User Reviews

I'm one of many who tuned in,in Sept. Of 1983 to watch this series sequel and help it at least get to #15 in the '83-84 ratings. It wasn't a horrible idea but it wasn't the best of ideas either.

I will not blast AfterMASH for it's failure to live up to "M*A*S*H but what I will say is that when a TV series,or movie series or a music act is popular for a long time,it has it's own time and place and when it's over it literally is the end of an era.

M*A*S*H debuted in the midst of Vietnam,soon to be Watergate and just a time in America when things were upside down. At the end in 1983,all of that was over (supposedly). AfterMASH is among the many failed sequel shows like: "Golden Palace"(Golden Girls), "The Sanford Arms"/"Sanford"(Sanford & Son), "Three's A Crowd" (Three's Company) and "Joey"(Friends). Simply,enough is enough the first go 'round.

...and let's not forget the horrid general Spin Off from Cheers, "The Tortellis" !! UGH! *Makes AfterMash look like...um, "M*A*S*H".

The plot lines and writing were very much like the old show and the drama was first rate but AfterMASH lacked a very important ingredient a "star" name. Morgan,Farr & Christoher were famous "yes" but they are and always will be "character" actors. They were great on M*A*S*H but they didn't have enough name or "pull" to attract the numbers M*A*S*H racked up.

What also never helps is network tampering. I could be wrong about the show,maybe being successful... and maybe it would have been if not for stupidly placing it against "The A-Team" (if Happy Days couldn't win,what chance would a new show have?). Then,dumping actors (especially a different Mildred in Season 2!) and the old ploy of "special guest star from the original series." I did like the show with Radar and was glad to see him no longer a virgin and dealing with a real issue.

In the end,the plot with Klinger on the run from the police for belting a guy was just like,"What's the big deal about punching a guy who deserved it?" I also got tired of Sunn Lee saying .."but Max,our baby doesn't have a name!" I thought,well just name the kid already!

As for the results next season,some good shows...especially the final appearance of Col. Flagg at Klinger's court trial,but the damage was done. It may have hurt the actors when it was pulled but for me,well,I simply moved on to the 80s sitcoms I was already watching. Not as deep or poignant but heck,the 70s were long gone.

Five stars,it was painless to watch but better for all after the curtain finally fell. (END)

Harry Morgan, William Christopher, and Jamie Farr were the only ones willing to take their characters past 1983. Here's the result.

A few good lines and puns. We finally meet Mildred Potter. Those are the only things worth mentioning.

The main problem here was all the new characters. They were obviously clones of the originals. A wise cracking doctor. Another doctor with a bad attitude. A rather uptight nurse. Sound familiar? The civilian setting gave it a little more to work with. And the never resolved cliffhanger (Klinger in jail, Soon-Lee about to give birth) was an infuriating way to end it.

And hearing about Alan Alda and others scheduled to make guest appearances, and Radar and Col. Flagg making said appearances, makes me wonder how much longer it would have been before it became "M*A*S*H, The Civilian Years." They should have just let it go.

Loved this show, but at the end of a season klingler was in jail and about to be a father, but the show was canceled and I never got to see the second season, I would love for it to play somewhere so I can quit wondering if klinger got out of jail, it's been 30 years ready for that next episode

I never watched this show until just recently on You Tube. I wanted to be fair and give it a real chance before jumping on the band wagon of denouncing this series as one of the worst spin-offs in TV history. After watching a number of episodes with an open mind i am ready to conclude that this series was not one of the worst spin-offs in TV history, it was THE worst spin-off in TV history. Set shortly after the end of the Korean Conflict. Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy are back in the states working at a VA hospital. After some preliminary introductions to Mrs. Potter and the new cast, the show desperately tries every bell and whistle it can to engage the audience but leaves you missing the good old 4077 in the original series all the more. I don't blame the cast. Morgan, Farr, and Christoper did the best they could but i am convinced that nobody had a clue how to develop this series properly. The scripts were vague and contrived and rarely held your attention. The reason I think it is so horrible is because of the height it fell from. Fair or not, to bear any resemblance, let alone half a title, of a legendary TV show and to come up this short is nothing short of insulting. What were the producers thinking?

