Yankee Doodle Doctor

Did You Know?

• This is one of the first episodes of M*A*S*H to deal strongly with anti-war themes.
• In April 1973, this episode was cited by Newsweek as an example of 'irony at its most abrasive'.
• The guest cast includes Ed Flanders as Lt. Bricker and Herb Voland as Brig. Gen. Crandell Clayton.

Plot

Lieutenant Bricker is making a documentary about Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units, and General Clayton recommends the 4077th. Hawkeye Pierce agrees to star when faced with the possibility that the role could go to Frank Burns. Discovering that the documentary is turgid propaganda, Pierce and McIntyre destroy the film at night by exposing it to light. They persuade Blake to let them make their own film and turn it into a comedy, casting Hawkeye as a Groucho Marx-type doctor, Trapper as a Harpo Marx-esque surgeon, and Radar as their hapless patient.

The final scene is a somber monologue by Hawkeye about the grim realities of war, delivered at the bedside of a patient in the post-op ward. Blake is mortified and Clayton is initially unimpressed, while the rest of the crowd loves the film. Afterward, Clayton tells Blake to destroy it but save one copy for him, so that he can have something to laugh at once the war is over. He also intends to use the final scene in his own documentary.