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happy birthday to THEM

I think a lot about Trapper sedating Hawkeye in Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde and how it seems like such an unkind thing to do to someone you care for but, when it comes down to it, Trapper is giving Hawkeye the only solution he can think of to keep him from being carted off to a mental hospital. Hawkeye's manic episode here is eerily similar to the one we hear about later in GFA. He's not sleeping, he's taking delusional steps to try to protect his patients or end the war, and ultimately he gets in a vehicle and does something reckless. We know the end result of that in GFA. Hawkeye goes to the mental hospital. And god knows there was nothing there that could have solved that. At some point, Hawkeye is going to have to confront what happened on the bus.

But in Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde, the thing that's driving Hawkeye's mania - at least from Trapper's point of view, uneducated in psychiatry as he is - is his lack of sleep. And Trapper's a doctor; he knows what mental hospitals are like, and these are 1950s mental hospitals. A general's coming to camp. He cannot let a general see Hawkeye like this, because Hawkeye will be sent to the mental hospital.

So he sedates him. And it's unkind, and when Hawkeye wakes up he's gonna have to explain what he did, but they both know the consequences if he didn't. It was the best option Trapper could give him. It was the only option Trapper could give him that he thought would keep him from wandering off into the minefield, or going AWOL and getting lost while horrifically sleep deprived, or being sent to the mental hospital. And I think, ultimately, they both understand that even though it's a solution that is painful for Hawkeye, it was the only one Trapper could think of to keep him safe.

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