Rating: 
Summary: MASH Season V
Review: I love this DVD! M*A*S*H is one of the best shows of all time and I love being able to watch it whenever I want. The intro's to each episode are cute on the DVD...they use a scene from the show and you arrow through play, chapter selection, etc and the words are made to be part of the scene. Very original and I like having a scene from the episode as the intro before I play so I can know whether I want to watch that one or not. Good color and quality picture. Great buy!
Rating:
Summary: A fanatic is born
Review: I was born in 1980 and therefore did not watch the show in its origional form. I have since grown to love it, starting to watch it about 1998 and have all the seasons so far released. This one is one of the ones I anticipate most.
I love how the charictures interact, though its clear that its time for frank burns to move on. This and season 4 are my favorites, since i loved the interaction between Hawkeye, BJ, and Frank. Hopefully I can get into the later seasons as much as i have some of the earlier ones, and this one will be mine at any cost! I hope there are others out there who like me did not grow up watching the show, but have since picked it up and love it as much as I.
Rating: 
Summary: Yawn.
Review: I'm a season 1-3 guy. But when I bought season 4 a few months back, I was surprised how great it was. Episodes like "Der Tag", "The Gun", "The Interview", and several others made the absence of Henry and Trapper (not to mention Gelbert) much easier to take. Where was the drop in quality I was expecting? Turns out I was off by a year, because season 5 is a major letdown. Alan Alda and Loretta Swit especially disappoint as they begin to play themselves rather than their characters, and Larry Linville's boredom with Frank Burns is palpable. Turns out war may just be hell after all.
Rating:
Summary: MASH Season V
Review: I, too am glad they added a play all feature! I enjoyed this season as the ones before, but I am anxiously awaiting season six and the impending arrival of Charles Emerson Winchester III! My favorite episodes are among the later shows, and I am always waiting for the next set to come out. I still think the older TV shows are the best.
Rating:
Summary: season 5
Review: I, too am glad they added a play all feature! I enjoyed this season as the ones before, but I am anxiously awaiting season six and the impending arrival of Charles Emerson Winchester III! My favorite episodes are among the later shows, and I am always waiting for the next set to come out. I still think the older TV shows are the best.
Rating:
Summary: M*A*S*H* : Classic TV Programming
Review: It's not neccessary to watch this series from its premiere episodes. This series has become the favorite of legions of fans worldwide and the slapstick humor that was so rooted in each episode is the reason why. Hawkeye, Trapper John, BJ Hunnicut, Colonel Henry Potter, Major Winchester, Henry Blake. These were outstanding comic characters which made this series so enjoyable to watch.I grew up on this series as a child, forced to watch it with my dad when I was growing up, and now they've released season five. I always resented having to watch this show but I've fallen in love with this this once again. For anyone who hasn't had the oportunity to catch this show, it was the original hospital drama long before E.R. appeared on the airwaves and had more entertainment value than General Hospital.
Rating: 
Summary: Goodbye, Frank
Review: MASH season 5 continues the classic comedy and drama of the episodes before it. The insert booklet mentions that season 5 focuses on developing the show's core characters, and it's really evident. Besides Margret's marriage, the dynamic between her and her nurses is explored. Father Mulcahy, now listed as regular cast, saves a wounded soldier and experiences the horrors of war. BJ experiences his first (of many) guilt trips, and even Klinger is seen in uniform a few times (he sacrifices his dresses in the season opener). However, the big character development this season is Frank, who is completely severed from the group now that Margret has left him. I can see why Larry Linville decided to end his run here - his character had been written into a corner, slowly de-evolving since season 1 (where he was still incompetent, but had his dignity). Even touching scenes, such as him conversing with his mother in "Margret's Engagement," are played for laughs - there was nothing left to salvage. While I really despise the Frank Burns character, that was the point, and Larry Linville will be missed. Thankfully, his final scene has been restored for this DVD set (after being removed in syndication). There are some other standouts this season - Dear Sigmund, where Sidney Freedman observes the 4077, and Movie Tonight, featuring the infamous camp sing-along. However, a few episodes come close to being sappy, particularly one with Hawkeye having a nightmare, and another featuring a football player that has lost his leg. Also, Hawkeye Get Your Gun is overly preachy in Hawkeye's refusal to use firearms. They're still good episodes, but lack the subtlety of MASH's best drama. FOX seems to have regressed in its presentation of these episodes. To reiterate what past reviewers have written, the photoshop cover is awful. Season 4 used the same 3-character format, but didn't horribly mutate the actor's faces like this cover does. Frank is not on the spine, another huge mistake. There is no spanish soundtrack - maybe not a big deal to most viewers, but there's no good reason for its omission, either. The worst though, is that season 5's film stock is really poor compared to the seasons before it. While the other seasons look like they were slightly cleaned up, season 5 has the washed-out look I see on syndication broadcasts. With a gap of nearly half a year between releases, why can't FOX do a better job? I'm taking off a star for FOX's poor treatment of this season, but otherwise this is really another decent set. From here on, MASH changes again with the addition of Charles Winchester III. Maybe FOX can get the set out before June?
