Like many TV shows, the first season of M*A*S*H isn't its best. Characters seem slightly unfamiliar, acting in strange ways. For example, one episode ("Dear Dad") features a particularly freaky (as in "insane", not "trannie") Klinger threatening, in all seriousness to do himself in with a live grenade. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone, Father. I'm just really tired, y'know?" No laughs here, but M*A*S*H has always been as famous for its serious stories as well as its laughs. That trend starts here.
Unlike most TV shows, M*A*S*H had the advantage of modeling itself after a hit movie, providing a solid premise and character combination. That's not to say however that following the formula exactly (which is essentially what the show attempts to do in the first season) was going to work perfectly. Some tinkering was going to be needed, but you might as well start somewhere, right?
Not only are the characters and their interactions a little more raw and edgy, the editing style of the shows often harkens back to the sex-farce aspects of the motion picture with the hanky-panky being a lot more in your face. Shenanigans that would come across as just naughty in later seasons seem downright dirty in the first season (in the series pilot, doubly-so). Furthering the movie-to-TV formula, most of the incidental characters from the movie, such as Ugly John, the Australian anesthesiologist, are transplanted between the movie and the series. Dr. Jones (nicknamed "Spearchucker" in the movie) appears living in the swamp with the boys, just as he had in the movie, only to be later "shipped out" when the writers discover there were no African-American surgeons in the Korean War (or that an ironic nickname in a two hour movie gets a little grating week after week on television).
We all know M*A*S*H went on to a record setting eleven years on prime-time television and became one of the most widely syndicated shows on television, winning countless awards and spinning off into two other series. One might question the need to purchase the DVD set of a show you can still find on television by smashing the remote control against your head - whatever station you land on, M*A*S*H will be on within the hour. This is not to mention the commitment required to buy a possible eleven box sets, but with few faults, this disc sets up the ideal DVD collection of an much beloved television show.
Video
There's only so much you can ask for from old TV shows put on DVD, especially anything from the 70s, but M*A*S*H sets a high watermark for all other to follow. Tapes seen through syndication have, over the years, ranged from washed out and ugly to just alright. The DVD, by comparison, shines. The images are crisp, the colors bright and there's little to no errors, either from film scratches or encoding artifacts (the advantage of a brightly lit show like M*A*S*H is the lack of solid fields of dark colors, where banding is usually most noticeable). Through out your old tape copies, this is the best copy of the episodes you'll find.
Audio
At least with TV shows you have the chance that it was filmed rather than taped, meaning a better image source. With audio, you're stuck with the limits of the format - recorded for a world still content with mono, M*A*S*H has little in the way of aural advantages. However, much like the discussion of image quality above, the quality of the mono track is markedly better on the DVD than what you'd find on TV through syndication. Whereas the TV episodes often contained garbles and drop, pops and clicks, the DVD sound is as good as it's ever going to get.
To try make up for the quality of the sound, Fox has gone out of their way to provide quantity, including mono tracks with and without the laugh track as well as a terrible mono French dialog. It sounds like it came off a Radio Shack cassette tape. If you thought the mono track is lacking, you should give a listen to the language tracks with the authentic, 1970s bare-minimum foley. You'll never take the rustle of tent canvas for granted again.
Does a spiffy front-end count? Really, the only extra this disc has is a Spanish subtitle track and I hate listing language subtitles as "extras." Really, given the nature of the technology, shouldn't these things be a gimme? After all these years the show has definitely been close-captioned and yet there's no English subtitle track. That's pretty sloppy.
Having seen out-take reels for later seasons, I was surprised by the lack of extras. The DVD slipcase hypes the inclusion of "fan-favorite" episodes, which one would think is a natural for commentary by any of the remaining actors, but alas, no. What, like William Christopher doesn't have time on his hands? And given the amount of work fans have put into archiving every detail of the show, a triva sub-title track should have been a shoo-in, but again, nothing. On the bright side, as of this writing, there are eight season sets left to go. Perhaps the future will bring happy surprises.
Summary
With most shows, you can say, "Well, there are only a few seasons, I can get into this." With M*A*S*H you're committing to one of the longest running prime-time series on TV. If you're a fan (as I am) it's a must. If you're not a fan, I still recommend it, but you might consider reading the back of the box to see if it contains a favorite episode first.
