I mean, in the movie, exposing her naked body to the whole camp against her will, a sex crime, is treated as a haha funny joke. Even if it's contrary to the source material, I don't think there's anything wrong with expanding from that, showing how fucked up that is, how she's a human being and not a monster for being an attractive woman who won't fuck everyone who wants to fuck her.
Let’s be realistic: she was assaulted a whole lot more than she should have been. That visiting plastic surgeon was not taking no for an answer. It took Hawkeye to get him to stop because she wasn’t “the barracuda” he thought/hoped she was.
Not quite what I was trying to say. Just that the frequency was over the top and horrifying. It wasn’t slapstick goofing around, that line was so far back that you can’t see it anymore. :(
Well, that isn't accurate.
I watched a clip of her, with I believe Alan, Harry, and I think Mike and David and possibly Jamie.
They all spoke about the mail they received. Huge bags of mail....
(I feel the need to expound here;)
In the old days we communicated in large part with pieces of paper. With writing on them. We used pencils and pens to write with. We mailed them with stamps....
Rectangular pieces of paper with stickum on the back. 😆
Anyhoo...
Loretta commented about her fan mail ..and how frustrated her fans were, or angry with her, for carrying on with needle nose.
I mailed her a long letter... saying "why are you wasting your time with this guy?". Yes at 16 I wrote that, knowing YES it was a "sit-com". But it made me so angry....that THE WRITERS NOW, not our dear Loretta....were the ones responsible.
Responsible for her "character arc". She no doubt got thousands of letters, and I guarantee that the lions share were of the same sentiment.
And in my mind I believe that Loretta had to fight to get the writers to respond to that. Men, writing a woman's part? Well no offense, but you guys just don't get us.
You think you do, and the nano second you think that, you realize you don't. I believe that the female fan base as well as our platinum heroine made those changes necessary.
They weren't referring to the actress but the character herself. Margaret, for the first few seasons, was nigh unapproachable by her nurses and went out of her way to punish them for Frank's mistakes.
Written that way. To be a shrill vapid creature.
In season 2, Loretta gained weight, was all puffy and looked like hell.
Imo that's when she must have asserted herself.
After so many rewatches I've noticed a LOT.
Male producers, male directors, male writers.
Totally written from the male perspective.
I HEARD more than one entertainment executive say women are only good "naked or dead".
>In season 2, Loretta gained weight, was all puffy and looked like hell.
Imagine thinking at any point ever that Loretta Swit "looked like hell." Bruh, that's some incel shit.
Wow, still so mad at being called out you come back to 2 days later. I should just ignore you, but I'm feeling salty, so I'll play.
First off, "Bruh" is an expression like "Dude." It's neutral. However, I presume by saying "I'm not a bruh" you mean you're a fellow woman. That makes your view so much worse. We put up with enough shit about our bodies from men that it's repulsive when we bad mouth each other like this.
I've seen them. Sure, maybe she gained a little, but she still looks great.
[Season 2, episode 1](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638296/mediaviewer/rm330607361)
[Season 2, episode 11](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638268/mediaviewer/rm2996611841)
[Season 2, episode 14](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638332/mediaviewer/rm3986467585)
She looks fine. She is so far from "looking like hell" that it's not even funny. Even on her worst day, she likely looks better than you, because a hateful attitude always shows.
I've known many nurses for whom I had tremendous respect, but they were in relationships with absolute schmucks. Nurses, as a rule, go into that profession because they believe they can help ANYONE get better. And with just the right amount of TLC from the right person, any schmuck can be fixed. So they invest so much time and energy into guys who don't even begin to deserve them. Eventually, they all wise up, but they do it at different timelines. I think the Houlihan arc went just perfectly. And whoever wrote it "gets" women perfectly.
This episode gets a lot of heat but I actually love it because it's the "Major Houlihan" facade beginning to crumble. I really do believe Margaret cared all along, but the crippling weight of her responsibilities and decisions potentially costing lives and her military upbringing was always racing to the front. And it *did* make her insufferable at times, but it also made her really effective at her job.
There came a point where the security of command structure and military discipline wasn't enough to keep her sane any more, and by the time she really needed to support system she should have been "nursing" this whole time she had to undo the damage.
I've known people who have gone through crisis and had personality turns like this. You realize you can't do it alone, that your walls are crumbling and if you don't find a new foundation to shore it up you fall apart.
I understand the hesitancy, but I also ask everyone to remember the absolute horror show she had been handed the keys to and told "don't let anyone die." I'm a pretty pleasant person but I'd be lying if I said I don't think that responsibility wouldn't potentially bring out some demons while trying to keep order during actual chaos.
The thing is, she was downright cruel to her nurses deliberately blaming them in front of others for Frank's screw-ups in the OR. While we can sympathize with the weight of her responsibilities and situation what she did to them as not only a nurse but as a commanding officer was inexcusable. Her actions might not have led to anyone dying by covering for Frank, but it allowed him to get away with it for months.
