Which do you think is the more realistic/ less realistic comedy and why. I say GP is more realistic in that during the peace time years shown the service was more tolerant of less than perfect intellect in the enlisted corp. MASH less realistic for the blatant disregard of military hierarchy and discipline. MASH devotees seem to feel their love is a very realistic depiction for the time and place. How about it?
shareYeah, Gomer was definitely more realistic than MASH ever was. There's no comparison.
shareYou people are joking, right?
shareYeah, you caught us,
shareWhy? Do you think the peace time services were exclusively staffed by John Rambo-type soldiers? With all due respect to those that served out of a sense of duty and responsibility there were plenty who went in during the 1970's and 1980's because they did not fit any place else. I remember high school in the 1970's and recall all the academically lower performing students leaving the guidance office with brochures for the services, trade school, or lower level community college courses (retail management). I think Gomer re-upped in season 4 so his first hitch lasted four television seasons. The worst stretch for GP is he probably would have gone to the mess hall or motor pool after about 6 or 8 months of being enlisted. Just yesterday at a bachelor party I talked to a guy that was in Irag as a mechanic and he told me there were plenty of less than able guys just where he was (repairs and maintenance). Just like in the private sector there are always a few that have to shoulder some dead weight here and there. Now tell me how ultra-realistic MASH is.
shareI was being a wise guy when I said I was just kidding.
On MASH, you can do whatever you want, when you want, and no one will do anything about it. Hawkeye constantly skips the chain of command and even crashes the peace talks and he's never in trouble for it. The one time he's brought up on charges for mutiny, he's found not-guilty, but nothing is done when he actually does commit mutiny, drugs Frank, covers his face with gauze, and puts him in post-op.
On Gomver Pyle, the Marines respect the chain of command, generally wear their uniforms correctly, are always clean-shaven, usually have haircust within regulations, are all of approximately the right age, and seem to care about the service.
On MASH, you would be hard pressed to find an example of someone wearing the uniform correctly, even when they're trying to do so. Very few people have a proper haircut, including regular Army soliders, like Margaret, and even she will modify her uniform improperly and not wear headgear outdoors very often. In at least one case, she even wears the wrong rank for most of the episode. She doesn't notice and no one else does. In the later years, many of the "kids" on the show are way too old. It's like the Army was made up of old men and you couldn't be on the show unless you were over 30.
Gomer Pyle had a few aspects that were somewhat unrealistic, like how closely Sergeant Carter worked with the lower enlisted men and how he got assigned to work with them after Boot Camp. Also, as you pointed out, they would have had to have gone to a school to learn an MOS, which I don't think they ever did.
As for your point about the peace-time military, I joined the Marine Corps myself in 1987. We had people who joined for all kinds of reasons. For me, there were three reasons: 1) opportunity; 2) patriotism; and 3) adventure. I'm from a poor family and there were no opportunities where I lived. We were 45 miles from the nearest community college and I wouldn't have been able to afford to go there even if it was next door. People joined for all kinds of reasons in those days. Some were barely able to write. We even had one guy from the Phillipines who couldn't speak any English and he wasn't found out until about three weeks into the training. How he'd passed the ASVAB and signed the paperwork, I don't know, but he blended in until then. He wasn't caught until he was on firewatch in flip-flops when a DI approached him and asked him a question he couldn't answer. We had other guys who barely finished high-school and some who joined the military to escape their crappy lives. The funny thing is, the DIs pointed out who each Marine could serve a purpose. Sometimes that purpose would be to save the platoon by jumping on a grenade or to serve as an example of what not to do. One thing about the military is that you don't always get to choose where you go and when you're working somewhere, you don't have any inputs into who gets assigned to your team. With your friend who had the less-than-able co-workers in Iraq, I bet he had his hands full trying to find a use for them. I spent a year in Iraq myself and for the most part, I think I was lucky with the people I served with.
John, thank you for your service. I also know from your comments you are a good guy.
shareWell, to hear me tell it, I'm a good guy. Thank you also for your service. I served andcontinue to serve for my benefit. It's always been something that has benefitted me. You served in a time that morale must have been horrible.
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What you are seeing is an ongoing discussion from other threads and boards. I think we all accept MASH in terms of lax uniform requirements, lax roll call, shaving for the doctors. My issue is nobody would be constantly allowed to question the CO especially in front of other company members or that someone would go above the CO's head or to constantly harass a ranking officer such as Frank. There used to be an active Army base about twenty miles from where I live and they employed civilians there. Civilians were not allowed into sensitive security areas so guys like Gomer were used to mow the grass and other light maintenance. Which is to say guys like Gomer had a place in the real military.
shareTo your point about someone questioning the CO or going over his head, I think it would stop long before that. MASH has a very simplified chain of command, which couldn't exist in a real military unit. It only works on the show because there's a conservation of detail. In a real unit, someone like Klinger, before he was the clerk, would likely never have a direct interaction with the CO of the unit about a personal problem until it had been addressed two or three layers down.
