M*A*S*H - Martinis and Medicine Complete Collection (1972)

M*A*S*H

This is one of those television drama/comedy-series that not only are a chuffing great watch, but truly an important part of telly history. Many people have been given something to think about in re war, civility, cruelty, and kindness through the thoughts, actions, and antics of Hawkeye, Trapper John, BJ Hunnicut, Radar, and all the rest of the cast. There is not only comments on the meaninglessness of war and chauvinism to be found here, but also on existence in general. And lets of course not forget some clever acting along the way, too.

The series pretty much picks up where the film left off. The characters are roughly the same, and the idiosyncratic directional style that Altman brought to the film is mimicked (to a point, of course) in the first series. As time goes by the series changes from being exclusively a comedy series to including quite a bit of drama, which, in my opinion, is just fine. It keeps the series 'fresh', for lack of better words. There is a clear evolution in the way that subject matter is treated. We get to see war and despair treated humoristically as well as dramatically.

The packing, as so many reviewers have noticed before yours truly, is not the best in the world. Two of the disc in my set was actually scratched out of the box. Seems a shame that such a great set of DVDs should suffer such bad packing, which is the reason for my rating it at 4 and not 5 stars. That, and the fact that the image quality is, to put it mildly, not very impressive. In these days of digital clean-up, it shouldn't be hard to make it better than this edition.

Still highly recommendable, though. December 28, 2008

MASH- My very favorite series

This is so enjoyable for me. Up until now I was always going to the library to get different seasons and I would only have 1 week to watch them. Now I can watch whenever there is nothing on TV. Great stuff. December 28, 2008

a good item but

mash is certainly a great show. one of a kind. and it's good to have a complete edition. but the packaging is a little misguided. it certainly leads to damaged dvd's a lot more than the other package formats. December 25, 2008

Great Show, Gruesome Packaging

There should be yearly worst-designed packaging awards, just so this set could win the grand prize. I have over 100 seasons of television, some with very poorly designed packaging, but this is the WORST piece of trash I have come across yet. And the kicker is that quite a bit of the expense of this set is for this less-than-worthless waste of trees.

Now the purpose of this inane packaging is to have a piece of M*A*S*H* memorabilia. But I didn't buy this to put on display like a sculpture. I bought it for the TV show - imagine that! I want my TV season sets to fit into my TV season storage shelves. Is that too much to ask? And haven't any of the people who are paid top dollar to be in charge of these projects ever heard of form following function? Apparently not. Trying to get a disc out of this thing is like wrestling with a muscular octopus. And when you do find some way to balance the heavy fold-out arm-like sections of this storage "book," then you have to slide the discs out oh-so-carefully while balancing it, so as not to scratch them...but ultimately you needn't bother, because the discs were scratched up when they were put in the packaging to begin with.

The fact that ANYONE thinks that sliding a DVD in and out of a rough cardboard slot is acceptable storage boggles my mind. It is virtually impossible NOT to destroy these discs if you keep them in their original packaging, and then you want to actually WATCH the show. The only way to preserve the already somewhat compromised quality of the discs is to abandon the octopus altogether. I decided the only way to go is to put the discs in slim line jewel cases, (yet another expense) and store them in the slipcover...ah, if only they all fit! Some had to go in vellum sleeves instead. Far from ideal, but at least the discs will not incur any further damage.

Inside of the cover of this unwieldy monster is a very nice clipboard. The entire purpose of the clipboard is to hold a much smaller booklet. Once I decided to abandon everything but the slipcase, I realized I'd really like to at least keep the clipboard, as it has some use. Of course, it is firmly glued to the inside of the book, but with some muscle, I removed it and scraped the glue off the back. The rest of the octopus will unfortunately only add to the clogging of the local landfill - that's the only logical place for it.

One day, perhaps, in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future, those who are in charge of producing TV shows for purchase will realize that we buy them to watch them, not to display them, and they will FINALLY stop wasting our precious money and storage space on monstrosities such as this. So to sum up, a word to those highly paid Hollywood types, double slim line DVD cases in slipcovers, stupid. December 18, 2008

On sale this week at Target for $109.99

The complete series is on sale at Target this week (12/14-12/20/08) for $109.99, If they sell out, and you don't need it for Christmas, get a raincheck, and you'll have a month to pick it up at this price. December 15, 2008

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