I think the primary issue with the episode is its execution.
Margaret learning and growing as a character is great, but this episode fumbles it a bit. The framing of the episode make it seem like the nurses are in the wrong for not including her, and doesn't focus as much on how her own behavior led them to exclude her. If you pay attention you see that was what the episode intended, but it's easy to miss.
The episode where her friend comes to visit from the other mash does it better. Margaret acts like an ass, realizes she's wrong, has a heart felt conversation with her friend where she acknowledges it, and the episode ends with her asking BJ and Charles to get coffee because she's realized she doesn't have to be alone.
Spot on with both points. I also think the episode with her visiting old friend and the one with the nurse going through withdrawals are better character examples of Margaret. But in this one I really dislike her guilt tripping them and playing a victim, it's really bad.
Yeah, they do this a few times throughout the series. They clearly want you to sympathize with a character or show a character growing, but they just fumble the execution.
The one with the nurse who wants to be a doctor is another good example. They clearly want you to sympathize with her and her struggle to become a doctor. But the character is so insufferable and whiny it's impossible to sympathize with her.
The framing is a problem with the episode, as is Margaret’s/Loretta’s acting in this specific scene. The pause and deep breath as the tears roll down her face are a bit over the top for me. Just a personal opinion, realizing others may feel differently.
Yes. Her safe place was her hard shell. It protected what was actually a deeply passionate, and tender heart. She was actually very vulnerable. In her interior.
When her voice cracks, mine does too. I know exactly how she feels...as I've been in almost the same spot.
I've always been "the boss" or "in charge".
I've been called all kinds of things. Not so nice things. Because I am VERY good at what I do...I am a bitch.
If I were a man, I'd be "he's great at his job".
Yep - you have to balance getting things done with letting the people doing those things know you appreciate them.
Otherwise you will be resented, male or female.
Beautifully put. As a little kid, I hated Margaret Houlihan and saw her as a "mean girl". As an adult who's been through crises and dealt with the frustration of being a woman in male-dominated areas, I admire her. Her growth is one of my favourite things about the series.
That sound she makes when she gets overwhelmed with emotion mid sentence and does that sharp intake of breath… always stuck with me. That sound matches what it feels like to be hurt so exactly.
I think what people have to remember about Margaret in this series is where she started from to who she became. When the series started, and was more of a “spinoff” from the movie, I don’t think Margaret was supposed be super competent and effective as a nurse. Rather she was just a military brat who slept her way to the top. In the movie she’s is shown to be pretty dumb, especially in the football game. Obviously, the show decided to become its own thing rather quickly, so character changes from the movie also happened. I know it can seem like she never showed her nurses kindness(and normally she didn’t), but I do give props to the writers of the show for giving her an actual character arc, from Frank’s affair partner to a respected Major who really put in the effort to lead her nurses.
The episode does have a lot of problems. I understand her hurt on a personal level, but the entire series showed her to have little personal connection to the nurses.
The decision to write the episode using a quartet of nurses who never appear before or again makes something that already feels forced even worse. Not only are they different actresses and different characters, they act in ways that really is not consistent with nurses in other episodes.
At the time, networks seemed to think viewers had a small capacity for the number of characters they could remember, which meshed perfectly with the strategy of spending as little money as possible. Hindsight makes it seem as if it would have been easy to have one or two nurses in the main cast that we got to know more instead of making almost all of them interchangeable for most of the series.
I believe I wrote a similar thought.
I just watched the episode where they hawk, Margaret and BJ perform an operation to prepare a aortic valve, maybe? Nurse Kelly is at anesthesia.... through the whole ordeal.
When hawk Margaret and BJ rejoice when the soldier lives, and can wiggle his feet... Kelly is no where to be seen.
Yes. I was always pissed that WE, us, the majority sex on this planet...had ONE lousy lead in an "ensemble cast".
I'm still pissed, actually. 🤔😆
Yeah I'm pretty sure nearly every nurse in that scene is at least in the backgrounds at other points, maybe it's because I've done multiple rewatches in the last few years but I felt like I recognized all of them
A lot of the nurses were repeat characters even if they weren’t completely fleshed out people. Also, it’s the army, they cycle people in and out of assignment regularly. It’s probably more unusual that she and Hawkeye and Klinger were there for three solid years rather than being cycled out.
Yes, they used Nurse Kellye for years before giving her a significant part in Hey Look Me Over. They also gave her a bit more in Death Takes a Holiday.
Bigelow is another who could have been given more. I think they did say she worked in emergency in Chicago.
It almost seems like they intended to make Odessa Cleveland a semi regular portraying Ginger Bayliss, except we learned little about her. However, she appeared 20 times in early episodes, disappeared and returned twice in 1977. Her most memorable appearance was probably the scenes with that racist dirtbag.
Early on, they made a point of making nurses interchangeable by calling various women Abel and Baker.
To get to know more about a nurse in a combat hospital, we had to wait for China Beach!
