March 18, 1975: "M*A*S*H" Kills Off Henry Blake

March 18, 1975. 50 years ago: The TV show M*A*S*H closes its 3rd season -- meaning it had now run for as long as the Korean War, which it depicted, had.

Early in an episode titled "Abysinnia, Henry," U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, M.D., commanding officer of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, played by McLean Stevenson, finds out that he has been discharged. (Henry had been known to say goodbye by saying, "Abysinnia," the former name of the African nation of Ethiopia, as a corruption of "I'll be seeing you.")

But at the end of the episode, during a surgery session, the camp's company clerk, Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff) came in, and said, needing to pause due to the weight of the words, "I have a message: Lieutenant Colonel... Henry Blake's plane... was shot down... over the Sea of Japan... It spun in... There weren't no survivors."

Radar took it harder than anyone else. Having lost his father before he was old enough to remember him, he looked up to Henry, who became like a father to him. But even the show's meanest characters, Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, the head nurse (Loretta Swit), and Major Frank Burns, the "Do as I say, not as I do" second-in-command and now temporary C.O., were broken up over it.

This was the 1st time that an American TV show had actually said that a main character had died. Previously, when an actor died, either the character was played by someone else, or written out of the series and not mentioned again. The same thing was done when an actor simply left the show.

But when Stevenson left M*A*S*H after 3 seasons, wanting to do other things, the producers and writers killed Henry off. They had the announcement right there in the script.

Americans had seen on their TVs that a President, and other beloved figures, had been murdered; that the scenes of wounded soldiers they were seeing in Vietnam were real; that there really were riots by protestors, and beatings, even shootings, by police and national guardsmen at political demonstrations; that a President had committed crimes, and that he was resigning rather than face impeachment over it.

But they had never been told that a TV character that they liked, played by a person who, then, was very much alive, was dead -- and just as he was going home from a war, too.

This was a year and a half before a dispute with the showrunners led to John Amos being fired from Good Times, and his character, James Evans Sr., being written out as dead in a car crash; 11 years before Officer Joe Coffey (Ed Marinaro) was gunned down on Hill Street Blues; 12 years before Valerie Harper was fired from Valerie over a salary dispute, resulting in the title character being killed off and the show being retooled as The Hogan Family; 16 years before Gary Shepherd (Peter Horton) was killed off on thirtysomething; 23 years before the death of Detective Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) on NYPD Blue; 26 years before an offscreen car crash killed Dolores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten) on The West Wing; and 36 years before Game of Thrones showed that no character was safe by killing off what appeared to be its lead character, Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean).

With every such death, once the initial shock wears off, the surprise becomes less. Nothing will ever top the surprise of Radar saying of Henry's plane, "There weren't no survivors."

Whatever happened between Stevenson and the showrunners, this was unjust. People still complain about it, half a century later.

The thing is, Henry wasn't the main character of M*A*S*H. Nor was his replacement as C.O., Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan). Nor was the Chief Surgeon, Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce (Alan Alda). The show's main character was war. Not even the Korean War per se, but war itself.

And, as one of America's greatest generals, William Tecumseh Sherman, taught us, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." Or, as he told the graduating class of a military academy, "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell." There's a reason the writers showed the cast in the operating room at least once an episode.

Two seasons, our time, and, I suppose, a few months, their time, after Henry's death, in an episode titled "The General's Practitioner," premiering on February 15, 1977, Hawkeye put it in even starker terms:

Frank: Everybody knows that war is Hell.

Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell): Remember: You heard it here last.

Hawkeye: War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell, and, of the two, war is a lot worse.

Father Francis Mulcahy, the camp chaplain (William Christopher): How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me: Who goes to Hell?

Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. But war is chock-full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

What better way to show that war is Hell, or worse, than by having it kill a beloved character?

Top 10 Things About M*A*S*H That Don't Make Sense

I love M*A*S*H. The show, part comedy, part drama, set in a U.S. Army hospital during the Korean War in the early 1950s, might be the greatest TV show of all time. But there are some things about it that just don't make any sense.

