I have a lot to say about this one. So, yeah, this series has caught a ton of flack as being the worst spin-off in television history, but is it really as horrible as everybody makes it out to seem? I will say this: AfterMASH was more boring and pointless than it was terrible. I mean, it's bad, but you can tell they tried to do something with it. Tried and failed, but you can tell, for some fleeting moment, something was there. Anyway, so as M*A*S*H was on its last legs in 1983, they aired a 2-hour series finale movie, which was the top-rated event in television history and it held that honor for 30 years! Everybody in the world tunes in to see how the characters would get home after the war. Even people who had stopped watching M*A*S*H by then still tuned in. It was a juggernaut in the ratings, so you know Fox and CBS couldn't let M*A*S*H go at this point. Not when it was still as profitable as it was, but the series was over, and only 3 of the 7 main cast members were willing to continue. How can you continue an ensamble show of that caliber with just three cast members? Make a follow-up, spin-off... and put NO effort into it whatsoever. The network hired back Larry Gelbart, who had left M*A*S*H in it's fourth season to develop the new show. Not sure why he bothered, but then again, I'm not sure why he bothered writing "Hawkeye". First thing he did was create the title AfterMASH, which he thought was the funniest thing he'd ever written in his life. No joke, he laughed about it for hours. Yeah, I get it, it's a pun on the word "aftermath", but is it really THAT funny? No, it isn't. Then Jamie Farr suggested setting it in a stateside veteran's hospital. "It's never been done before." Yeah, there's probably a reason for that, Jamie. Stateside vet hospitals are boring. But hey, the original cast and some funny side characters can make it work... right? So, here's where things take an "interesting" turn, as you have to wonder how Colonel Potter, Klinger, and Father Mulcahy, characters from opposite ends of the country and who have nothing in common, all get together again in one place. If it sounds farfetched, that's because it is. The series begins as Colonel Potter returns home to Missouri, and we finally get to meet Mildred. Potter's got a job at General Pershing Veteran's Hospital in Riverbend, and Klinger's going to be working for him. Yeah, you remember in the M*A*S*H finale where Klinger actually volunteered to stay in Korea and help his bride Soon-Lee find her family? She'd been looking for them for months and hadn't found them. That was a big character moment for Klinger and went against his years of trying to get out of Korea, and this gave him motivation to stay. Eh, they found her family almost instantly, and now they're back in the states. Wow, what an insult. Father Mulcahy joins the gang in part 2 of the two-part pilot, and you remember how his hearing got damaged by an exploding mortar blast, and he was going deaf? Another huge character moment from the finale that got completely tossed aside due to a miracle surgery. Geez, I'll bet if Winchester were in this show, he'd go right back to listening to music.
So, what about the other characters in this series? We've got the hospital administrator, Michael D'Angelo-yes, that's really his name-and the best way to describe him is to imagine Henry Blake if he were not funny or likable. We've also got Alma Cox as Mike's assistant, and she is, well, imagine Hot Lips if she were not funny or likable either. Both of these characters are dull, boring, and just plain mean. There are, however, two promising new characters who actually are likable: Dr. Gene Pfeiffer, a young, idealistic doctor who works alongside Potter, and Bob Scannell, who served with Potter in the first World War. So at this point, the good characters outweigh the bad, but sadly, that was about to change. Towards the end of the first season, the show began to completely fall apart. Dr. Pfeiffer is replaced by Dr. Boyer, who is essentially an unfunny, unlikable Hawkeye. Yes, that's the strategy for AfterMASH's new characters: take likable M*A*S*H characters and give them bland, unappealing personalities and make sure not a single line of dialogue is funny. Boyer has a sullen attitude and lost his leg in the war. Why did they replace Pfeiffer with this sad-sack? Also, D'Angelo gets his walking papers and is replaced in Season 2 by Wally Wainwright, an even more deplorable person. Soon-Lee gets pregnant, and Klinger goes to jail for assaulting a shady real estate agent. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Radar makes an appearance in their tenth episode. He could've joined the cast here, but they instead gave him his own spin-off: W*A*L*T*E*R, and the less said about that horrific piece of crap, the better. Anyway, so in Season 2, they recast Mrs. Potter and changed the opening sequence. Also, they had Klinger declared insane to avoid going to jail, and you know what that means: he gets to pretend he's crazy again. You're not even trying!! But then again, when were you ever? So nothing much else happens as the series mercifully got canceled at the end of Season 2, with one episode never airing.