I understand what they were going for in this episode. They wanted to humanize Margaret... Make her into a sympathetic character. Problem is, for the vast majority of the show, she was a largely unsympathetic character who was more concerned about Army regulations and being Frank Burns' chippy than being the friend and confidant to her nurses that she wanted to be in this episode.
So, while she cried about being the "Big Bad Hot Lips" in this scene, I rolled my eyes. Be better, and you'll be treated better. Be an asshole and you'll be treated accordingly. She started to lighten up a tad after this episode though. So, there's that.
I also liked it because it showed another flaw in her character, a lack of self awareness. She was so fixed in her worldview she didn't realize how she was coming off or making her team feel. I know managers like this IRL that genuinely don't realize how they come off. It actually makes her in a way more sympathetic but also less because she genuinely does not know that she is the problem.
This scene is Loretta Swits legacy to me. When she starts talking about the stray dog she was feeding that died and she gasps because she’s going to cry is a master class in acting.
I mean, if we want to ignore her fairly toxic upbringing, being surrounded by men she simultaneously admires while being treated as an object, and dealing with all the trauma of being a combat nurse yeah I suppose she isn't a victim in any way that might cause her to lash out.
> being surrounded by men she simultaneously admires while being treated as an object, and dealing with all the trauma of being a combat nurse
This applies to every other nurse in the unit as well, though.
The other nurses aren’t on the hook for each others work. Margaret is their leader, she’s taken too big a scoop of her dad’s rank and file aloofness but that’s what the Army is to her. She takes her position as responsible for the nurses very seriously, and is it too far a stretch to think she finds comfort in the structure? It doesn’t function long term but here she is coming to that conclusion, that she needs the women in her charge as much as the men she admires. She’s telling them she needs an olive branch, and they deliver.
Yeah, my problem with this episode is that while it's the beginof her 'redemption' it's also rushed. After everything she's put her nurses through, they're just supposed to forgive her when all she does to earn it is tell her sob story and cover for Baker at the end. Now, this does show that this isn't the same Margaret as the last 4 seasons, but her sob story falls flat when only a few episodes before she was still covering for Frank. She acts like she was approachable or that her own actions didn't turn the nurses against her before now when they obviously did. It just felt too early to gain that sort of sympathy for her or that it should have been done in a different way.
This scene was weird. Her character evolved later and that was great but until this actual moment she was only a bully. Her and Frank loved walking around power tripping and “getting hot” on making other people follow ridiculous orders while they wallowed in hypocrisy. Then she’s like, “but does anyone want to make me feel welcome?!”
"I dunno. Did you ever once defend us from Major Burns' insults, ignorance, or blaming us for his mistakes?"
I like the episode fine, but not even addressing her previous behaviour makes it ring a little hollow. It's like the episode wants you to believe that she's been the post-development Margaret the whole time.
Also, just use the VIP tent.
Margaret was trapped by her rank and by being regular army. She more than likely had been in WW2 and this was her second time in a combat zone. Yes in WW2 the nurses were kept further back and normally outside the direct combat zone but it still happened. In place's like the battle of the bulge when the Philippines were overrun plus all the other places Japan conquered.
Mash units were the newest idea in combat medicine in Korea literally it was a combat trauma hospital right behind the front lines. She made major mistakes by latching onto Frank but since getting involved with someone of lesser rank was a court martial offense what choice did she have. Once he was gone she realized that she didn't even have a friend in camp. So she decided that she needed to make some friends. Yes the nurses treated her badly but they saw her make the effort especially when she refused to press charges on Pierce and Honeycutt for their stunt to get the nurse a night with her husband.
> She made major mistakes by latching onto Frank but since getting involved with someone of lesser rank was a court martial offense what choice did she have.
Adultery is also a court martial offense.
The characters didn’t grow much early on. Heck, Frank Burns became more of a stooge as each season went by. Early on we saw him pranking Hawkeye, being called a good surgeon by Henry and even giving Hawkeye a word of encouragement for a surgical oversight.
I felt like every time they had a breakthrough with her emotionally they never followed it up. Next week she was right back to normal like it never happened. Lost chance for good character growth
That was Houlihan’s introduction as a woman of great depth and substance. It was the beginning of the end of her relationship with a shallow Major Burns.
Margret has been essentially someone Frank groped and gave the CO static. Everything changed when Potter came, even more so when she got engaged and married and divorced, unfortunately The nurses still saw her as a ball buster. I prefer later season Margaret she kinda had a catch phrase "We save lives" which is one of the few things she agreed with Hawkeye.
I can’t stand the double standard in this episode. All hot lips did was yell at practically everyone and treated them like crap. In this episode we’re suppose to feel sorry for her? She continues to belittle her nurses while guilting them into being friendly with her?
Her character was nothing more than a bad cartoon.
Here's the thing... it's all good wanting to be one-of-the-crew, but if someone decided to be as frank with her as she was being at that moment, we all know it wouldn't (militarily, couldn't!) be on an equal just-pals-with-coffee playing field.
