M*A*S*H Still Resonates, ... & Likely Always Will

Years ago, when my children were still young, but old enough to watch and appreciate movies and television from my youth -- say films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off -- my wife and I introduced them to one of TV's longest-running and most endearing sitcoms, M*A*S*H.

And they loved it, just as we did and knew they would.

Truly one of the most significant and impactful television sitcoms in history, it streams on Hulu, and my wife and I still tune in and watch a couple episodes a week. The show is every bit as good as it ever was. For a show centered on a group of army doctors and nurses during the Korean War, the entertainment value is actually quite an interesting study. M*A*S*H is hilarious and poignant, heartwarming and heartbreaking, deeply thoughtful and wildly wacky, honestly insightful on the human condition and hilariously honest about everyday life.

This week, esteemed linguist and social commentator John McWhorter published a piece in the New York Times about 10 Old Television Series Every Kid Needs to Watch. Surprisingly, he didn't include MASH, though he conceded his actual list is much longer than ten, and his commentary led me to pondering just how it is that MASH still "Holds Up Fifty Years Later":

Few, if any, sitcoms that began more than half a century ago can claim to be as great as M*A*S*H was. Despite airing throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, and centering on a war that began and ended approximately 70 years ago, in many ways, it feels like a timeless show. It was a TV version of the 1970 Robert Altman movie of the same name, which itself was an adaptation of a 1968 novel called MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. That novel was based on the real-life experience of former military surgeon turned author Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. during his time spent serving in the Korean War, and so both the movie and the TV show center on a group of doctors and other medical staff in South Korea, with M*A*S*H's cast shown to work at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea. As striking and effective as the movie can be, the TV show takes what works about the film and makes it even better. It's a little less abrasive and crude, given it was broadcast on television, and features new takes on the characters that make them more sympathetic and endearing. Beyond the character development, the TV version of M*A*S*H also shines for its expert balance of comedy and drama, its bold anti-war themes, and its willingness to experiment with the TV format. Not every aspect has aged perfectly, but the vast majority of the time, M*A*S*H.