And I'm not talking about continuity errors, such as which characters' family members were still alive or not, or consistency in what their names were, or where they might have lived. I'm talking about things that, had they happened in real life, would not have happened that way.

10. The Manpower Turnover Rate. Hawkeye, Margaret, Klinger, Father Mulcahy, and possibly some of the nurses seemed to be at that one unit for the duration of the war, 3 years. They each would have been transferred at least once.

9. Potter's Age. In one episode, he gave his age as 62. But in more than one, he mentioned that he was too young to serve in World War I, and thus lied about his age. This would have put him in his mid-50s. But he looked more like 62, or even older. At that age, it's unlikely that he would have been put in that particular command.

For the record, Harry Morgan played Potter from the age of 60 to 67.

8. The Hair. In that era, men would not have had hair as long as Hawkeye, B.J. and Klinger had. I'm also not sure they would have allowed B.J. to have that mustache.

7. Henry's Unfitness For Command. Aside from cheating on his wife, Henry Blake was a decent guy, and a good doctor. But, as was pointed out by Hawkeye on one side, and Margaret and Frank on the other, he was a bad choice to command any military unit, even a hospital. Potter was so much better suited to it.

And Henry knew it, too. Frank and Margaret "went over his head" so many times, "I've developed athlete's scalp!"

6. Klinger's Stunts. It wasn't just wearing the women's clothing. He tried all kinds of things to either escape from the Army (mostly early on) or convince Henry or Potter to give him a psychiatric discharge. It's shocking that he got away with it for as long as he did, without getting tossed in the stockade, and eventually getting a dishonorable discharge.

5. Hawkeye's Antics. No matter how good a surgeon he was, half of what he did would have gotten him court-martialed.

4. Frank Burns' Incompetence. If he was that bad a surgeon, that would have gone on the record, and he would have been transferred out of there.

And 5. and 4. both lead to...

3. The Frank & Margaret Affair. A couple of times, Hawkeye threatened to blow the whistle on them if they didn't back off on their threats. At some point, the good surgeons would have had enough, and ratted them out. Even if Hawkeye and Trapper, and later Hawkeye and B.J., weren't willing to do so, and Henry didn't have the spine to act like a true commanding officer on the subject, a man like Colonel Sherman T. Potter, M.D., U.S.A. would have.

The only way not doing so can be justified is their professional respect for Margaret as a nurse. They couldn't take Frank down without also ruining Margaret's career. But, at the very least, one threat to Frank should have scared him into leaving Hawkeye alone.

2. Hawkeye's Crackup. In the series finale, the war finally breaks him. While he and Sidney Freedman did reach a breakthrough, it was way too soon to be allowed back into action. It proved to be vital, but the real Army wouldn't have allowed it.

1. The Drinking. There is no way the Army would have let surgeons have a distillery in their quarters. At the rate they were going, surely, there must have been an occasion where they were already drunk when wounded came in. And there was one time when Hawkeye proved to be too hungover to operate. One time that we know of. Surely, there were more. That kind of drinking -- when he was always on call -- would have cost him not only his honorable discharge, but possibly also his civilian medical license.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the "M*A*S*H" Producers for Killing Off Henry Blake

Castle may be the only show in the history of television whose most loyal fans were relieved that it was canceled. The alternative, or so it appeared, was killing off NYPD Captain Kate Beckett, because her portrayer, Stana Katic, was not given a contract for a new season.

And (spoiler alert), at 10:57 PM Eastern Time last night, it looked like the fandom's worst fear had come true: Beckett and her husband, mystery novelist turned private detective Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), were shot and apparently dying, by the hand of (in true James Bond film style) the last remaining henchman of the evil organization they had taken down together.

At 10:58, we found out that they survived -- at least for another 7 years, by which point they have 3 small children. (The "little Castle babies" that the fangirls, and many fanboys, have wanted all along.)

Tonight, the season finale of NCIS airs. It is Michael Weatherly's last episode as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. They have been hinting at a reunion between him and former Special Agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo). And while the promos for the Castle finale suggested that Beckett would die, the promos for NCIS are suggesting that DiNozzo will walk out of the Navy Yard office alive.