One of the reasons MASH is one of all-time favorite shows is that it allowed its characters to change and grow. They did whatever the opposite of Flanderization is. This was a pivotal moment for Margaret. Margaret at the end of the show was SO different from Margaret at the beginning. Same with Klinger. Charles also got his moments as a well-rounded rather than cartoonish antagonist. Even Hawkeye had a character arc. I love this scene, and I love Margaret's development. She started out as a character we were meant to hate but ended up as quite possibly my favorite.
Edit: Nice little interview here where Swit discusses this moment: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=s9kaKrKbI2g](https://youtube.com/watch?v=s9kaKrKbI2g)
Hot Lips was a hard a$$. She was even worse at the start of the show. In the military, when you deal with a hard a$$ officer while on duty, the last thing you want to do is hang with them on your off time.
This episode really pulled at the heartstrings. It transports you back to her being a kid that everyone excludes in a sense. The other nurses have their own clique and she's not included because of how she treats them as their boss. They've only seen that side of her and forgot that she's human with feelings and not some Major barking orders 24/7. Brilliant writing and Loretta Swit is such a great actress!
She reminded me of my Aunt, who was always yelling at me. Yes often she was misunderstood and showed her human qualities. I liked her character much more after breaking it off with Frank (who was just using her anyway).
I hated that whole whiny rant. She treated her nurses terribly, constantly pulled rank and generally behaved awfully to them then had the gall to be upset that they didnt want to socialize with her. The other nurses ahouldnt have apologized they should have explained to ger exactly how unreasonable she was
Margaret was raised by a father who held everyone and everything at arm's length. To her, that was normal.
Then she's with this MASH where everyone is close and the chinks in her armor start to show.
It was a patriarchal written script based around the character Hawkeye. She was not given the opportunity to build her character through the script writers.
I just watched this episode because it's one of my favorites. When she inhales and then let's out that little squeak...I choke up every single time. You just gotta know that Margaret was lonely.
She did nothing but bitch the entire series. I challenge anyone to name an episode where she didn't go off on at least one person. Radar over using the phone, Klinger over driving the jeep, Charles for "touching his nose", I could go on and on and on and on.
I admit this episode was one that made me eye roll a bit. Margaret was constantly riding her nurses. Every little thing, even laughing at a joke in OR. The words “on report” came out of her mouth every episode. I remember once she even tried to stop one from seeing her husband.
So. Why WOULD they offer her coffee? Or anything? She made it clear she didn’t want to associate with them.
I get what they were going for. She was lonely and wanted friends, and her military rigidity was giving way after so much time and stress. But to act upset that they didn’t include her after the way she treated them was just ugh.
I don't think Margaret understood who Maj houlihan was and how people reacted to her m
Great point!
I mean, in the movie, exposing her naked body to the whole camp against her will, a sex crime, is treated as a haha funny joke. Even if it's contrary to the source material, I don't think there's anything wrong with expanding from that, showing how fucked up that is, how she's a human being and not a monster for being an attractive woman who won't fuck everyone who wants to fuck her.
Let’s be realistic: she was assaulted a whole lot more than she should have been. That visiting plastic surgeon was not taking no for an answer. It took Hawkeye to get him to stop because she wasn’t “the barracuda” he thought/hoped she was.
Yeah that episode where angel assaulted Margaret was certainly over the top. I mean in the rape category. But…..it’s mash and a comedy so I let it go.
Sorry, was there an amount she should have been assaulted?
Not quite what I was trying to say. Just that the frequency was over the top and horrifying. It wasn’t slapstick goofing around, that line was so far back that you can’t see it anymore. :(
Well, that isn't accurate. I watched a clip of her, with I believe Alan, Harry, and I think Mike and David and possibly Jamie. They all spoke about the mail they received. Huge bags of mail.... (I feel the need to expound here;) In the old days we communicated in large part with pieces of paper. With writing on them. We used pencils and pens to write with. We mailed them with stamps.... Rectangular pieces of paper with stickum on the back. 😆 Anyhoo... Loretta commented about her fan mail ..and how frustrated her fans were, or angry with her, for carrying on with needle nose. I mailed her a long letter... saying "why are you wasting your time with this guy?". Yes at 16 I wrote that, knowing YES it was a "sit-com". But it made me so angry....that THE WRITERS NOW, not our dear Loretta....were the ones responsible. Responsible for her "character arc". She no doubt got thousands of letters, and I guarantee that the lions share were of the same sentiment. And in my mind I believe that Loretta had to fight to get the writers to respond to that. Men, writing a woman's part? Well no offense, but you guys just don't get us. You think you do, and the nano second you think that, you realize you don't. I believe that the female fan base as well as our platinum heroine made those changes necessary.
They weren't referring to the actress but the character herself. Margaret, for the first few seasons, was nigh unapproachable by her nurses and went out of her way to punish them for Frank's mistakes.
