Rating: 
Summary: M*A*S*H Makes a Grand Entrance!
Review: Although season one definitely was not my favorite M*A*S*H season, I'm glad that the series is finally coming out on DVD, and that I have the first season in my hot little hands as we speak.Nothing overly special has been done here. There aren't parades of extras and easter eggs. Just a straightforward good dvd package. The episodes have been given a nice once-over to bring them back to their great khaki-green lustre...audio and video are both nice, and you even have the option to turn off the laugh track! What a hoot! All in all, I just want to say that for M*A*S*H fans, this is a nice treat. I watch the show religiously on F/X channel, and I fret over the day it may no longer be on tv. Now I can fret no longer!
Rating:
Summary: Finally
Review: This is a definite collector's item for anybody who admire the best TV series ever. It was worth waiting for.
Rating:
Summary: Most excellent
Review: Mash was a series I could never appreciate as a kid. But as an adult and watching the many reruns I find that it is an incredibly deep show.
They know just how far to take something before letting us off the hook. Because of that they deal with some very serious issues at times. They make us laugh but every episode deals with something inportant.
With the added bonus of being able to watch the series without that stupid canned laughter is a huge bonus. I wish every series would drop it. We know what is funny and what isn't. By giving us the choice it is finally giving the audience some credit. Well worth the money. Especially as I have not seen the 1st season before.
Rating:
Summary: A dream come true for a diehard fan
Review: Any real fan of M*A*S*H who owns a DVD player needs to invest in this set of DVDs, period. If you're like me, and you're too young to have seen (or remember) the original broadcasts, you won't believe what editors cut out of syndicated episodes. Yes, I know there are more commercials now than 30 years ago, so edits must be made, but you could teach a class on editing by showing the stupid (and occasionally smart) editing decisions TV stations make to lose 3-4 minutes per show. The material is 5 stars, but the video quality is only 3. That's not FOX's fault! This material is almost 30 years old. It's not the pristine DVD pictures we're used to, and it can't be. The producers of the DVD did a great job, but technology can only go so far. The ability to watch episodes without a laugh track is wonderful. It's true that many parts of M*A*S*H had no laugh track, because producers successfully fought CBS to get the laugh track out of the operating room. But removing it entirely is even better. Nitpicks: A bit more trouble than necessary to watch without the laugh track, and you must manually select episodes--you can't watch them back to back. Still, for any true fan of the show, owning this [...] is a no-brainer.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: We need more classic TV like this on DVD. Excellent picture quality, sound, and menus. MASH never looked this good. A great value for the money and a well-deserved treatment for a great show. A must have for MASH fans but also for fans of any 70's sitcom. I hope Fox does more nice DVD box sets like this.
Rating: 
Summary: In the beginning, when M*A*S*H was just a situation comedy
Review: In 1972 America was still involved in the war in an unpopular war in Vietnam, which created an environment in which an antiwar comedy like "M*A*S*H" could thrive. The show was set during the Korean War, but the Vietnam sub-text was obvious from the very beginning. However, what we forget when looking back at the first season of "M*A*S*H" was that it was a traditional situation comedy in the beginning and that it was not, from the start, the great show that it became when it hit full stride. Larry Gelbart gets a lot of credit for creating the series and writing the pilot and the "Dear Dad" episode, but that first season Laurence Marks wrote almost as many episodes. This is of some importance because Marks had been one of the chief writers on "Hogan's Heroes," and there is a sense in which many of these early episodes are more reminiscent of that odd World War II sit-com set in a Nazi P.O.W. camp than "M*A*S*H" in its prime (the show was known as "Hawkeye's Heroes" in some quarters during that first season). Of course, the television series was also burdened with toning down the blood and sex from the Robert Altman movie on which it was based. By this point the original novel by "Richard Hooker" (pen name of Dr. Richard Hornberger) was pretty much completely forgotten except for the names and the places. Today, when you think of "M*A*S*H" you think of Alan Alda, who clearly dominated the show from the beginnig in front of the camera and would have a greater effect behind it as the series progressed. "M*A*S*H" is one of the 10 best sitcoms of all time, and while I will gladly give the series 5 stars for its entire run, it is simply not that good that first season. Several episodes, such as "Requiem for a Lightweight," are easily dismissed as standard military comedies on a par with "Gomer Pyle." Alan Alda was always embarrassed in particular by "Major Fred C. Dobbs," where Hawkeye and Trapper are forced to actually keep Frank from leaving. There were a few worthwhile attempts to deal specifically with the Korean War, such as "The Moose" and "Cease-Fire," but only sporadic attempts to rail against the insanity of war, most notably at the end of "Yankee