Season Seven gets off to a shaky start with "Commander Pierce," an odd choice to reintroduce the characters of the 4077th, the mobile army surgical hospital stationed just three miles from the front lines during the Korean War. With Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan) away, irreverent surgeon Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce (Alan Alda) is put in charge of the camp, but as Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit) points out, "it's not so easy to play the clown when you have to run the circus, is it?" In short order, Hawkeye becomes a royal pain in the ass, not the best way to season premiere your show's leading character.

The season's best episodes are those which break away from the established formula, which in M*A*S*H's case had pretty rigidly had become intercutting an A- and B-story, the latter usually broadly comic (often involving Jamie Farr's Klinger), while the A-story had more serious elements focusing on one of the series' leads. "Point of View," a famous episode, is shot entirely "through the eyes" (i.e., the camera lens) of a wounded soldier, tracing his journey from the battlefield through triage and the operating and recovering rooms at M*A*S*H.

"C*A*V*E," another unusual show, has the entire camp bugging out and ultimately seeking refuge in a cave -- only Hawkeye has crippling claustrophobia. And in "Preventative Medicine," the conundrums of doctors patching up soldiers only to return them to battle to kill or be killed, as well as the fundamental differences between Hawkeye and BJ, are explored in this especially well-written show.

Many programs, however simply repeat basic plots from earlier scripts changing only the characters involved. There are familiar shows involving characters doing business with dangerous black marketeers, another show with Hawkeye and BJ Hunnicut (Mike Farrell) trying to save a Korean boy from being conscripted into the Korean army, the inevitable visit from wacky spy Colonel Flagg (whose silly antics now seem out-of-place on the more serious show), psychiatrist Sidney Friedman (Allan Arbus), and one-shot romances involving Hawkeye, Colonel Potter, and others. One show, the one-hour "Our Finest Hour," brings back Clete Roberts for more black-and-white interviews with the show's principals, but it's mainly an excuse to compile a cost-saving, self-congratulatory "best-of" show of highlights from the previous six years.

A production sloppiness which became quite pronounced in M*A*S*H's final seasons has its roots here. Rising production costs, probably mostly inflation and escalating salaries, presumably led to the decision to rely more on the studio-bound M*A*S*H rather than the location one (filmed at the Fox Ranch in Malibu) which in seasons past had been used to film most exteriors. In later seasons the much less convincing studio set is used heavily and less effectively. Season seven is also the year that actor Farrell grew BJ's trademark mustache, one of numerous anachronisms (e.g., Swit's singularly '70s hair and makeup) which in turn have dated the show for 21st century audiences. (Of course, the Robert Altman movie did the same thing, but for different reasons.)

Complaints aside, if its seventh year isn't a good as its sixth, M*A*S*H was still one of the top four or five shows on the air in 1978-79, and probably still ranks in the top ten of all-time.

Video & Audio

Century City, we have a problem. While most of Season Seven's shows look noticeably better than the earliest M*A*S*H DVDs, this one has a major flaw. "Our Finest Hour," originally one-hour, is presented in two half-hour syndication versions. Menu screen text states that original elements for the one-hour version were "damaged and proved to be unworthy." Given how awful these half-hour versions appear -- like a bad VHS tape -- the hour cut must have looked like dog meat. In fairness, this episode appears to have been finished (i.e. edited) on videotape, which may explain their abysmal condition. However, the combined running time of the two 30-minute shows is just 45:13, suggesting what was used was either time-compressed or further cut.

The rest of the shows, based on a sampling of all three discs, look fine, as is the Dolby Digital 1.0 mono, available with or without the canned laughter. French and Spanish tracks are available.

Parting Thoughts

M*A*S*H Season Seven isn't the series' best, but by no means is it its worst, either. The show was near the peak of its popularity and coasted when it should have stretched a bit more. But this will be a must-have for those who've stuck with it this far, and overall they will not be disappointed.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. His new book, Cinema Nippon will be published by Taschen in 2005.