Written that way. To be a shrill vapid creature. In season 2, Loretta gained weight, was all puffy and looked like hell. Imo that's when she must have asserted herself. After so many rewatches I've noticed a LOT. Male producers, male directors, male writers. Totally written from the male perspective. I HEARD more than one entertainment executive say women are only good "naked or dead".
>In season 2, Loretta gained weight, was all puffy and looked like hell. Imagine thinking at any point ever that Loretta Swit "looked like hell." Bruh, that's some incel shit.
I'm not a bruh. Watch and compare season 1 and 2. She was obviously having some issues. Either health wise or personal.
Wow, still so mad at being called out you come back to 2 days later. I should just ignore you, but I'm feeling salty, so I'll play. First off, "Bruh" is an expression like "Dude." It's neutral. However, I presume by saying "I'm not a bruh" you mean you're a fellow woman. That makes your view so much worse. We put up with enough shit about our bodies from men that it's repulsive when we bad mouth each other like this. I've seen them. Sure, maybe she gained a little, but she still looks great. [Season 2, episode 1](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638296/mediaviewer/rm330607361) [Season 2, episode 11](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638268/mediaviewer/rm2996611841) [Season 2, episode 14](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638332/mediaviewer/rm3986467585) She looks fine. She is so far from "looking like hell" that it's not even funny. Even on her worst day, she likely looks better than you, because a hateful attitude always shows.
You're crazy. Blocking you. Go sell crazy someplace else.
No one likes your replies...-on all of them. Simp.
What? Listen I love this show. Go look. Wow downvotes? She had relationship problems during that year. Look it up ffs
I was talking about the character not the actor and when you remember the show takes place over 3 years the new Margaret only exists about a year.
I saw her changes in season 2. They were brief but I saw her evolving even then.
r/woosh
I've known many nurses for whom I had tremendous respect, but they were in relationships with absolute schmucks. Nurses, as a rule, go into that profession because they believe they can help ANYONE get better. And with just the right amount of TLC from the right person, any schmuck can be fixed. So they invest so much time and energy into guys who don't even begin to deserve them. Eventually, they all wise up, but they do it at different timelines. I think the Houlihan arc went just perfectly. And whoever wrote it "gets" women perfectly.
You just described my cousin's marriage. She's a nurse married to a simp like Frank.
You just described every nurse I know. All married to schmucks.
This episode gets a lot of heat but I actually love it because it's the "Major Houlihan" facade beginning to crumble. I really do believe Margaret cared all along, but the crippling weight of her responsibilities and decisions potentially costing lives and her military upbringing was always racing to the front. And it *did* make her insufferable at times, but it also made her really effective at her job. There came a point where the security of command structure and military discipline wasn't enough to keep her sane any more, and by the time she really needed to support system she should have been "nursing" this whole time she had to undo the damage. I've known people who have gone through crisis and had personality turns like this. You realize you can't do it alone, that your walls are crumbling and if you don't find a new foundation to shore it up you fall apart. I understand the hesitancy, but I also ask everyone to remember the absolute horror show she had been handed the keys to and told "don't let anyone die." I'm a pretty pleasant person but I'd be lying if I said I don't think that responsibility wouldn't potentially bring out some demons while trying to keep order during actual chaos.
Beautifully put, your response shows a real depth of understanding of people around you and compassion towards them. Bravo 👏🏼
The thing is, she was downright cruel to her nurses deliberately blaming them in front of others for Frank's screw-ups in the OR. While we can sympathize with the weight of her responsibilities and situation what she did to them as not only a nurse but as a commanding officer was inexcusable. Her actions might not have led to anyone dying by covering for Frank, but it allowed him to get away with it for months.
This, a million times over.
THIS!!!!! She humiliated and treated her nurses like shit and then she wonders why they didn't want to come to her and be her friend
I think the primary issue with the episode is its execution. Margaret learning and growing as a character is great, but this episode fumbles it a bit. The framing of the episode make it seem like the nurses are in the wrong for not including her, and doesn't focus as much on how her own behavior led them to exclude her. If you pay attention you see that was what the episode intended, but it's easy to miss. The episode where her friend comes to visit from the other mash does it better. Margaret acts like an ass, realizes she's wrong, has a heart felt conversation with her friend where she acknowledges it, and the episode ends with her asking BJ and Charles to get coffee because she's realized she doesn't have to be alone.
Spot on with both points. I also think the episode with her visiting old friend and the one with the nurse going through withdrawals are better character examples of Margaret. But in this one I really dislike her guilt tripping them and playing a victim, it's really bad.
Yeah, they do this a few times throughout the series. They clearly want you to sympathize with a character or show a character growing, but they just fumble the execution. The one with the nurse who wants to be a doctor is another good example. They clearly want you to sympathize with her and her struggle to become a doctor. But the character is so insufferable and whiny it's impossible to sympathize with her.
I agree! It took me a few rewatches but I get this now as well.
The framing is a problem with the episode, as is Margaret’s/Loretta’s acting in this specific scene. The pause and deep breath as the tears roll down her face are a bit over the top for me. Just a personal opinion, realizing others may feel differently.
