User Reviews

I'm up early on a Saturday morning. The family is still asleep. I better try to get in at least one episode here. I never really watched MASH. I've mostly found that Gary Burghoff was trying too hard in his appearances on Match Game. Here he gets a subplot with an aggressive dog. He sleeps in the tub when the dog takes the bed. This will not be the last animal-related subplot. We had Diana Canova two episodes ago. Here's her mother, Judy Canova. She plays 'P. J. Muldoon,' the ship's cook. Phil Silvers is a legend. Here he plays Captain Stubing's dad. 'We didn't win the big war sitting in our cabins,' Stubing Sr. Says. Good casting. I like any jokes about Captain Stubing's hair. Jane Curtin was an original member of SNL. She was kind of the square one there, and she's the square one here too. Joanna Kerns would go on to play the mom on Growing Pains, a show I never liked. She was also in A*P*E, the Korean giant monkey movie. (You can bet I've seen that one.) Anyway, her hair here is ready for the excess of the 1980s. She wears a bikini but then drapes a robe over it. Is that allowed? 'The code name is screwdriver,' the girls say, as they start their romance game. A passing plumber asks for a 'screwdriver.' Imagine that! He's a hunky plumber who reads Byron and writes poetry. 'Wanna see my cabin?' Doc asks. Man, it was a different time. Meanwhile Kerns falls for a dwarfish nerd. We get three romantic subplots out of this one, but Curtin gets the focus. The romance doesn't click, the comedy doesn't, uh, bite, but I got a little amusement from Silvers in particular. This episode was directed by Jack Arnold, who directed It Came from Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon. On Kafka's Love Boat Scale, this episode gets 2 1/2 * out of a possible 4 *.