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[sholio]

Current MASH feelings: no thoughts, head empty, only Them. This is not helping tremendously with getting any writing done.

I watched 11x05 "Who Knew" last night and had lots of feelings about certain parts of it which are expressed in this extremely spoilery tumblr post.

A further thought occurred to me when I rewatched it today (shush) that I didn't think about the first time ...

... which is how explicitly Charles's subplot with Klinger and the hula hoops mirrors the beats of Hawkeye's A plot with the dead nurse. This is most obvious in the scene when Hawkeye is talking to the other nurses, who are discussing how they didn't know her (no one knew her) because she always took the night shifts and kept to herself - which cuts to Potter asking Charles if he minds taking the night shift for a week and Charles saying it's fine, he enjoys the solitude.

I don't think the plots ever touch quite that obviously again, but the entire hula hoop plot, for all that it looks like goofy B-plot nonsense, is basically Charles doing his best to pull back or cut off Klinger's attempts to be friendly with him - cutting back and forth with Hawkeye unraveling the nurse's actual life behind her unfriendly facade, which of course leads up the climax when he directly and in so many words tells his friends that he loves them, because he's realized how easy it is, in this place, to die and leave behind people who never knew how much they meant to you, as happened to Millie Carpenter. (And Charles at the funeral definitely looks like he had a feelings bomb dropped on him, although this is also probably because Hawkeye telling him he loves him was definitely not on his 1953 bingo card.)

The episode sequence may well be coincidence, but I genuinely love that this episode leads directly into 11x06 "Bombshells," with its soft playfulness and more open than usual affection between the Swamp Rats. It's not like there aren't earlier episodes like this, but you can easily see it as a part two, the softly friendly epilogue that we didn't get in the episode itself.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I don't remember that episode OMG. I'm sure I watched it. I've seen them all many times, but I don't remember that one specifically. It sounds wonderful!

[sholio]

It was - well, I was going to say delightful, but actually most of the episode was depressing AF in that particular MASH way. XD But that scene with Hawkeye telling his friends he loves them was just gorgeous, and a really nice keystone moment for him after 10+ seasons of repressing his feelings. <3

[sheron]

I will never understand how the fandom took this show, where Hawkeye literally says Charles' (and Margaret and BJ's) names and says I love you, where he names them in his will (including, as you say, leaving Charles his bathrobe as a comfort item he always wears), and where Charles makes tearful telegrams to his sister writing how he nearly lost "those he loves" after the grenade episode, and where he goes and tells Hawkeye the most painful story from his childhood, and then the fandom goes: hmm, I just wonder if they like each other or not. Maybe they simply find each other annoying. LIKE.

I hope fic results from your watching ♥

[sholio]

Fic? What is this fic of which you speak ....

But yeah, I think I can see the general *shape* of how people miss it because there is just so much show and so many different character relationships going in different directions. But it's just such a clear thing in later seasons!

(Also since you mentioned the grenade episode, I'm now thinking about how I believe Hawkeye and Charles might be the only characters who actually use the word "love" for how they feel about the others there; it's really interesting. Also really interesting that Charles's parents way back in season 7(?), the party episode, specifically mentioned wanting to meet the families of the "most important people in his life," so clearly this is coming through in his letters home, whether he realizes it or not.)

[sheron]

I think that's because Hawkeye and Charles are both the feelsy opera-loving "sensitive" guys, whereas BJ, Margaret and Potter just aren't. So the vocabulary is different. It doesn't necessarily mean the feelings are less or more, just they conceptualize their relationship with all the Feels.

[sholio]

Right!! I definitely don't think they love *less* or show it less. But yeah, it's a different way of relating to people, and it's so interesting that Hawkeye and Charles both have that feelsy/"sensitive"/not-typically-masculine side in common, where Hawkeye doesn't really share that with most of his other friends (including Margaret, who is more of a typical guy than a lot of the guys are!). The only other character on the show who was like Hawkeye in that way was Henry, which .... :((((

(It's really occurred to me lately how much Hawkeye shuts down in early season four. I think there's a softer and teamier vibe to season 3 - kiss on the cheek!! - and then he backpedals *hard* from letting people in, in the way he was starting to let people in, after losing Henry and Trapper in one blow. It's not that he isn't close with BJ, but it really takes him a while to feel like he can open up and love people again. Really would be a shame if someone dropped a presumed dead friend on him at that point, wouldn't it.)

[sheron]

Word.

♥♥♥

[troyswann]

MASH metaaaaaaaaaaa *savours*

When I'm not in limbo, I shall have Things to Say!

[sholio]

I will look forward to them very much! :)))