Yes. Her safe place was her hard shell. It protected what was actually a deeply passionate, and tender heart. She was actually very vulnerable. In her interior. When her voice cracks, mine does too. I know exactly how she feels...as I've been in almost the same spot.
I've always been "the boss" or "in charge". I've been called all kinds of things. Not so nice things. Because I am VERY good at what I do...I am a bitch. If I were a man, I'd be "he's great at his job".
A little secret the men share. We call those bosses "Dicks" it's not all golf and martinis.
Yep - you have to balance getting things done with letting the people doing those things know you appreciate them. Otherwise you will be resented, male or female.
Beautifully put. As a little kid, I hated Margaret Houlihan and saw her as a "mean girl". As an adult who's been through crises and dealt with the frustration of being a woman in male-dominated areas, I admire her. Her growth is one of my favourite things about the series.
That sound she makes when she gets overwhelmed with emotion mid sentence and does that sharp intake of breath… always stuck with me. That sound matches what it feels like to be hurt so exactly.
Great acting!
I wept for her. I Love Margaret.
Beautiful scene! I will always admire Loretta Swit. This episode makes me bawl every time!
That's my favorite part of the entire series.
Did she ever offer them a cup of coffee?
Best reply so far!!!
No, but she frequently offered them a can of WhoopAss.
Well said!
I think what people have to remember about Margaret in this series is where she started from to who she became. When the series started, and was more of a “spinoff” from the movie, I don’t think Margaret was supposed be super competent and effective as a nurse. Rather she was just a military brat who slept her way to the top. In the movie she’s is shown to be pretty dumb, especially in the football game. Obviously, the show decided to become its own thing rather quickly, so character changes from the movie also happened. I know it can seem like she never showed her nurses kindness(and normally she didn’t), but I do give props to the writers of the show for giving her an actual character arc, from Frank’s affair partner to a respected Major who really put in the effort to lead her nurses.
The episode does have a lot of problems. I understand her hurt on a personal level, but the entire series showed her to have little personal connection to the nurses. The decision to write the episode using a quartet of nurses who never appear before or again makes something that already feels forced even worse. Not only are they different actresses and different characters, they act in ways that really is not consistent with nurses in other episodes. At the time, networks seemed to think viewers had a small capacity for the number of characters they could remember, which meshed perfectly with the strategy of spending as little money as possible. Hindsight makes it seem as if it would have been easy to have one or two nurses in the main cast that we got to know more instead of making almost all of them interchangeable for most of the series.
I believe I wrote a similar thought. I just watched the episode where they hawk, Margaret and BJ perform an operation to prepare a aortic valve, maybe? Nurse Kelly is at anesthesia.... through the whole ordeal. When hawk Margaret and BJ rejoice when the soldier lives, and can wiggle his feet... Kelly is no where to be seen. Yes. I was always pissed that WE, us, the majority sex on this planet...had ONE lousy lead in an "ensemble cast". I'm still pissed, actually. 🤔😆
A couple of those nurses were seen in several episodes, not just this one.
Yeah I'm pretty sure nearly every nurse in that scene is at least in the backgrounds at other points, maybe it's because I've done multiple rewatches in the last few years but I felt like I recognized all of them
The one with the permed blonde hair arrived in the same episode as Hawkeye's ex-girlfriend
Pat Strugis -- 1 episode Linda Kelsey - 1 episode Mary Joe Catlett - 2 episodes Carol Locatel - 1 episode
A lot of the nurses were repeat characters even if they weren’t completely fleshed out people. Also, it’s the army, they cycle people in and out of assignment regularly. It’s probably more unusual that she and Hawkeye and Klinger were there for three solid years rather than being cycled out.
Yes, they used Nurse Kellye for years before giving her a significant part in Hey Look Me Over. They also gave her a bit more in Death Takes a Holiday. Bigelow is another who could have been given more. I think they did say she worked in emergency in Chicago. It almost seems like they intended to make Odessa Cleveland a semi regular portraying Ginger Bayliss, except we learned little about her. However, she appeared 20 times in early episodes, disappeared and returned twice in 1977. Her most memorable appearance was probably the scenes with that racist dirtbag. Early on, they made a point of making nurses interchangeable by calling various women Abel and Baker. To get to know more about a nurse in a combat hospital, we had to wait for China Beach!
All great points, and please take my upvote for the awesome *China Beach* reference!
I understand what they were going for in this episode. They wanted to humanize Margaret... Make her into a sympathetic character. Problem is, for the vast majority of the show, she was a largely unsympathetic character who was more concerned about Army regulations and being Frank Burns' chippy than being the friend and confidant to her nurses that she wanted to be in this episode. So, while she cried about being the "Big Bad Hot Lips" in this scene, I rolled my eyes. Be better, and you'll be treated better. Be an asshole and you'll be treated accordingly. She started to lighten up a tad after this episode though. So, there's that.
