Fan Theory: MASH is Hawkeye’s Tainted Recollection of Korea
My wife and I have watched and rewatched MASH countless times. We started developing this theory when we wanted to try to justify the glaring continuity issues throughout the show, and this is what we’ve come up with. We are not the only ones to have this idea. I mentioned it in a comment months ago and was informed that there are multiple versions of this fan theory, so I don’t want to make it sound like my wife and I are the originators of this theory. We decided against looking into the other versions of this theory until we have completed our “version” of it, so there are likely many more out there that are better fleshed out than ours, but this is the nuts and bolts of it…
One of the most frustrating parts of being a MASH fan and binge watching it has to be the almost deliberate lack of continuity in it. In reality, the lack of continuity is a result of having an 11 year show depicting a 3 year war, as well as the typical issues that arise with casting and maintaining a coherent story line over a decade.
Another one of my favorite shows is Hogans Heroes, which suffers from similar continuity issues. However, someone has gone to amazing lengths to create an episode guide in chronological order for HH that stands up fairly well to basic scrutiny. No matter how hard you try, it’s just not possible to do the same thing with MASH. So this is how we’ve justified it in our “head cannon.”
One of the underlying themes throughout all 11 seasons is how Hawkeye almost always come out smelling like a rose despite some fairly reprehensible character traits. He also comes off as a professional comedian, not just with his jokes but with his timing, delivery, etc. But there are a handful of episodes where he seems human and, dare I say, flawed.
The episodes that really led us to explore this were the interview episodes with Clete Roberts and Goodbye, Farewell, Amen. He doesn’t come off as a comedian in those episodes. He comes off as someone suffering from severe PTSD who is unsuccessfully using humor to cope with the horrors of war. And it’s not just a single line or scene. His interviews with Roberts and his time with Sydney in GFA are not funny. They are painful to watch. And specifically in GFA, he doesn’t seem like the main character of a sitcom. He seems like the subject of a documentary or a training video for counselors.
So we started wondering, what if those episodes aren’t the exceptions? What if they were displaying the “real” Benjamin Franklin Pierce? And if that was the case, how do we justify his portrayal in the rest of the series?
That’s how we came up with the theory. And tbh, it explains away many if not most of the errors, goofs, and lack of continuity prevalent throughout the series. Our viewpoint is that the series is Hawkeye’s retelling of his time in Korea, told through the lens of someone who has narcissistic and borderline personality disorders as well as PTSD.
The stories don’t have to make sense; the timelines don’t have to add up. They are all retelling of individual events or episodes from his time in Korea, not meant to be taken as gospel truth or investigated deeply for how they line up to other stories he has told. There’s an episode of King of the Hill where Peggy calls out Cotton for his WWII exploits against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan being literally impossible given the timelines. He shrugs it off and realizes he was wrong, but not because he was lying. His stories were how he coped with the war, and they became his memories. Our theory is Hawkeye does the same.
There are a few episodes that seem to offer a peak behind the curtain to the “real” Hawkeye, but idk if I’d go so far as to say they completely fit the theory. Bananas, Crackers, and Nuts, Hawkeye, and Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde fit this mold. If you’re watching it like most people do, these episodes seem to highlight his eccentricities and suggest that maybe he went a little too far from time to time. Watching it using our theory, they appear to be an actual glimpse into his “real” character.
One thing that gives some backbone to our theory is that we rarely ever see any scenes/storylines without Hawkeye in them that couldn’t have been retold by him with second hand information from BJ or Klinger. Whether it’s escapes with Winchester or jeep trips with Margaret or fishing trips with BJ, all of the stories that don’t feature Hawkeye could have been relayed to him for him to retell.
I get that there’s no way the series itself was written from this frame of reference. But the more I dive into it, the more it seems to hold up. I’d love to hear other people’s opinions and evidence either for or against the theory. It’s definitely not perfect, but it holds up pretty well, at least for me. And it gives us another to keep watching the show.