hagen).

There's also the case of Kate McCoy, Luke's wife on The Real McCoys, for the final season (1962-63) of the series Luke became a widower with Kate having died between seasons 5 and 6.

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This M*A*S*H episode came as a surprise for fans watching

"Abyssinia, Henry" was a serious episode for the comedy series.

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51 Years Ago Today, MASH Changed TV History Forever

1972's MASH is monumental for TV in many ways, but a little over 50 years today, it totally altered the course of the industry with a bold story.