MovieChat Forums > M*A*S*H (1972) Discussion > Have you ever known anyone,

Have you ever known anyone,


Who talked like Hawkeye? ,that glib? that witty?,..as much as I like the show, his dialogue always seemed a bit much..

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[deleted]

Yeah I kind of have, Hawkeye is full of self importance and feels that he is the only one going through a war or at least the only one who is being affected by it.

His speech is what I think they call "Didactic" where he is preaching or giving morality sermons and taking on the holier than thou attitude. It takes a lot of charisma to pull that off and Alda/Pierce just doesn't have that as rather than deliver those sermons with energy they are delivered with sanctimonious depression.



Sometimes a movie or tv show plot is so stupid that only the stupid can understand it.

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I think they purposely wrote him to be like Groucho Marx. I mean, as flat as the characters were in the MASH movie, at least they talked like normal people. The TV versions talk like sitcom characters. And the puns... by Season 9, virtually EVERY line of dialogue had a groaner pun in it. I don't know whose decision that was, maybe since the series was leaning more toward drama at that point, they wanted to hammer in jokes to liven things up.

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Given Alda's power it wouldn't surprise me if Alda himself felt that imitating Groucho Marx (which he sometimes did very blatantly) would be some kind of homage or just hysterical.

The problem is Alda never succeeded in delivering sarcasm and dry wit the way Groucho did. Again, it just comes across as depression.



Sometimes a movie or tv show plot is so stupid that only the stupid can understand it.

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Yep, puns,...and aliteration

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Nobody wrote for Groucho Marx, Bucko. Groucho did his own stuff. So did Harpo. When filming a scene for a movie, Groucho once turned to the writers and said, “If you hear anything that you wrote, clap.”

Sheesh!

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No, and that was one of the biggest reasons the show got to be off putting as I grew into adulthood.

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[deleted]

Yeah, I had this guy I worked with. He was in the same position as me. I was 22 and he was probably 50. He insisted he was a Vietnam vet, but I was always suspicious. He would come in and would quote movies all day as if these were things he'd come up with on his own. Sometimes, he would tell the same joke three to four days in a row. When I recognized a line from a movie or a show, I would point it out. That didn't stop him.

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I blame autocorrect.

You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.

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It was fine up until about season four. After that it got to be too much.

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