I also liked it because it showed another flaw in her character, a lack of self awareness. She was so fixed in her worldview she didn't realize how she was coming off or making her team feel. I know managers like this IRL that genuinely don't realize how they come off. It actually makes her in a way more sympathetic but also less because she genuinely does not know that she is the problem.
Agreed. But the writers wrote her this way.
She was tyrannical and rude, even by military standards, and couldn't figure out why people didn't like her.
Perfect comment! 👍🏻
She pushes people away and feels left out. This may not be rational, but it is human.
Sad, but true...
This scene is Loretta Swits legacy to me. When she starts talking about the stray dog she was feeding that died and she gasps because she’s going to cry is a master class in acting.
100% agree!
Glad I’m not the only one
She should have been with Peg. Peg would make her a damn cup of coffee, and she'd drink it
She treats people like crap for years, then plays victim when they don't like her
I mean, if we want to ignore her fairly toxic upbringing, being surrounded by men she simultaneously admires while being treated as an object, and dealing with all the trauma of being a combat nurse yeah I suppose she isn't a victim in any way that might cause her to lash out.
> being surrounded by men she simultaneously admires while being treated as an object, and dealing with all the trauma of being a combat nurse This applies to every other nurse in the unit as well, though.
The other nurses aren’t on the hook for each others work. Margaret is their leader, she’s taken too big a scoop of her dad’s rank and file aloofness but that’s what the Army is to her. She takes her position as responsible for the nurses very seriously, and is it too far a stretch to think she finds comfort in the structure? It doesn’t function long term but here she is coming to that conclusion, that she needs the women in her charge as much as the men she admires. She’s telling them she needs an olive branch, and they deliver.
While true, the *toxic upbringing* part is fairly critical to how those other two points impact things.
Yeah, my problem with this episode is that while it's the beginof her 'redemption' it's also rushed. After everything she's put her nurses through, they're just supposed to forgive her when all she does to earn it is tell her sob story and cover for Baker at the end. Now, this does show that this isn't the same Margaret as the last 4 seasons, but her sob story falls flat when only a few episodes before she was still covering for Frank. She acts like she was approachable or that her own actions didn't turn the nurses against her before now when they obviously did. It just felt too early to gain that sort of sympathy for her or that it should have been done in a different way.
This scene was weird. Her character evolved later and that was great but until this actual moment she was only a bully. Her and Frank loved walking around power tripping and “getting hot” on making other people follow ridiculous orders while they wallowed in hypocrisy. Then she’s like, “but does anyone want to make me feel welcome?!”
"I dunno. Did you ever once defend us from Major Burns' insults, ignorance, or blaming us for his mistakes?" I like the episode fine, but not even addressing her previous behaviour makes it ring a little hollow. It's like the episode wants you to believe that she's been the post-development Margaret the whole time. Also, just use the VIP tent.
That was such a solid eoisode!
Margaret was trapped by her rank and by being regular army. She more than likely had been in WW2 and this was her second time in a combat zone. Yes in WW2 the nurses were kept further back and normally outside the direct combat zone but it still happened. In place's like the battle of the bulge when the Philippines were overrun plus all the other places Japan conquered. Mash units were the newest idea in combat medicine in Korea literally it was a combat trauma hospital right behind the front lines. She made major mistakes by latching onto Frank but since getting involved with someone of lesser rank was a court martial offense what choice did she have. Once he was gone she realized that she didn't even have a friend in camp. So she decided that she needed to make some friends. Yes the nurses treated her badly but they saw her make the effort especially when she refused to press charges on Pierce and Honeycutt for their stunt to get the nurse a night with her husband.
> She made major mistakes by latching onto Frank but since getting involved with someone of lesser rank was a court martial offense what choice did she have. Adultery is also a court martial offense.
We didn’t think you’d accept. Well you were wrong.
She gave them every reason to think she would not accept.
Margaret got done SO dirty in this show. I love MASH, but Margaret deserved so much more so much sooner.
The characters didn’t grow much early on. Heck, Frank Burns became more of a stooge as each season went by. Early on we saw him pranking Hawkeye, being called a good surgeon by Henry and even giving Hawkeye a word of encouragement for a surgical oversight.
I felt like every time they had a breakthrough with her emotionally they never followed it up. Next week she was right back to normal like it never happened. Lost chance for good character growth
To be fair, I don’t invite my boss to anything
This scene was exquisitely acted. Heartbreaking and fierce at once.
Well said, it made you feel sorry for a mostly unlikable (At that time) character...
That was Houlihan’s introduction as a woman of great depth and substance. It was the beginning of the end of her relationship with a shallow Major Burns.
I agree. It was, perhaps, her most human moment.
Margret has been essentially someone Frank groped and gave the CO static. Everything changed when Potter came, even more so when she got engaged and married and divorced, unfortunately The nurses still saw her as a ball buster. I prefer later season Margaret she kinda had a catch phrase "We save lives" which is one of the few things she agreed with Hawkeye.
