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Larry Linville thought the M*A*S*H finale was ''boring''
The "ferret-face" actor prefers rewatching a different M*A*S*H episode.
In the first season of M*A*S*H, Frank Burns has some villain vibes, painted in early episodes as foil to Hawkeye, the series hero. Whenever those two were at odds, audiences were rarely on Frank’s side.
In the first season episode "Sticky Wicket," for example, Hawkeye and Frank are at odds after Hawkeye insults Frank’s surgical skills and Frank ridicules Hawkeye over an unfortunate patient situation.
On the show, Frank Burns sticks around for five seasons before the actor behind the character, Larry Linville, decided his time trading barbs with Hawkeye was done.
And though Linville never had any regrets about leaving the series, in 1986, he once again proved himself a villain in the eyes of M*A*S*H fans when the character actor gave The News and Observer a three-word review of the show’s most-watched episode, the series finale.
"Boring as hell," Linville said.
In the interview, Linville declared that the best episode of M*A*S*H was not its last episode, but an episode from the first season: "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet."
This episode is a favorite of classic TV fans because it guest stars Ron Howard, but for Linville, the episode was special for a different reason.
Linville said when they were filming the episode, he ended up giving notes to Hawkeye that changed the way Hawkeye behaves in a scene where he loses one of his oldest friends on the operating table.
Originally, Hawkeye was supposed to storm out of the O.R. in tears, but Linville suggested that instead Hawkeye be ordered to work on another patient.
Linville preferred the drama of episodes like "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" to the final note of "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," which features less drama in favor of providing closure.
In interviews, Alan Alda has said that the only reason he wanted to do a final season was to do this finale episode.
His tender scene with Mike Farrell at the episode’s end likely packs more meaning for him personally than for Linville, who was by that time six years removed from the series.
Alda was also more involved than Linville in writing for the series as it stretched on.
But for Linville, in interviews, he expressed feeling detached from the show right from the beginning, so his detachment to the finale makes a certain sense, beyond any potential bias he might have in feeling it was "boring."
He only auditioned for the show because M*A*S*H producer Gene Reynolds asked him to, and when he signed on, he only expected to stick around a few weeks.
Instead, his character Frank Burns became notoriously popular for his slimy ways, and he stuck around for five years longer than Linville ever imagined the series lasting.
His negative view of the show apparently stuck around, too, from the first episode to the last.
"When the show began, we thought it was a disaster," Burns said. "We were on the shirttails of a brilliant motion picture. The public and critics thought we were going to be doing F-Troop. They were all over us; they hated us."
Perhaps Linville – whose character was sometimes portrayed as jealous on the show – envied how much more invested Alda was in the show by its finale, and possibly how much he earned.
In the Eighties, Alda became the highest-paid TV actor, pulling in $5.6 million a season on M*A*S*H, while Linville reported in 1986 that he’d only made $6,000 for his final episodes.
121 Comments
I’d like to be notified when the last episode is scheduled to be broadcast again. I was out of the country for the last one so wasn’t able to see it.
Was ALSO BORING because THE
FOLLOWING Happy Days Characters.Were Not Invited to
The Wedding of Joanie and
Chachi Arcola:
CHUCK CUNNINGHAM:
Either Gavan O'Herlihy or
Randolph Roberts
BAG ZOMBROSKI:Neil J SCHWARTZ
MOOSE:Barry Greenberg
EUGENE BELVIN:Denis MANDEL
MELVIN BELVIN:Scott Bernstein
Spike Fonzarelli:Danny Butch
WENDY:Misty Rowe
MARSHA SIMMS: Beatrice Colen
Trudy:Tita Bell
KC Cunningham Crystal Bernard
Flip Phillips Billy Warlock
I'm mostly a fan of The BLAKE YEARS, especially SEASON TWO but a fairweather fan afterward, because Winchester made them bearable! I mised the dynamic. Linville had with LORETTA SWIT, once the writers separated their characters I thought the show started to take itself too seriously.
But a major thing we all need to give the series (creators) for is that it has given us plenty of conversation for all these years, love or disappointed in it. If a series is going to run that long on ANY network, it better have something to say one way or another.
Perhaps that's why it's there.
Back in the spring of 1984, I wrote Linville a letter suggesting that he reach out to the "AfterMASH" people to come onto that program as the new administrator of the V.A. hospital for the 2nd season, since this would have created an interesting dynamic of Frank Burns now becoming in charge of Sherman Potter and allow his character to expand somewhere else. (Writer Ken Levine has since noted in his blog and on an interview that this possibility was actually considered during the show's 1st and 2nd seasons.) In his reply back to me, Linville wrote that my letter to him was "brilliantly perceptive" but that the key people from "M*A*S*H" were no longer involved in the new show "as is easily seen in the sequel."
I do appreciate actors being consistent in their portrayal of characters. Not in a boring way of course. But in finding the right sparks to reveal a little something more about the role as it moves on!
The last episode had its pros and cons, there were some good twists but the episode seemed to draw out the storyline longer than it should’ve been.
It just appeared that when you have that closeness to each other, you don’t want it to end.
Still an iconic show to watch, MeTV has better shows on now from decades past then current TV shows, sitcoms
You mean he ended up giving notes to Alan Alda, not to Alda's character.
As for
"In interviews, Alan Alda has said that the only reason he wanted to do a final season was to do this finale episode."
That's a pretty ridiculous way of phrasing it: the show had to have a final season, whichever season it was. When the show ended, THAT would've been its final season.
Regarding Linville's opinion of the show's finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," he was essentially correct: the extended episode was tedious and not a worthy conclusion to the series, BUT his view may have been affected by the inescapable fact that Frank Burns was replaced as Hawkeye/Trapper's/B.J.'s foil by the more nuanced character of Charles Winchester, played by a more nuanced and skilled actor, David Ogden Steiers, and that the only real feeling generated by the show's finale was in the subplot featuring Charles and the North Korean musicians.
The unfirtunate and inconvenient (for Linville) fact is that Frank Burns was as one-dimensional as a character can be, and that Linville did not, or could not, elevate Frank beyond the simple self-absorbed scoundrel as conceived in the show's scripts.