M∗A∗S∗H was TV's first black sitcom. No, not like Amos 'n' Andy and The Jeffersons were black sitcoms. It was a sitcom about war. No, not like Sergeant Bilko and Hogan's Heroes. M∗A∗S∗H was more than lovable lunks running around doing nutty things. This was comedy that showed war. Not like a John Wayne epic, but one of small-scale, more human dimensions. M∗A∗S∗H showed the blood and violence of war without ever actually showing the blood and violence. It showed the inside and underside of battle. The loneliness, the fear, the emotional as well as physical casualties. It showed death.

And yet M∗A∗S∗H was a lot of laughs.

Actually, M∗A∗S∗H—maybe the most sophisticated sitcom of them all—was not a sitcom at all, but a minimovie with a laugh-track. (p. 297)

It was unusual in many ways. It took place in the early 1950s, during the Korean War—and it lasted four times as long as the Korean War. It had a daring sense of humor that took itself very seriously; and when it was serious, it always had a sense of humor about it. And, like Silly-Putty, it could change its form. One week it was a strictly-for-laughs sitcom. The next week there was hardly any comedy at all, just the horror of trying to put back together the young men of war—and lamenting those who didn't make it to the operating room. Often, there'd be no situation at all, just vignettes (sometimes in the guise of a letter home).

Once, in a classic episode, the principals of M∗A∗S∗H changed the principles of M∗A∗S∗H when, "interviewed" by a US TV reporter, they talked about their fears, anger, and horror at the war (like a fifties newsreel, this episode was filmed in black and white; in fact M∗A∗S∗H, which took place in the fifties, was the other side of Happy Days. M∗A∗S∗H was Sad Days and Scary Nights). Another relic episode showed the M∗A∗S∗H unit as seen—at bedside level—through the eyes of a wounded soldier whose mouth had been wired shut. Very often there would be no resolution at the end of an episode. Just as there would be no resolutions at the end of our episodes. And yet, no matter how it changed forms, M∗A∗S∗H always managed to maintain its lightning humor, frightening reality, and enlightening insights. (pp. 297-98)

Futility and insanity were the passwords in M∗A∗S∗H. A sense of humor was the survival kit….

More than any other sitcom, the characters who peopled the show were people, not caricatures…. [They] were so real that they seemed interchangeable with the actors who portrayed them. Like its sitcom contemporaries—Sanford and Son, Happy Days, and [welcome Back] Kotter—it had a proliferation of one-liners, but unlike the others, those jokes grew out of the characters' characters, and not just the networks' insistence on a laugh every twenty-eight seconds. (p. 298)

To understand the character of the show, you have to understand the characters. Alone, they were all interesting; together—interacting and reacting to one another—they were fascinating. (p. 299)

Reams, chapters, books could be written about M∗A∗S∗H. But M∗A∗S∗H deserves it—not because it was "the best" (others might be better), but because M∗A∗S∗H helped change the way we think about America. In M∗A∗S∗H the "good guys"—the superpatriots, the gung-ho war people—were often the bad guys. Even more so, no one in M∗A∗S∗H was totally good or bad; it was the first sitcom to paint its characters in varying shades of grays….

Most of all, though, M∗A∗S∗H improved on the history of "service sitcoms," as they were called. Bilko told us that War Is Fun. Hogan went a little deeper and said that, perhaps, War Is Heck. M∗A∗S∗H just came out and said it: War Is Hell.

Perhaps M∗A∗S∗H melded so well because it was a contradiction of terms: war is supposed to take away lives. And here were these doctors in the middle of a deathly war—trying to save lives—which made them subversives. Which meant that we—the millions and millions of Americans tuning into M∗A∗S∗H each week—were harboring war criminals in our living rooms. (p. 305)