Actions like Hawkeye trying to call the CO of the Second Marine Division would get him in so much hot water from the Marine Corps and from his own unit. This can only happen in the MASH universe because of Hawkeye's uncanny karma. In any realistic setting, he'd be in prison contemplating where he went wrong so many times.
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Yeah, you can flout a regulation that no one cares about, but if you try to disrespect a person, you're in for some trouble. I could name some specific cases in my own past, but I don't think they would be applicable to the 1950s in the Korean War.
Everyone's military experienc was different, I know. I've had people tell me I was lying because their experiences were different, but I think most people would understand that things are different based on time and place.
I can imagine that military service during the timeframe of the Vietnam War was different from other times in our military history.
I was in Korea in 1988 and again from 1993-1994. By then, it was a fully-vounteer military and uniform regulations were strictly enforced.
In MASH, nobody cares about their uniforms, even people who should care, like Margaret. Her hair is too long and she almost never wears headgear, but she's constantly on the backs of the other nurses for violating her rules. That would be an easy one for me. In times when I've had someone point out a minor violation, I've turned it back on them. I think the same would happen with Margaret.
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I can agree that overseas commands and war-time units have relaxed uniform standards. We even had that in the Gulf War. However, you should still be able to find some examples of people wearing the uniform properly, at least a small percentage. On MASH, you'd be hard-pressed to find one or two examples of soldiers wearing their uniforms right and that includes all the "lifers." Because the military is what they've dedicated their lives to, they would still be dressed in the proper uniform and would call people out for not doing so.
Also, the portrayal of Marines on MASH is not at all accurate. They even have George Wendt as a Marine.
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They were generally GI in those occasions and I don't think it's being too picky to say that even in those times, they lacked a military haircut and didn't wear their headgear outdoors, as they should have.
Hawkeye also never wears the ribbons or medals he was awarded. He would have at least had a National Defense Service Medal and a Purple Heart. That's a minor detail that could be overlooked, unlike the lack of a haircut.
That's about as close as he gets to being in a proper uniform and I don't think that would pass, especially when he's up for a court martial. I think his lack of a haircut would be seen as not caring about what
Aside from the disregard for uniform regulations, it always sticks out in my mind when soldiers travel by jeep and don't bother wearing a helmet or carrying a side arm. They also don't carry any canteens with them or spare food or anything that might come in handy if the jeep breaks down. I can only think of one time that Potter makes a big deal out of it and Hawkeye acts like he has a say in it. I don't know why it was Potter would treat Winchester like a soldier in his command and Hawkeye like his adolescent son.
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Yes, I understand it's a TV show and these are actors playing a part. The point of the thread was which one was a more realistic portrayal of the military. On Gomer Pyle, the actors found a barber shop and proper uniforms. On MASH, they didn't.
On MASH, many of the main characters are anti-military, but not all of them. Margaret is a great example. She's regular Army and she still doesn't wear her uniform right most of the time. She's out of uniform more often than she's in it.
I'm not looking for spit and polish, just commenting on the subject.
There are times in TV shows where military characters do what they would never do in real life because it's better for the show or for the camera. If you watch the show, a lot of times, the characters will be standing so close to one another when they talk so they can all fit into the shot. In real life, that would be really creepy. They also stand close to one another when people are shooting at them. That's a bad idea, too. A haircut doesn't fit into that category.
But now we are drifting away from the issue of insubordination. Also, the biggest supporters of MASH love to state how ultra-realistic this show is. Under the circumstances I think the criticism is fair versus MASH being some high school production for the town stage. You can't say a product sets a very high standard and yet have much room for improvement.
shareI enjoy both show equally, but to say that this show is more realistic than M*A*S*H is absurd. The country was upside down in the sixties, partly because of the Vietnam War, but there was never any mention in the show of a conflict or sociological strife. I'm sure the writers intent was to take people away from the madness that we were living through at the time, and to do that, it was necessary to act as though the Vietnam War didn't even exist. That's about as unrealistic as it gets, when a show about the military absolutely refuses to acknowledge what we all knew was going on at the time... that people were dying every single day.