The NCIS showrunners know the pitfalls of killing off beloved characters. They've already killed off Special Agent Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander), NCIS Director Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly), former Special Agent Mike Franks (Muse Watson), Mossad Director and Ziva's father Eli David (Michael Nouri), current NCIS Director Leon Vance's wife Jackie (Paula Newsome), and other, less key characters. And have ended seasons with the lives of Tony, Ziva, Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) and, last year, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in serious doubt. So they probably know better than to end this episode with either Tony or Ziva dead.

(UPDATE: Tony did walk away from the job alive, but the script said that Ziva was dead. But none of us saw a dead body. We found out they had a 2-year-old daughter. In 2019, it was revealed that Ziva was alive, and while we didn't see them all together, we knew they had all been reunited.)

Yesterday was also the 20th Anniversary of the Seinfeld season finale that killed off Susan Ross (Heidi Sweberg), fiancee of George Costanza (Jason Alexander). It wasn't a huge surprise to find out that she and George wouldn't get married, or even that she died, but the other characters' reaction to her death was cold and despicable.

Yesterday was also the 30th Anniversary of the Dallas season finale that revealed that, contrary to the events of the previous season's finale, Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) was alive. The writers weaseled out of that one by having his wife Pam (Victoria Principal) say the entire season, starting with his death, was all a horrible, horrible dream.

Killing off characters has been controversial, from Alice Harper (Mrs. Joe Cartwright, played by Bonnie Bedelia) on Bonanza in 1972 to Jon Snow (Kit Harington) on Game of Thrones last season (although he's been brought back by magic).

None more controversial than M*A*S*H killing off the Korean War Army hospital's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, on their Season 3 finale, on March 18, 1975. This was the 1st time a TV show had actually said that a main character had died. Previously, when an actor died, either the character was played by someone else, or written out and not mentioned again. The same thing was done when an actor simply left the show.

But when McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H after 3 seasons, wanting to do other things, the producers and writers killed Henry off. They had the announcement right there in the script.

Americans had seen on their TVs that a President, and other beloved figures, had been murdered; that the scenes of wounded soldiers they were seeing in Vietnam were real; that there really were riots by protestors and beatings, even shootings, by police and national guardsmen at political demonstrations; that a President had committed crimes, and that he was resigning rather than face impeachment over it.

But they had never been told that a TV character that they liked, played by a person who, then, was very much alive, was dead -- and just as he was going home from a war, too.

Whatever happened between Stevenson and the showrunners, this was unjust. People still complain about it, 41 years later.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the M*A*S*H Producers for Killing Off Henry Blake

5. It Was Their Show. Whether it was right or wrong, fair or unfair, they had every right to do it.

4. McLean Stevenson. He wanted out. If he'd wanted to stay, Henry would almost certainly have continued as the 4077th MASH's C.O.

3. The Novelty. Main castmembers had been written out of previous shows, but never explicitly mentioned as having died. Little Joe's wife on Bonanza was an exception, and not a particularly big one, because she was introduced and killed all within the space of a single hourlong episode. We didn't have time to get to know her. Henry Blake was the 1st one -- and we're still talking about it, 41 years later.

2. War Is Hell. Hawkeye wasn't the main character of M*A*S*H, war was. Not even the Korean War per se, but war itself.

There were many references in the show to World War II (As in, "If we let the Communists get away with things, it'll be like we appeased the Nazis all over again," and all the references to Major Frank Burns, played by Larry Linville, being like Hitler), and to World War I (such as the service of the new C.O., Colonel Sherman Potter). The old Korean soldier who fought for Japan in the Russo-Japanese War. Even the American Civil War, the Crimean War, the Napoleonic Wars and the American Revolution got mentions.

As Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce (Alan Alda) put it, "I think war is worse than Hell. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell."

1. It Worked. The show was better with Sherman Potter as the commanding officer, and it was better with Harry Morgan playing the C.O.

And people who say the show was better with Henry, Frank and Captain "Trapper" John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) than with Potter, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell) and Major Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers), before Alda started pontificating, are idiots. Or, as Charles would say, "cretins."