I have a lot to say about this one. So, yeah, this series has caught a ton of flack as being the worst spin-off in television history, but is it really as horrible as everybody makes it out to seem? I will say this: AfterMASH was more boring and pointless than it was terrible. I mean, it's bad, but you can tell they tried to do something with it. Tried and failed, but you can tell, for some fleeting moment, something was there. Anyway, so as M*A*S*H was on its last legs in 1983, they aired a 2-hour series finale movie, which was the top-rated event in television history and it held that honor for 30 years! Everybody in the world tunes in to see how the characters would get home after the war. Even people who had stopped watching M*A*S*H by then still tuned in. It was a juggernaut in the ratings, so you know Fox and CBS couldn't let M*A*S*H go at this point. Not when it was still as profitable as it was, but the series was over, and only 3 of the 7 main cast members were willing to continue. How can you continue an ensamble show of that caliber with just three cast members? Make a follow-up, spin-off... and put NO effort into it whatsoever. The network hired back Larry Gelbart, who had left M*A*S*H in it's fourth season to develop the new show. Not sure why he bothered, but then again, I'm not sure why he bothered writing "Hawkeye". First thing he did was create the title AfterMASH, which he thought was the funniest thing he'd ever written in his life. No joke, he laughed about it for hours. Yeah, I get it, it's a pun on the word "aftermath", but is it really THAT funny? No, it isn't. Then Jamie Farr suggested setting it in a stateside veteran's hospital. "It's never been done before." Yeah, there's probably a reason for that, Jamie. Stateside vet hospitals are boring. But hey, the original cast and some funny side characters can make it work... right? So, here's where things take an "interesting" turn, as you have to wonder how Colonel Potter, Klinger, and Father Mulcahy, characters from opposite ends of the country and who have nothing in common, all get together again in one place. If it sounds farfetched, that's because it is. The series begins as Colonel Potter returns home to Missouri, and we finally get to meet Mildred. Potter's got a job at General Pershing Veteran's Hospital in Riverbend, and Klinger's going to be working for him. Yeah, you remember in the M*A*S*H finale where Klinger actually volunteered to stay in Korea and help his bride Soon-Lee find her family? She'd been looking for them for months and hadn't found them. That was a big character moment for Klinger and went against his years of trying to get out of Korea, and this gave him motivation to stay. Eh, they found her family almost instantly, and now they're back in the states. Wow, what an insult. Father Mulcahy joins the gang in part 2 of the two-part pilot, and you remember how his hearing got damaged by an exploding mortar blast, and he was going deaf? Another huge character moment from the finale that got completely tossed aside due to a miracle surgery. Geez, I'll bet if Winchester were in this show, he'd go right back to listening to music.

So, what about the other characters in this series? We've got the hospital administrator, Michael D'Angelo-yes, that's really his name-and the best way to describe him is to imagine Henry Blake if he were not funny or likable. We've also got Alma Cox as Mike's assistant, and she is, well, imagine Hot Lips if she were not funny or likable either. Both of these characters are dull, boring, and just plain mean. There are, however, two promising new characters who actually are likable: Dr. Gene Pfeiffer, a young, idealistic doctor who works alongside Potter, and Bob Scannell, who served with Potter in the first World War. So at this point, the good characters outweigh the bad, but sadly, that was about to change. Towards the end of the first season, the show began to completely fall apart. Dr. Pfeiffer is replaced by Dr. Boyer, who is essentially an unfunny, unlikable Hawkeye. Yes, that's the strategy for AfterMASH's new characters: take likable M*A*S*H characters and give them bland, unappealing personalities and make sure not a single line of dialogue is funny. Boyer has a sullen attitude and lost his leg in the war. Why did they replace Pfeiffer with this sad-sack? Also, D'Angelo gets his walking papers and is replaced in Season 2 by Wally Wainwright, an even more deplorable person. Soon-Lee gets pregnant, and Klinger goes to jail for assaulting a shady real estate agent. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Radar makes an appearance in their tenth episode. He could've joined the cast here, but they instead gave him his own spin-off: W*A*L*T*E*R, and the less said about that horrific piece of crap, the better. Anyway, so in Season 2, they recast Mrs. Potter and changed the opening sequence. Also, they had Klinger declared insane to avoid going to jail, and you know what that means: he gets to pretend he's crazy again. You're not even trying!! But then again, when were you ever? So nothing much else happens as the series mercifully got canceled at the end of Season 2, with one episode never airing.

So, yeah, this is a bad show. Mostly because it's boring. It had nothing to say, nothing to add to the M*A*S*H canon, it was just a lazy, sloppy, incoherent show CBS made them throw together quickly in a vain attempt to save their most successful show of the 1970s. Nothing but a shameful cash-in. It's also painful to watch actual funny people performing such terrible scripts. Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher were too good for a show like this. You could tell they were trying hard to make this show work, but they couldn't do it. The writing and directing was that bad. Apparently, this series was killed when it aired opposite The A-Team in a foolishly cocky display that made them thing AfterMASH would steal their viewers. I pity the fools. The A-Team was a fresh, new, well-written, action-packed character driven show, while AfterMASH was tired, old drivel that offered nothing new or even vaguely interesting. I've seen about four episodes of AfterMASH, and they are boring, dull, lifeless, and not funny. I could get a weak chuckle out of Morgan, Farr and Christopher, because they're naturally funny people. I also liked Patrick Crenshaw as Bob Scannell, but nobody else in this cast can be funny or give a good performance, to say nothing of Rosalind Chao's naive, fish-out-of-water act. I think most M*A*S*H fans disregard AfterMASH and it wasn't included in the Complete Series DVD set, or even released on DVD at all. Maybe it's for the best. I think this series needed better writers, better directors, and a supporting cast that could actually be funny, but maybe that was too much to ask. It was obvious the network was scared of taking risks with it, and when the ratings slightly dropped at the end of its first year, they panicked, which is why they recast Mildred and changed the intro. So, in closing, do I recommend AfterMASH? No. It's boring and pointless. But if you're curious to see what happened to Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy after Korea, then I'd say take a look. Oh, and one more thing: why does it have to say "A continuation of M*A*S*H" in the closing credits? I think we can figure that out ourselves, but then again, this show things its audience are idiots.