#it's possible

[miguxadraws]

whoops!! i dropped my eye!

[write-the-room]

Andrew's humour is so underrated bc how did everyone move on from "is your learning curve a horizontal line" that quickly

[thesmilingproudwandererswor-blog]

So Sam borrowed this old phone from Bucky and suddenly remembered there were still 300 (annoying flirty caring)texts that he sent to Bucky......

[essektheylyss]

[wakes up in a cold sweat] are we sure Ludinus Da'leth isn't secretly Kephekedriel. has anyone checked. HE COULD STILL BE OUT THERE

[siffrinsonionquiche]

thinking about crocheting isat tapestry but i'm trying to figure out the logistics of it. like how big would i have to make it for it to be legible. which frame or scene do i even do

[westruun]

Let's do it your way then. As long as it's with you.

[tuttle-did-it]

Time for Tuttle to dig through more M*A*S*H scripts.

This time, it's an unproduced script- 'The Contract,' by Mac Ness, dated 19 July, 1978. This is the third draft- I'm not sure whether that means it got to the third draft in discussion with the production and writing staff on M*A*S*H, or if this was Ness's 3rd draft full stop. I can absolutely see why this script went un-produced.

The plot is about Winchester being roped into signing a Section 8 for Klinger after Klinger saves his life. (Winchester doesn't seem to care that he was almost killed). Klinger meets a wounded soldier from Toledo who tells him all his favourite places have been shut down, and Toledo is a more unfriendly place. Which... how many Uncles of Klinger's are mentioned who were hitmen, enforcers, served prison sentences for scandals, and even one who died of a gunshot wound, so him being shocked that Toledo could be a rough place made no sense.

So Klinger inexplicably decides there's no reason to go back to Toledo because he's told by one person that the city has changed because a couple of businesses have closed.

Then he says his family will disown him if he comes home in a dress-- which tells me Mac Ness didn't watch enough M*A*S*H when this script was written, considering Klinger's family are very supportive and often send him new fabrics and silks for him to make his dresses, and a few uncles are mentioned by name as cross-dressing--

Uncle Gus successfully avoided WWI conscription as 'Aunt Gussie,'

Uncle Zak who used a wedding dress to get out of WWI.

Uncle Bob wore women's stockings to get out of the Navy in WWII

Reading this script, I can see why this was unproduced. In the end he decides he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life talking to psychiatrists about being a cross-dresser... I guess? Honestly, the conclusion made no sense, and I'm glad this was not an episode. It felt like a rehash of 'Radar's Report'-- Klinger demands a §8 for cross-dressing, someone is prepared to give it to him, he refuses it (in a very queer-phobic way) for reasons that don't really make sense, and then continues to cross-dress and demand a §8 for cross-dressing. 'Radar's Report' was in 1973-- 5 years before this script. And frankly, I think 'Radar's Report' came too late-- should have been the first year or two. So 1978 (season 7) was just wayyyy too late for a script like this.

Overall, this wasn't a brilliant script, and I'm pretty glad it was not an actual episode. There was some stuff I want to chat about, though.

Personally, whilst Ness understood B.J.'s penchant for the puns and snap-back between B.J. and Hawkeye, I don't feel they got quite the rhythm, and some of this dialogue doesn't quite sound like the two of them to me. B.J. and Hawkeye's banter is usually quite fluid, and almost feels like two people dancing as it flows. This just feels like joke, response, quip, response, joke, snap back.

Also, I don't get the joke about Arnold Arthur, maybe someone smarter can explain it to me. I know Arnold Arthur was a British politician who was quite far left for his time, supported the temperance movement (maybe Ness thought it was funny because they're drinking so much in this scene?), and wrote about his travels with his suffragette wife in the Middle East, and I know he was knighted. But I don't get the 'double agent' reference for him.

