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Gotta get us to the show.
I'm into the fourth season of MASH. I found a version online without the laugh track - send me a message for details - and it's made it a more enjoyable viewing experience. Sometimes there's a slight pause for a moment of physical comedy, sometimes there's a moment of quiet where it's clear there was a wait for a reaction, and largely, it makes it significantly more immersive.
With the disclaimer of "we all know it's a TV show, this is how we're relaxing," I've seen a few people suggest the timeline discrepancy of three years of the Korean War and 11 years of the series is some kind of Groundhog Day loop, or they're in purgatory, and I hope those people are having a good time, wherever they are. I've seen other people suggest that it can work out if you take this chunk of seasons as a year, this other set as about six months, and that's also entertaining, but doesn't address the discrepancies of multiple birthdays or the characters being able to zip all across Korea and still get home in time for dinner. The theory I've read which makes the most sense, as these things go, is that the series is told as a set of memories - it's all subjective recollections, which serves to explain why so many of the same people reappear as different characters. The faces are remembered better than the names.
The way I like to take it is much the way I love recognizing how the Korean Peninsula looks absolutely nothing like Southern California. I'm very deliberately watching a dramatization of something that happened a long time ago that isn't trying to make me think it's "real" in the manner of shows like Six Feet Under or Breaking Bad, or ones with a heightened tone like Parks and Recreation or Scrubs, or even ones which are abjectly fantastical, like Deep Space Nine or Farscape. It's not going for that effect. It's more like watching a bunch of actors on a stage and understand I'm not looking at the Scottish Moors or a Danish castle or someone's tiny apartment, not really, but for the duration of the play, I can believe that's where they are. The theater - the story - is what makes it real.
MASH isn't aiming for realism. It's aiming to convince me of the emotional truth of the scenarios and make me believe in the emotional lives and journeys of the characters. There's times it's easy to see they're on a sound-stage, and plenty more when it's clear they're all in Southern California, and I spot those with pleasure at seeing how the pieces fit together for the actors to play the characters and let me believe the story they're telling me. It's not a media experience I've had all that often, and I'm savoring it as best I can.
With the disclaimer of "we all know it's a TV show, this is how we're relaxing," I've seen a few people suggest the timeline discrepancy of three years of the Korean War and 11 years of the series is some kind of Groundhog Day loop, or they're in purgatory, and I hope those people are having a good time, wherever they are. I've seen other people suggest that it can work out if you take this chunk of seasons as a year, this other set as about six months, and that's also entertaining, but doesn't address the discrepancies of multiple birthdays or the characters being able to zip all across Korea and still get home in time for dinner. The theory I've read which makes the most sense, as these things go, is that the series is told as a set of memories - it's all subjective recollections, which serves to explain why so many of the same people reappear as different characters. The faces are remembered better than the names.
The way I like to take it is much the way I love recognizing how the Korean Peninsula looks absolutely nothing like Southern California. I'm very deliberately watching a dramatization of something that happened a long time ago that isn't trying to make me think it's "real" in the manner of shows like Six Feet Under or Breaking Bad, or ones with a heightened tone like Parks and Recreation or Scrubs, or even ones which are abjectly fantastical, like Deep Space Nine or Farscape. It's not going for that effect. It's more like watching a bunch of actors on a stage and understand I'm not looking at the Scottish Moors or a Danish castle or someone's tiny apartment, not really, but for the duration of the play, I can believe that's where they are. The theater - the story - is what makes it real.
MASH isn't aiming for realism. It's aiming to convince me of the emotional truth of the scenarios and make me believe in the emotional lives and journeys of the characters. There's times it's easy to see they're on a sound-stage, and plenty more when it's clear they're all in Southern California, and I spot those with pleasure at seeing how the pieces fit together for the actors to play the characters and let me believe the story they're telling me. It's not a media experience I've had all that often, and I'm savoring it as best I can.
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I watched a ton of MASH in real time and felt it was awesome then. Back then in the dawn of cable and before the internet, there was a broadcast lineup that night that most of America sat down and watched all together! So weird to think back on that. Viewing is so different now.
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The set-of-memories thing is the best. I wonder if I can turn the laugh track off on the DVDs.
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Have you seen the notice about the MASH archive being imported to AO3?
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