M*A*S*H confronted the war dead on. The operating room was full of blood, just like it is in real life... and just like in real life, people die - you'll notice there's never a laugh track when they are filming in the operating room, because there's nothing funny about what's going on in there. I do hate it when a production gets sloppy like M*A*S*H did toward the end. Seventies haircuts in a show about the 50's is nothing new though, look what happened to Happy Days toward the end of its run. And of course, the insubordination was exaggerated, but that was a major part of the novel upon which the movie was based.
Finally, I went to boot camp back in the 70's, and as another poster stated, everyone's experience is going to be a bit different depending on their MOS and where they did their service time. Both great shows though, very different, but both very enjoyable.
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No, the producers of M*A*S*H fought to have the laugh-track removed entirely and the compromise was that no laugh-track would be heard while there was a scene in the operating room. That is why you have the option to turn the laugh-track off when you buy the DVD sets... you get to experience the show as it was originally intended, with no canned laughter inserted.
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fadedhippie - I agree! I think it was producer Larry Gelbart who said that he thought the audience was smart enough to know when something was funny and when it wasn't.
Years ago I interviewed a wonderful lady named Mary Kay Stearns who had a wealth of information regarding early tv productions. She was a real pioneer of television, having been one of the leads in the first tv sitcom ever, 'Mary Kay and Johnny'(1947-1950), which was also the first show to depict a man and a woman sleeping in the same bed together. Years before 'I Love Lucy,' 'Mary Kay and Johnny' incorporated Mrs. Stearns very real pregnancy into the storyline, and after her baby was born, he became a member of the cast as well. She told me at the beginning, television was so new to everyone that they didn't even know if anyone was watching. They found out when they held a televised promotion and received thousands inquiries that the whole thing was, and was going to be, much bigger than anyone had ever thought. She said when it became apparent to some very powerful people just how many were watching, they started making absurd demands, so as not to offend any individual or group of individuals who may have been watching - it seems at some point, pressure was being applied by certain powerful and influential individuals and institutions... though she did elaborate that during her tenure on the show, no one ever thought twice about depicting a married couple sleeping together, and the pregnancy was also a non issue at the time, but things seemed to change quickly and become much more restrictive after she and her husband retired from television. You've probably heard about the battle producer Bob Mosher with executives over showing a toilet on 'Leave it to Beaver' back in 1957, and the compromise that was made to just show the top half, even though the toilet was integral to a very important scene in the first episode.
You know, I watched M*A*S*H religiously during its initial run, and really became close to the characters and what they had to deal with throughout. It's a wonderful show, but sometimes I don't want to see the horrors of war anymore, even if there are people being very witty while all the carnage is going on. Sometimes I want to escape, and truth be told, I haven't watched M*A*S*H in many years, but I've been watching Gomer Pyle USMC for the last three months straight, and enjoying the hell out of it.
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CBS mandated that GP : USMC take place during a time of peace. It was out of the producer's hands as to if they wanted political tones to the show. I stand by my experiences having lived near a very active army base during the Cold War and having known civilians that worked there. I don't know how one can separate the on going theme of insubordination and anachronism from MASH. After all the topic is which show is closer to real as to how the respective military branch operated.
share"CBS mandated that GP : USMC take place during a time of peace. It was out of the producers hands as to if they wanted political tones to the show."
That is incorrect. If CBS executives had mandated that 'Gomer Pyle USMC' take place during a time of peace, then that's exactly what we would have gotten... a show which took place during a time of peace. Instead, what producer Sheldon Leonard gave us was a program about the lives of a drill sergeant and soldiers serving under his command at a Marine base during the 1960's, which makes it all the more glaring that no mention was ever made of the Vietnam War, one of the most significant social and geo-political events to have occurred in decades.
"I don't know how one can separate the on going theme of insubordination and anachronism from MASH. After all the topic is which show is closer to real as to how the respective military branch operated."
No, the topic is not which show is closer to real as to how that particular military branch operated, the topic is as follows: "Which do you think is the more realistic/ less realistic and why." You and like minds make the claim that M*A*S*H is less realistic because many of the characters display a distain for authority, but the show is actually based on a movie, who's source is a book written by a former surgeon who had served in the Korean War. The characters in his book are an amalgam of many different individuals whom he had met during his stint in the service, and the incidents within are a compression in time of events which had occured while he was serving in a M*A*S*H unit during the conflict. M*A&S*H may go a little overboard at times with its gratuitous display of disregard for military decorum, but it doesn't shy away from what war is really all about... and that is, killing people. Gomer Pyle USMC on the other hand, is a fantasy world populated by soldiers who never discuss war and the very real possibility that many of them will soon be dead. Jim Nabors is quoted as saying "It was very difficult for me to watch the opening of the show because I later found out that many of the men with whom I had been marching had been killed in Vietnam."
