If it’s okay I would love to hear about In Love and War thoughts?
okay okay so. i think that “in love and war” is one of the best episodes of season six and that viewing it solely as the love story between hawkeye and kyung soon is actually a very limited read of the episode. when watching that episode i think that it’s way more about hawkeye having to confront his naivete when it comes to actually recognizing himself as part of the american imperialist war machine, however unwilling a participant he is. hawkeye’s up on his good liberal soapbox from the moment he meets kyung soon, and it’s only when he sees her living conditions that his feelings begin to change and he realizes that he’s being a huge asshole to someone whose living conditions have been DIRECTLY caused by the actions of the US military
and then the naivete continues the whole time!! hawkeye is trying so hard with her, and he’s being so kind and genuine, but only an american would say without a trace of irony, “you know, you have a fantastic attitude. that you can go through all of this and still smile is wonderful. i guess nothing is all that bad unless you think it is” and THEN he romanticizes all the labour she has to do because of the war (“kyung soon, i'm touched by you. by the way you sit in a bombed-out house and make jokes in french. even by the way you yank vegetables out of the ground and carry water from a mile away”) like. hawkeye her family is suffering. everyone is suffering. this is a nightmare scenario and it’s heartbreaking that you think that taking her on a date in a bombed out building is enough to distract from that/save her/etc.
hawkeye showing up in his class A’s to kyung soon’s mom’s funeral is such a haunting/almost horrifying image. the nicest clothes he has in korea are a specific symbol of imperialism, and of course he wants to be respectful and dress nicely, but the fact that ultimate peacemonger hawkeye looks so out of place among everyone else at the funeral because he looks like a good little soldier is fucking intense
and then it ends, because it has to end, and he says, so sadly, so genuinely, “you sold the phonograph?” which breaks my heart because it shows that he’s still not entirely getting it; of course she sold the phonograph, and traded the car, and got rid of her possessions to take care of her family. of course it can’t last, and they won’t write letters, because it’s a war. and things are fucked up in a war, which is why hawkeye tells margaret that he has to let her go. beyond the obvious trauma of working in a MASH unit, he finally is starting to get the impact of the war on the personal level and how impossible and horrible it makes everything.
TL;DR “in love and war” is a great parable about how american imperialist ideology affects hawkeye and how he’s forced to confront his part in the war machine and how it impacts those he cares about
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