So, yeah, this is a bad show. Mostly because it's boring. It had nothing to say, nothing to add to the M*A*S*H canon, it was just a lazy, sloppy, incoherent show CBS made them throw together quickly in a vain attempt to save their most successful show of the 1970s. Nothing but a shameful cash-in. It's also painful to watch actual funny people performing such terrible scripts. Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher were too good for a show like this. You could tell they were trying hard to make this show work, but they couldn't do it. The writing and directing was that bad. Apparently, this series was killed when it aired opposite The A-Team in a foolishly cocky display that made them thing AfterMASH would steal their viewers. I pity the fools. The A-Team was a fresh, new, well-written, action-packed character driven show, while AfterMASH was tired, old drivel that offered nothing new or even vaguely interesting. I've seen about four episodes of AfterMASH, and they are boring, dull, lifeless, and not funny. I could get a weak chuckle out of Morgan, Farr and Christopher, because they're naturally funny people. I also liked Patrick Crenshaw as Bob Scannell, but nobody else in this cast can be funny or give a good performance, to say nothing of Rosalind Chao's naive, fish-out-of-water act. I think most M*A*S*H fans disregard AfterMASH and it wasn't included in the Complete Series DVD set, or even released on DVD at all. Maybe it's for the best. I think this series needed better writers, better directors, and a supporting cast that could actually be funny, but maybe that was too much to ask. It was obvious the network was scared of taking risks with it, and when the ratings slightly dropped at the end of its first year, they panicked, which is why they recast Mildred and changed the intro. So, in closing, do I recommend AfterMASH? No. It's boring and pointless. But if you're curious to see what happened to Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy after Korea, then I'd say take a look. Oh, and one more thing: why does it have to say "A continuation of M*A*S*H" in the closing credits? I think we can figure that out ourselves, but then again, this show things its audience are idiots.
So, what about the other characters in this series? We've got the hospital administrator, Michael D'Angelo-yes, that's really his name-and the best way to describe him is to imagine Henry Blake if he were not funny or likable. We've also got Alma Cox as Mike's assistant, and she is, well, imagine Hot Lips if she were not funny or likable either. Both of these characters are dull, boring, and just plain mean. There are, however, two promising new characters who actually are likable: Dr. Gene Pfeiffer, a young, idealistic doctor who works alongside Potter, and Bob Scannell, who served with Potter in the first World War. So at this point, the good characters outweigh the bad, but sadly, that was about to change. Towards the end of the first season, the show began to completely fall apart. Dr. Pfeiffer is replaced by Dr. Boyer, who is essentially an unfunny, unlikable Hawkeye. Yes, that's the strategy for AfterMASH's new characters: take likable M*A*S*H characters and give them bland, unappealing personalities and make sure not a single line of dialogue is funny. Boyer has a sullen attitude and lost his leg in the war. Why did they replace Pfeiffer with this sad-sack? Also, D'Angelo gets his walking papers and is replaced in Season 2 by Wally Wainwright, an even more deplorable person. Soon-Lee gets pregnant, and Klinger goes to jail for assaulting a shady real estate agent. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Radar makes an appearance in their tenth episode. He could've joined the cast here, but they instead gave him his own spin-off: W*A*L*T*E*R, and the less said about that horrific piece of crap, the better. Anyway, so in Season 2, they recast Mrs. Potter and changed the opening sequence. Also, they had Klinger declared insane to avoid going to jail, and you know what that means: he gets to pretend he's crazy again. You're not even trying!! But then again, when were you ever? So nothing much else happens as the series mercifully got canceled at the end of Season 2, with one episode never airing.
So, yeah, this is a bad show. Mostly because it's boring. It had nothing to say, nothing to add to the M*A*S*H canon, it was just a lazy, sloppy, incoherent show CBS made them throw together quickly in a vain attempt to save their most successful show of the 1970s. Nothing but a shameful cash-in. It's also painful to watch actual funny people performing such terrible scripts. Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher were too good for a show like this. You could tell they were trying hard to make this show work, but they couldn't do it. The writing and directing was that bad. Apparently, this series was killed when it aired opposite The A-Team in a foolishly cocky display that made them thing AfterMASH would steal their viewers. I pity the fools. The A-Team was a fresh, new, well-written, action-packed character driven show, while AfterMASH was tired, old drivel that offered nothing new or even vaguely interesting. I've seen about four episodes of AfterMASH, and they are boring, dull, lifeless, and not funny. I could get a weak chuckle out of Morgan, Farr and Christopher, because they're naturally funny people. I also liked Patrick Crenshaw as Bob Scannell, but nobody else in this cast can be funny or give a good performance, to say nothing of Rosalind Chao's naive, fish-out-of-water act. I think most M*A*S*H fans disregard AfterMASH and it wasn't included in the Complete Series DVD set, or even released on DVD at all. Maybe it's for the best. I think this series needed better writers, better directors, and a supporting cast that could actually be funny, but maybe that was too much to ask. It was obvious the network was scared of taking risks with it, and when the ratings slightly dropped at the end of its first year, they panicked, which is why they recast Mildred and changed the intro. So, in closing, do I recommend AfterMASH? No. It's boring and pointless. But if you're curious to see what happened to Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy after Korea, then I'd say take a look. Oh, and one more thing: why does it have to say "A continuation of M*A*S*H" in the closing credits? I think we can figure that out ourselves, but then again, this show things its audience are idiots.