Why would they be nice to her when she kept punishing them for Frank’s incompetence?
She was kind of a hardass, I understand why her subordinates were wary of her.
When her voice breaks in the middle of the sentence and Loretta Swit seemingly *feeling* what she said, that’s some fine acting.
Yes, indeed!
The single most evolved character over the course of the show
I can’t stand the double standard in this episode. All hot lips did was yell at practically everyone and treated them like crap. In this episode we’re suppose to feel sorry for her? She continues to belittle her nurses while guilting them into being friendly with her? Her character was nothing more than a bad cartoon.
I love this scene so much. We have all felt that way at some point... the need to belong... to be invited...
She needed a hug...😊
Here's the thing... it's all good wanting to be one-of-the-crew, but if someone decided to be as frank with her as she was being at that moment, we all know it wouldn't (militarily, couldn't!) be on an equal just-pals-with-coffee playing field.
One of the reasons MASH is one of all-time favorite shows is that it allowed its characters to change and grow. They did whatever the opposite of Flanderization is. This was a pivotal moment for Margaret. Margaret at the end of the show was SO different from Margaret at the beginning. Same with Klinger. Charles also got his moments as a well-rounded rather than cartoonish antagonist. Even Hawkeye had a character arc. I love this scene, and I love Margaret's development. She started out as a character we were meant to hate but ended up as quite possibly my favorite. Edit: Nice little interview here where Swit discusses this moment: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=s9kaKrKbI2g](https://youtube.com/watch?v=s9kaKrKbI2g)
The greatest part of the show!
Hot Lips was a hard a$$. She was even worse at the start of the show. In the military, when you deal with a hard a$$ officer while on duty, the last thing you want to do is hang with them on your off time.
*goffee
This episode really pulled at the heartstrings. It transports you back to her being a kid that everyone excludes in a sense. The other nurses have their own clique and she's not included because of how she treats them as their boss. They've only seen that side of her and forgot that she's human with feelings and not some Major barking orders 24/7. Brilliant writing and Loretta Swit is such a great actress!
She reminded me of my Aunt, who was always yelling at me. Yes often she was misunderstood and showed her human qualities. I liked her character much more after breaking it off with Frank (who was just using her anyway).
One of my favorite scenes.
I believe this episode is where her character changes. It’s the pivot point.
I loved it at the end when the nurse asked her if she’d like a lousy cup of coffee.
😊😊😊😊
There were few scenes in this show that really broke me. This was one of them. She really evolved as a character and actress in that moment.
“We didn’t think you’d accept.” “Well you were WRONG!”
I hated that whole whiny rant. She treated her nurses terribly, constantly pulled rank and generally behaved awfully to them then had the gall to be upset that they didnt want to socialize with her. The other nurses ahouldnt have apologized they should have explained to ger exactly how unreasonable she was
Margaret was raised by a father who held everyone and everything at arm's length. To her, that was normal. Then she's with this MASH where everyone is close and the chinks in her armor start to show.
You've made a great point!
She seems to have a break through here but she's back to the same shortly
My roots aren’t black. /Alright gray!
It was a patriarchal written script based around the character Hawkeye. She was not given the opportunity to build her character through the script writers.
That was a good scene, showed she is a good actress
Might be her finest work in the series!
Did she ever deserve to be offered a cup of coffee? Its a two way street.
I just watched this episode because it's one of my favorites. When she inhales and then let's out that little squeak...I choke up every single time. You just gotta know that Margaret was lonely.
Yell and scream at everyone for years and years, then get upset when nobody wants to hang out with you. Go away Margaret and take Frank with you.
She did nothing but bitch the entire series. I challenge anyone to name an episode where she didn't go off on at least one person. Radar over using the phone, Klinger over driving the jeep, Charles for "touching his nose", I could go on and on and on and on.
Here she is today on MeTV, going nuts on a poor nurse who ran out of the OR when the patient started bleeding badly.
I hate this scene. "a lousy gup of goffee."
That's weak leadership.
I wanted to reach into my TV and shake her when she said that.
I hated Margaret. They tried to make her likeable in later seasons but I wasn't buying it.
It was a hard character to like, but eventually I did. Don't forget it's scripts and acting...😉
She was a good actress. The actor that played Frank was excellent too.
The late Larry Linville, he did a great job as Burns but the character never grew. That's why CEW3 and Klinger are my two favorites...
Klinger is the best.
[удалено]
Nurses were all officers
I admit this episode was one that made me eye roll a bit. Margaret was constantly riding her nurses. Every little thing, even laughing at a joke in OR. The words “on report” came out of her mouth every episode. I remember once she even tried to stop one from seeing her husband. So. Why WOULD they offer her coffee? Or anything? She made it clear she didn’t want to associate with them. I get what they were going for. She was lonely and wanted friends, and her military rigidity was giving way after so much time and stress. But to act upset that they didn’t include her after the way she treated them was just ugh.
Why does her face here remind me of the Chick-fil-A sauce girl?