Bless You, Hawkeye was the 17th episode of Season 9 of the CBS-TV series M*A*S*H, also the 215th overall series episode. Written by Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford and directed by Nell Cox, it originally aired on March 16, 1981.
Synopsis[]
When Hawkeye starts sneezing uncontrollably, Colonel Potter eventually suspects it's psychological in nature and calls in Dr. Freedman.
Full episode summary[]
A small batch of three wounded soldiers arrive in the middle of the night. One of them, Private Caputo, whom Hawkeye takes, is frightened and drenched from having fallen in a ditch full of moldy water.
Later that night back in the Swamp, Hawkeye begins sneezing uncontrollably. He insists he's fine, but the sneezes are getting louder and more frequent as the day goes on; Potter doesn't want him spreading around whatever it is he has, and the others give Hawkeye a variety of remedies: Klinger suggests an asphidity bag (a clove of garlic around his neck), B.J. advises camphorated oil, and Margaret urges eucalyptus, while Charles sarcastically proposes arsenic. Hawkeye refuses to listen but continues sneezing, so Potter suggests (and then orders) that Hawkeye take a shower, which he does.
Later in Post-Op, Hawkeye still shows some symptoms which he tries to hide, but just as Potter leaves, Hawkeye lets out a giant sneeze which causes Potter to turn on his heel and order him off-limits to the patients until they're sure he's not contagious. Potter orders a series of tests, but even though all of them turn up negative, Hawkeye continues getting worse.
During a staff discussion in Potter's office, Hawkeye bursts in, convinced he's going to die; he is still sneezing, but now his eyes and hands are swollen, and he has developed a severe itch. After ordering Hawkeye confined to the VIP tent, Potter deduces that whatever it is that Hawkeye has might be psychosomatic, so he puts in a call to Sidney Freedman. He arrives in camp and briefly talks with Hawkeye about the events of the previous two nights, but when the Benadryl begins to kick in, Sidney lets Hawkeye sleep while he does some investigating on his own, perusing the personal effects of the three wounded soldiers that came in that night.
The next day, Sidney is back with Hawkeye trying to get an idea of what's causing Hawkeye's maladies. Hawkeye thinks he's been suppressing the insanity of the war around them, but Sidney knows all too well that Hawkeye never holds in his feelings about the war. He believes instead that Hawkeye may have placed a "mental land mine" in his head a long time ago, and that something happened the other night to set it off. He also believes that once they find out why Hawkeye set the mental mine in the first place, they'll figure out what caused it to go off.
Sidney gets Hawkeye to open up more about his childhood in Maine. He begins talking about a particular swimming hole he often visited with his older cousin Billy, whom he loved, saying "he was the older brother I never had." As he continued talking about Billy, Hawkeye unknowingly began gently thumping his fist against the I.V. stand next to his bed; when Sidney asks Hawkeye about it, he plays it off, and then talks about how Billy once saved his life: when Hawkeye was seven years old, he and Billy were out in a boat fishing on the swimming hole when Hawkeye fell into the water and nearly passed out, but Billy pulled him back into the boat, and Hawkeye remembers "smelling like a wet burlap sack." But then Hawkeye unknowingly says "I would have been dead if Billy hadn't helped me into the water," which Sidney latches onto, pointing out that Hawkeye had made several references to water, including:
- "Swimming in cold sweat" (which Hawkeye said to Sidney when he first arrived)
- "We had a tidal wave of Americana" (when talking about his upbringing in Maine)
Sidney then presses Hawkeye about how and why he ended up falling into the water. Hawkeye tells about when he stood up in the boat to get more bait, but then as he fell into the water, he heard laughing, and then nothing at all. He then recalls that he tried to scream but couldn't, and then remembered a hand, Billy's hand, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him back into the boat. He then suddenly remembered that Billy was kidding around and actually pushed him into the water, causing Hawkeye to burst out in loud sobs, mortified that his beloved cousin could do something so despicable. He then recalls that after Billy pulled him back into the boat, he chastised Hawkeye for being clumsy, and Hawkeye, already stunned by what had happened, could only thank Billy for saving his life. Deep down, Hawkeye loathed Billy for what he did, but at the same time, he still loved him so much that he couldn't bring himself to even think that he hated him, much less say it, so he altered and suppressed the memory, and in so doing suppressed the conflict as well.
Hawkeye wonders what could have brought the memory back, and Sidney suggests Private Caputo, who came into camp frightened and smelling, as Hawkeye said, "like a wet burlap sack." Sidney remarks that an odor is a very powerful memory trigger, and concludes that it was the smell of the moldy water that set off Hawkeye's "mental land mine." Hawkeye remarks on the irony of being trapped in a war zone while getting laid up by something that happened in his childhood, and Sidney points out that it's the "little battlefields" (ponds, bedrooms, schoolyards, etc.) that can leave the worst scars. Hawkeye then realizes that all his symptoms, especially the sneezing, are gone.
Later, a fully-recovered Hawkeye is in the Officers Club playing stud poker with Sidney, B.J., Mulcahy, and Potter. Sidney is dealt two queens on the table and quickly makes a bet, hinting that he might have a third queen. The others all fold their hands, and Hawkeye is reticent to call, but when Sidney sneezes, Hawkeye, thinking that Sidney may be suppressing something, reconsiders and calls Sidney's bet, but Sidney turns up the third queen in his hand and wins the pot. He then laughingly advises Hawkeye, "You should never fall for that old fake sneezing trick!"
Research notes/Fun facts[]
- Early in the episode, Col. Potter says the keys to the lab have been "pulling a Judge Crater," which is a reference to Judge Joseph F. Crater, who mysteriously disappeared amid political scandal on August 6, 1930 (he was declared legally dead in 1939). The phrase "to pull a Judge Crater" (meaning to disappear) came into popularity soon after.
- In the final scene in the Officers Club where they're playing stud poker, Sidney says "Gentlemen, Patty and Maxene are on stage, LaVerne is waiting in the wings...", a reference to Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne Andrews, the Andrews Sisters, who were a highly popular vocal group before and during World War II, but had broken up in 1954.
Guest stars/Recurring cast[]
- Allan Arbus as Major Sidney Freedman
- Barry Schwartz as Private Joe Caputo
- Dennis Troy as Driver
- Pamela Coleman as Nurse (see Unnamed Nurses)
- Uncredited appearances by:
Gallery[]
