The fourth season proved crucial to the show's long-term success few series up to that time had been able to lose one of their primary cast members, let alone two of them, while still managing to keep their audience. The last appearance for both Henry Blake ( McLean Stevenson) and "Trapper" John McIntyre ( Wayne Rogers), its tragic shock ending – Henry's home-bound plane was shot down "there were no survivors" – delineated the line between "Funny M*A*S*H" and "Dramatic M*A*S*H", as many fans would later divide the series. "Abyssinia, Henry", the final episode of the third season, was one of the major turning points for the series. ![]() The show is often cited as TV's first true Dramedy. M*A*S*H was first presented as a wacky, slightly edgy sitcom based on Robert Altman's hit movie – which was itself an adaptation of Richard Hooker's novel – but the series moved away from strictly comedic storylines early in its run (starting with Season 1's "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet"), often incorporating dramatic plotlines in conjunction with comedic ones in the same episode. There the doctors and nurses perform "meatball surgery" and otherwise do what they can to patch up the wounds (physical and/or psychological) of the war's casualties, all while staving off their own stress, fear, boredom, and fatigue. The setting is the 4077th MASH ( short for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, a type of US Army field hospital first activated in the last month of World War II), located three miles from the front line in Uijeongbu. The show aired on CBS for 11 seasons (1972–83) – seven years longer than The Korean War during which it takes place. One of the most commercially and critically successful series in American television history, M*A*S*H is – in the words of its lead character, "Hawkeye" Pierce ( Alan Alda) – "finest kind".
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