At its inception, MASH happened twenty years in the past; now, this roughly 45-year-old show is happening 65 years in the past. A gap this size speaks to nostalgia more than history. MASH was neither the first series nor the last to use this gimmick—as it happens, adults’ feelings for their youth are extremely powerful. “Happy Days” is the salient example of a beloved sitcom that reminded adult viewers of their teens, but the formula would be just as successful for semi-serious fare like “The Wonder Years” and “Freaks and Geeks.” Even kids who never lived it could get into the odd customs of their parents’ generation. Consider “That ‘70s Show,” which ran for eight seasons. By the way, where’s today’s sitcom set in 1998, about college kids who share a Dell computer and say talk to the hand? I’m ready. I want it.
The ‘50s artifacts in MASH are pleasing to look at, some shabby (battered ammunition boxes), some shiny (enamel cups, glass jars of blood for the IV). Burns loves listening to Glenn Miller; Klinger copies a dress from a Rita Hayworth movie; Hawkeye calls General Barker “dad.” Production design is fairly faithful to the era, and the army setting with its bare-bones equipment also provides leeway. Still, people have Seventies hair and makeup and faces and bodies. Especially as the series moves into its late seasons and Korea is no longer twenty years ago but thirty, we begin to lose the sense of time altogether. MASH is its own time and place, as if visited via a parallel-universe portal.
To add yet another dimension, here in our age the Seventies is now long enough ago that it’s attained “history” status. Highbrow TV projects like “The Deuce” and “Mindhunter” can treat the era with reverence, and we are at a point where MASH the series is less a good little comedy than a substantive cultural document. It survives! Moreover, as a subject of study today, it’s far more interesting than it was as a TV show in 1972: new layers of MASH’s relevance are presenting themselves at a fast rate. There’s a lesson here, and my mystic side is dying to believe it’s proof that time is immaterial.
But maybe it’s simpler than that, just something about everything coming back into style sooner or later.
This photo to me feels like waking up from a lifelong dream, like a familiar voice that you hear for the first time, a shot of nostalgia straight to the heart…
The show is about a group of kids who find themselves transported to the fantasy world of D&D by way of a portal and now seek their way home.
The show was canceled in 1985 after 3 seasons, without a proper conclusion. The kids never found their way back home.
With D&D growing immensely since 1985 and especially recently with the prevalence and popularity of D&D podcasts, I think this is a great time to bring this show back.
The new show can begin more or less the same, except in present day. A group of kids gets warped to the fantasy realm. But here’s the twist. It’s the same fantasy realm of the original series. And the original cast of kids is still trapped inside.
Have the reboot’s cast meet the adult versions of the original cast. See what became of these characters after nearly 40 years inside the fantasy world.
I LOVED THIS SHOW SO MUCH. (Seriously: it was the last morning cartoon of the lineup when I was a kid, and I only got to see if it we weren’t doing yardwork, so only occasionally. I didn’t know anyone who played D&D, didn’t really until I was out of college, but damn I loved these adventurers and their wacky hijinks.) I would watch the hell out of a reboot.
~Hubo un tiempo en mi vida, donde tenia muy claro lo que queria hacer, mis sueños, mis metas, solia tener confianza en mi, creia que en el futuro lo podria lograr todo, pero un dia, sin darme cuenta, desperte perdido en este mundo, sin lugar, sin camino, viviendo sin ningun proposito, y despojado de toda esperanza…~
~Es realmente triste no poder tener el control total sobre mi vida, si me va bien o me va mal, pero lo que si puedo hacer, es seguir intentando alcanzar mi sueño hasta el final, pase lo que pase, triunfe o fracase…~