Rating:
Summary: Significant season
Review: Most shows after a few seasons being to lose their impetus, but MASH proved to be one of those shows that proved the complete opposite, and especially with the fifth season. By now Harry Morgan as Colonel Sherman T. Potter and Mike Farrell as Captain B.J Hunnicutt were now fully settled in to the full cast as this was their second season. This series would prove significant for two cast members, this was to be Larry Linville's last season as Major Frank Burns and William Christopher's first season as a full cast member as Father Francis J. Mulcahy. I find this strange that they waited until this season to make him so, as he had been there since the first season. My favouite epsiodes from this season includes the one-hour show to open the season "Bug Out" in which the camp had to move en-masse while Hawkeye, BJ and Margaret had to operate on a patient with spinal injuries. "The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan" in which it is rumoured that Hotlips had been abducted and the appearance of the loony CIA man Colonel Flagg wanting to invade North Korea as a result. "Dear Sigmund" of more in the next paragraph. "Mulchay's War" in which was the first episode where Father Mulcahy played the significant part of him doubting his effectiveness in the camp, and "Movie Tonight" where they watch a bad copy of My Darling Clementine and the entertainment that takes place when projectionist Klinger has to repair it. The episode that is one of the very best episodes in all 251 episodes is "Dear Sigmund", significant in that the main character and narrator in this episode is Dr Sydney Freedman played by Allan Arbus. Suffering from depression after the suicide of a patient and writing as a form of self-therapy to Sigmund Freud, he watches how the 4077th observes how they cope with the pressures of war, and the paves the way in the future when the originator of a series of practical jokes reveals himself near the end. This episode written and directed by Alan Alda shows him by this stage becoming a huge part behind the scenes on the show, but in this episode does not show him taking center stage, which anyone who knows the history of the show, knows that is typical of Alan alda realising that is a ensemble show. It was also of no surprise that "Dear Sigmund" won him the 1977 Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series, 1977 Director's Guild Award, and 1977 Writer's Guild Award. An episode and season well worth recommending.
Rating: 
Summary: Slapdash packaging and DVD transfer
Review: My star rating relates to the quality of the DVD transfer and the packaging, not the content -- M*A*S*H gets five stars for every series in my opinion. Instead my low rating is for the appallingly slapdash way in which these series are being packaged for sale. The DVD transfer quality is passable, but this season is frequently marred by digital flaws and skipped frames. The picture quality in the last episode of Season 5 is very poor: some shots look as if they were filmed through frosted glass, and have very poor color saturation. But my biggest beef is with the packaging. There clearly wasn't much thought put into it and it reveals that as far as the publishers are concerned, this series is a cash cow whose buyers it assumes will settle for anything. The cover photo of the Season 5 box has already appeared in one web commentator's list of "hideously photoshopped cover art of the week" -- it's a frankly insulting depiction of Linville, Swit and Morgan. But this isn't the first gross packaging error the marketers have made. Season 3, the one in which Henry dies, shows him saluting with an inane grin in another terribly poor Photoshop montage. How sensitive. And Season 2, horror of horrors, shows Hawkeye *SALUTING* on the cover. Hawkeye salutes approximately three times in the entire 11-year series -- he refuses to salute to superiors countless times. Showing him saluting for no reason misses the entire point of the show. Then there are the portraits on the spines. Each box shows the face of a single character here. Season 1 shows Hawkeye -- no problem, he's the main character. Season 2 shows Trapper. He's only in the first three seasons, so that makes sense. By rights, Season 3 should have Henry, as it's his last season. But they screw up and have Radar! Season 4 shows Colonel Potter, his first series so that's fine. But Season 5 is Frank's last chance to be in a spine picture, and he isn't, it's BJ! What were they thinking? There are exactly eleven characters who unquestionably deserve a spine picture: Hawkeye, Trapper, Henry, Frank, Margaret, BJ, Colonel Potter, Radar, Charles, Klinger, and Father Mulcahy. With eleven seasons, it should have been so easy. Now they're going to be two short by the time they get to series 10 and 11. Maybe Sidney Freedman, nurse Kellye, or Igor will get a picture. Too bad for Larry Linville and McLean Stevenson. Still, they're both dead. Why couldn't a fan have had a hand in producing the packaging, so that it could actually be appropriate for each season? (It gets worse in overseas versions, BJ's picture appears on one of the Season 1 DVDs in the British version.) Why is there absolutely no bonus material of any kind? Finally in this season, there is a "Play All" option, which someone else here asked for. Maybe the publisher reads these reviews. But I guess they know we are going to buy the whole set anyway, so they just don't care.
Rating:
Summary: MASH improved
Review: Once again MASH is great. I love the added "play all" option!
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