Doodle Doctor." The pivotal episode for the series, written by Carl Kleinschmitt, is "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet." You can say that the idea of a television Dramedy, the perfect blending of drama and comedy in a series, can be traced to this specific episode. In it, an old friend of Hawkeye's dies on the operating table. For one of the few times in a television sitcom, a sympathetic and charming character died. One CBS executive literally demanded of Gelbart and director Gene Reynolds, "What are you doing? Is this a comedy or a tragedy?" The pair stuck by their guns and because of that episode M*A*S*H was able to deal with both the dark and the light side of life, which set the foundation for the series' best episodes. M*A*S*H was hampered in its early years by the character of Frank Burns, another character in a long tradition of comic characters who are incompetent at some important function. Frank is an incompetent surgeon (versus Ted Baxter the inept news anchor and Howard Borden the incompetent airplane navigator). There is a sense in which the greatness of M*A*S*H is defined by the major transformations of "Hot Lips" into Margaret and Winchester into Charles, neither of which is possible until Frank is out of the picture. In the fall of 1972 M*A*S*H aired on Sunday nights at 8:00 EST in between "Anna and the King" and "The Sandy Duncan Show." However, someone at CBS decided it was good enough to give it the choice spot behind "All in the Family" the following year, and the rest, as someone once said, is television history. Final Note: One of the nicest things about this DVD is that the episodes are UNCUT. For example, in syndication, the end of the second act of "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" is used as the tag scene. Pay attention to the difference when you see the entire thing. Of course, if you are going to watch the entire thing then you need to start with the first season. All television shows evolve and that is certainly the case with "M*A*S*H," as Radar O'Reilly becomes more innocent as the show progresses and Klinger and Father Mulcahy are worked into the ensemble. I think part of the fun of going through this first season on DVD is the anticipation of what lies ahead. After all, you have to understand the initial antipathy between Margaret and Hawkeye to fully appreciate the longest kiss in television history that comes in the grand finale. FIRST SEASON EPISODES: (1) "M*A*S*H-The Pilot," (2) "Henry, Please Come Home," (3) "To Market, To Market," (4) "Germ Warfare," (5) "The Moose," (6) "I Hate A Mystery," (7) "Chief Surgeon Who?" (8) Requiem for a Lightweight," (9) "Cowboy," (10) "Yankee Doodle Doctor," (11) Bananas, Crackers and Nuts," (12) "Edwina," (13) "Dear Dad," (14) "Love Story," (15) "Tuttle," (16) "The Ringbanger," (17) "Dear Dad...Again," (18) "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet," (19) "The Long John Flap," (20) "Major Fred C. Dobbs," (21) "Sticky Wicket," (22) "The Army-Navy Game," (23) "Cease-Fire," and (24) "Showtime."
Rating: 
Summary: English subtitles?
Review: Closed captioned?
English subtitles?
I missed out on M*A*S*H the first time because closed-captioned t.v. hadn't come into the big picture. Looks like I'll miss it all over again!
Rating:
Summary: Miss M*A*S*H
Review: One of the greatest TV series comes to DVD. The humor is great, acting, writing, all great. What's sorely lacking are any DVD extras. I realize that the set is 3 DVDs and many episodes, but perhaps a commentary here or there, especially the pilot episode? Alan Alda would be perfect, having acted, written and directed episodes throughout the series' history. One wonderful feature is the ability to turn off the horrible laugh track. We don't need the producers to tell us where to laugh, there are enough funny parts as is.
Rating:
Summary: Love this DVD!
Review: I absolutely love the DVD, and the fact that I can see the uncut versions of the early episodes. The one thing that I dislike about the DVD, and the ONLY reason I gave it a 4 instead of a 5, is the fact that you must shuffle back throught the menus when one episode ends to start the next episode manually. I hope that when the 2nd season DVD comes out in May, 2002 that they at least give you the option to run all the episodes back-to-back without a break.
Rating:
Summary: 5-Star DVD, historically inaccurate disc design...
Review: First of all, let me just say that releasing the series M*A*S*H on DVD is perhaps the most brilliant marketing decision by 20th Century Fox ever! This series is tremendous and having it on DVD is a dream come true. The picture is wonderful and the ability to turn off the laugh track makes it even better to watch. My only complaint ... is that whomever is responsible for the design of the actual DVD artwork, he/she needs to brush up on his/her American history. Each disc features a character of the show in front of an American flag...one problem, the flag is the 50 star flag used today. During the Korean War there were only 48 states and therefore the U.S. Flag only had 48 stars. The producers of M*A*S*H were able to remember this piece of history when they filmed the shows, but the designers at Fox are apparently just plain stupid. P.S. The movie version of M*A*S*H has the exact same error all over the design of the DVD's and the brochure inside the DVD. Other than that, forget the error in history on the artwork and enjoy this wonderful series. I can't wait for the other 10 seasons to be released!!!!
| 