I know you won't take my word for it but others will come along and vouch that the Vietnam War was deliberately off limits by the network. Now in your words you say "MASH may go a little overboard" but I would say more than a little. Pierce breaking into the peace talks and nothing of consequence happens to him? Not in the real world or even Richard Hooker's Korea if he went. Not that we had to see the recent Star Trek films from JJ Abrams but those were hardly the first examples of an alternate reality. Green Acres may have been dated in the 1960's but the producer readily stated he incorporated examples of post WWI Arkansas while he grew up there and at that time into the show. Part of it was to make the show economical to produce and part was purely personal.
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I don't think a more realistic approach necessarily means that a show is better, particularly in the case of 'Gomer Pyle USMC.' If it were a drama depicting a certain time period in our history and the focus was to be true to that period of time, I'd say yes... but I think it's a good idea to play things a bit lighter when your looking for a weekly escape from the real world.
Speaking of military oriented sitcoms... I've read that Werner Klemperer and his family fled Germany in the 30's, and that he had such a hatred for Nazi's, he specified in his contract that his character (Col. Klink) was never to win in the end, otherwise, he wouldn't perform on the show.
Not if it were written like St Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues. And when it gets right down to it when those shows aired in the early 1980's they really changed my feelings as to what was a top shelf dramedy. Those shows did not rely on straw men characters such as Frank Burns and one overriding theme. War is bad? No kidding!
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We are not going to see eye to eye on this but what you are saying is why MASH is more relevant to you than GP:USMC. The fact is that a sizable part of the population did not feel a daily connection to what was going on in SE Asia back then for better or for worse. Especially if nobody they directly knew was over in Vietnam.
shareJohn, I know you posted your comment months ago, but if you check back, I hope you see this. Thank you for your insight, and for your service in the Marines. You pointed out some interesting things in both series which, even though I watched them both, never thought about.
I think the Gomer Pyle series figured out a way to keep Gomer and Sgt. Carter together after boot camp, because they believed they had a good combination after the initial episodes and didn't want to break in a new sergeant. But they couldn't very well have had Gomer joining the motor pool and Carter still be his sergeant. For that matter, since Gomer was such a good mechanic, he wouldn't have had all the struggles he had, as depicted in the maneuvers at sea, or handling a bazooka, or other episodes.
MASH just kept going more and more crazy with Hawkeye and pal's disrespect for the military and as a teenager I was troubled by the way they seemed to portray all non-doctor officers as war-crazy, regular-crazy, or corrupt, or in some important way unlikeable. On McHale's Navy, the guys got away with breaking some rule, usually involving drinking or taking the 73 out for non-military use, because before the Admiral could discipline them, they saved the base from an enemy attack. But on MASH, it seemed Hawkeye and pals could do anything without facing any consequences.
I did laugh at the early years of MASH, particularly before Henry (Col. Blake) left. Much of what came later wasn't all that funny and the heavy-handed anti-war, anti-military plots were rather offensive.
Gomer may have been silly in some aspects, but it was at least fairly funny throughout its run.
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Aren't the Marines very different than the Army?
shareJust reading through the responses. Some seem to put MASH on a par with life and death which is absurd. As far as taking 100's of examples then blending into a few characters makes no sense to me. It just creates a distortion from reality. Add me to the list of those who thought the Frank Burns character sank so quickly that he was pointless to have on the show after the first couple of years. I think that most would find the Vietnam War a sad chapter in US history but to say the average American laid in a fetal position over it during its run was a stretch. Most Americans endured a daily struggle to make a go economically then so that is what preoccupied the little free time they had. Most had to do with physical labor to make a paycheck versus the high tech economy we have today. Also, those who lived back then knew people who joined the military versus being drafted and quite a few went to places other than Vietnam. These were real people who had flaws versus being polished fighting machines. Often the brightest and most motivated were not there to be signed by the military so the service had to work with what walked through the door. Gomer was to one end of what was enlisted but he had lots of company in terms of intellect. For the most part the military would send you to where you would do the most good. Take the person in your high school class who was not very capable and then see them in the service happened quite a bit which makes Gomer Pyle the more realistic of the two shows.
shareI watch and enjoy Gomer Pyle regularly, along with The Andy Griffith Show, but it is far from being realistic.
shareI would not describe either show as being ultra-realistic but in terms of one show relative to the other Pyle has fewer problems in terms of structure. Most here (or who were here) who were supporting MASH were doing so out of pure emotionalism. "I don't like war so since MASH is anti-war it is more relevant to me" seems to be the thought process with them. It does not address the discussion of relatively speaking which one is more realistic.
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