Is it the Arnold reference as in Benedict Arnold that is being referenced? Obviously, I get the references for the Round Table for Arthur. Dunno, the joke didn't land for me, someone smarter please explain this if you get what Ness was trying to do. A bit of the dialogue did pass for me, particularly the more queer comments and the snap back for foils/aluminium. B.J. always has terrible puns, so that worked well enough. Not good, but it's salvageable. Never mind that Hawkeye gets to move his pieces twice without B.J. caring at all (which I'm not going to fight cos on the next page B.J. does say he's a little tired of the chess game).

I think Mike Farrell and Alan Alda could have made this scene funny-ish, but I think they'd have had to do a fair amount of work to get it there, which is unfortunate.

Another snippet of dialogue:

I don't really understand why Klinger needs to be in a men's uniform at this point-- story-wise, he's happy he got Charles to sign and he's going to give Potter the paperwork the next day-- but the §8 Winchester has just signed for him was based on Klinger being a cross-dresser, so Klinger stopping cross-dressing would actually damage any chance he had for that paperwork to go through.

If he finally got the paperwork (again), he would be more likely to double-down how much he's cross-dressing In order for the officials to take the paperwork seriously. Walking around in men's uniforms will only cause problems with the officials ask everyone in the camp if Klinger consistently cross-dresses, if everyone says 'yeah, but he has stopped wearing dresses for the last week.'

The officials have absolutely heard about Klinger by now-- they've had reports from Sidney, from Houlihan and Burns, almost certainly from Blake and Potter, too. So there would be an investigation had he managed to get those signatures required. Stopping cross-dressing would tell the officials he's not serious about it at all, the §8 would be refused. Logically, so much of this story does not track.

Him not cross-dressing was obviously in there just to get B.J. and Hawk to comment, just so Klinger could reveal what Winchester signed the paperwork for him (Because he promised he would do anything for Klinger after Klinger saves his life.)

(it's also mentioned that Klinger needs 3 signatures and that Hawkeye and B.J. lost a poker game previously to Klinger, and in payment for losing they gave him their signatures for the §8 paperwork, which ...they magically forget, or something.) It also doesn't even specify a men's army dress uniform, so this just would be the BDUs they stomp around in most of the time, which is neither male nor female as BDUs look identical regardless of gender.

As a whole, I don't think this writer completely captured the dialogue for all the characters throughout most of this script.

I can absolutely see why this script was un-produced.

The plot of Klinger getting an offer for an out on a §8 due to cross-dressing had already been covered 5 years before-- he refused it, then (in a very queerphobic way).

there were comments in the script that show that the writer really hadn't watched a lot of M*A*S*H because Klinger's family have been quite supportive of him wearing dresses to try to get out.

Charles is almost killed and he barely seems to notice.

The dialogue didn't really feel fluid and comfortably in-line with the M*A*S*H characters that were established.

So much of the dialogue is quite on-the-nose, and M*A*S*H was very good at always coming in with side-ways dialogue full of subtext that didn't always have to say, word for word, what they actually meant.

And Klinger's reason for tearing up the paperwork-- a few of the shops he used to go to in Toledo have shut down over the last could of years he's been in Korea? Toledo is more of a hard-core place than he remembered (which... he has uncles in organised crime but okay?). I don't see how this would ever stop him.

So much of M*A*S*H is kind of incredible for me in how much they can stuff multiple storylines and stakes for various characters, how quickly those storylines can move, and how much can happen in such short spaces of time. The way this was written, it feels like absolutely nothing happens, even though there are a lot of words on the page.

With all this said, Ness did pick up just how often Hawk and B.J. do make queer remarks, and how often B.J. likes to make terrible puns. So, at least they did know the show well enough to recognise that.

If I had watched this as an episode, I'd have found it unremarkable. It's certainly not the worst M*A*S*H script I've read, produced or otherwise, but there's absolutely nothing there that would have made this an episode worth watching for me. There are no stakes, no story progressions, no characters with anything to lose, no character progression, no consequence for anything.

tuttle digs through M*A*S*H scripts 11/??