AfterMASH was a situation comedy that ran for two seasons (1983-1985) on CBS. A spin-off of the long-running hit series M*A*S*H, AfterMASH took place immediately following the end of the Korean War and chronicled the adventures of three characters from the original series: Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan), Max Klinger (Jamie Farr) and Father Francis Mulcahy (William Christopher).

Synopsis

In the pilot episode, Colonel Potter returns home from Korea to his wife Mildred. He finds retirement boring, so he returns to work as the chief of staff at General Pershing Veteran's Hospital ("General General"). Soon thereafter, he hires Max Klinger as his assistant. Klinger has married Soon Lee, a Korean woman, and the couple finds it difficult to adjust to life back in the United States.

Father Mulcahy, whose hearing was damaged in the final episode of M*A*S*H, is now suffering from depression and drinking heavily. After his hearing is surgically corrected, he stops drinking and joins Potter and Klinger at the veteran's hospital as the chaplain.

Failure

AfterMASH attempted to parallel M*A*S*H as closely as possible. Because it took place in a veterans hospital, most of the episodes featured a storyline that highlighted the horrors and suffering of war, just as most episodes of M*A*S*H had done in the final seasons. Furthermore, many of the characters in M*A*S*H had counterparts in AfterMASH. Like Hawkeye, the show had a trouble-making but idealistic and talented young surgeon, Jules Pfeiffer (who was replaced in the second season). The Frank Burns/Major Houlihan role of narrow-minded, bureaucratic authority figures was filled by hospital administrator Mike D'Angelo and his assistant, Alma Cox. However, the series did not succeed in recapturing the feeling of the original, and was cancelled after thirty episodes were completed. The series finale was never aired.

Other facts

The only other regular character from the original series to appear on AfterMASH was Radar (Gary Burghoff), who appeared in a two-part episode shortly before the show's cancellation. The same character was also the star of a pilot called W*A*L*T*E*R, in which Radar moved from Iowa to St. Louis and became a cop. (The series was never picked up.) Edward Winter also appeared in one AfterMASH episode as Colonel Flagg.

See also

• M*A*S*H (TV series)
• Colonel Sherman T. Potter
• Maxwell Q. Klinger
• Father John Patrick Francis Mulcahy