That M*A*S*H finale really was a bloated mess

I have to say, this episode is a great one. Father Mulcahy goes deaf, although this does not make sense in the finale, in the spin off series, "After MASH", Potter is able to fix the Father's hearing. I personally feel that the show got even better after Henry and Trapper left. Harry Morgan brought a fatherly figure to the show in the form of Colonel Potter and BJ brought a character that is not sex-crazed, who remains true to his wife. After Larry Linville's Frank left David Ogden Stiers replaced him as Charles Winchester, this added to the show further, in later episodes Charles shows us that he is real and he does end up getting along with the other characters.
Whatever anyone says this show lasted 11 years and few shows make it that far, few make it past 1 year. MASH will remain an incredible part of television history for many years to come.

but that kiss was so stiff!! Slip her some tongue, at least, for god's sake.

I loved this show as a kid. Never missed it and even had my best friend over to watch the finale with my family.

This time, I stumbled upon it on late night and felt all nostalgic. Turns out, I had forgotten that the Hawkeye crack up scenario was a part of it - thought it was a separate episode. Forgot the deafness, forgot the bug-out. Mostly what I remembered was BJ and Hawkeye's good-bye and Potter riding off on Sophie.

I find myself in your camp - too much stuff crammed in here but to me, it remains a classic that brings up fond memories of the whole series. I just don't want to watch it again anytime soon.

#4, how could you mind that kiss? The relationship between these two developed steadily as the show moved away from the slapstick style and one-dimentional characters of the early years and as the characters got more complex and the writing improved, it was clear these two cared for each other, very much.

He told a woman to kill a kid, and she did, so they could all live! Wouldn't that drive you nuts? Watching it freaked me out as a nine-year-old.

I think people have overanalyzed this finale. Hawkeye's "going nuts" was a part of the war that people don't like to believe is reality, and to have that start off the finale was a metaphor for the rest of the movie, in which several characters had a "distasteful" reality that settled in as the war was coming to an end. The end of war is usually perceived as a happy time because the troops will be coming home, however, as they wrap up their time in the foreign land, they start to hit realities that leave some kind of bitterness in them. In some psychoanalytic way, this finale was rather powerful. I will admit there were a few things that could have been left out, but overall it was great and will be great. BTW, the camp bugged out because of the brush fire. I remember that scene because Klinger asked Potter if it was such a beautiful sunset, then Potter said that's East, not West, and it occurred to him they had a brushfire coming.

I was only 11 when the MASH finale aired, but I had grown up watching the show in primetime and in syndication. It was my parents' favorite show. Even as a kid, Hawkeye going nuts made no sense to me and was annoying. As an adult, it enrages me. It negates a huge part of the premise of the show. The zany antics part of the MASH formula was all about how these doctors kept from going nuts. Besides, Edward Hermann did a far better job of "witty, brilliant doctor losing it and cracking up" in an episode of MASH years earlier.

I do respect your opinion of the finale. I find it rewarding & one the best finales in TV history, but I would admit it was too heavy handed at times.
I would also like to point out that maybe you would have enjoyed rewatching the finale a little more had TV Land not bloated it out even more. What originally ran for 2 1/2 hours was stretched out to 3 1/2 hours thanks to a network's over reliance on commercial advertising. This is precisely why I don't watch much commercial tv anymore. Soon they will be editing already edited shows for syndication. We'll be lucky to get 15 minutes of the original episode if someone doesn't put a stop to this.
Sorry about the rant, but it seemed like an appropriate forum.

Also: who can love the completely awkward, long, unnecessary goodbye kiss between Margaret and Hawkeye?

I remember the hype surrounding that last ep and also how I cried through most of the ep. I remember it with fond nostalgia and have never seen it again since that first airing. However, I have a feeling I would agree with you on most points if I ever watched it again. For now I will just remember how it was the first time.

I grew up on re-runs of the show. If it is on, I usually (90% of the time) watch it. It still is one of my favorite TV Shows and now that I am older (in my 30's) I catch things that I was too young to understand when I watched it the first time around. So in that instance it's like a re-discovery of sorts.

The only thing that I think they did that was over the top and not needed in the finale was the whole Father Mulcahy goes deaf after being hurt trying to help the POWs. I think that was exessive. Ok... and maybe bugging out. That was too.

BJ needed to leave and then come back. It showed the hetro-man-love between him and Hawkeye.

It was nice to see Hawkeye "lose" it after all. I found it comforting.

Didn't a lot of camps like the 4077th become psedo-POW camps? I think they did.

Anyway... having seen it for the second time on TV Land, I still enjoied it. And yes, I did smile (and even shed a tear) there at the end.