CBS (ended 1984)
I recently finished watching the series MASH for the 1st time, I checked out the season sets at the library, and I thought it was good. Is After Mash any good? I know it only has something like 3 characters from the origianl series, and that's fine but how good are the episodes?
I saw most episodes of AfterMASH. It had good intentions. Potter, for example, while working at the Veterans' Hospital, was not in charge of it. Rather he was second to a series of rather annoying administrators who seemed very good at running around him. It was meant to re-energize a familiar character, but it only seemed to frustrate him. Klinger went legit as Potter's assistant, and grew in the role. The Padre dealt with the at-home bureaucracy and ignorance in his unique way. Rosalind Chao started to move Soon Lee away from her immigrant caricature, and Barbara Townsend fleshed out Mildred Potter as we always knew she would be.
Then came Season 2. Townsend was replaced by an older actress who turned Mildred into a shrewish idiot (doubt it was her choice, but...). The goofy admin from S1 was replaced by a wheeler-dealer made of Teflon. Klinger relapsed into a mental fugue, shuffling off the responsibility he'd built since Radar left the 4077th. Soon-Lee became a crying fool. The Padre did what he could, but it was all a mess. A mess that only lasted 8 episodes as opposed to S1's 22. The high point : Gary Burghoff returned as Radar for two eps that ended with his marriage - a marriage that was undone in the unsold Pilot W*A*L*T*E*R, go figure. The low point, sadly enough, was Ed Winter returning as Colonel Flagg for Klinger's trial. Whereas Radar's eps felt progressive and organic, Flagg's felt forced and gimmicky. To make matters worse, Flagg's devolution from dangerous sort to complete cartoon finished up here.
IMO, the real problem was the supporting characters. The admins were like the generals. One secretary was like a Frank/Margaret combo, and a couple of the Doctors recalled Hawkeye, Trapper and BJ and a psych counselor was like a female Sydney----who cares? We didn't watch the show for them, but there they were, taking up all this screen time when the MASH alums started this show because they didn't want to end the original show (Alda, et al voted to end it with S10 and only did S11 with incentives). So why are we watching the adventures of Sidekicks, Inc.?
Had the tone and tenor of S1 kept on, so it would have been for AfterMASH.
