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AfterMASH aired from September 1983 until December 1984 on CBS.

For more on AfterMASH go to the mini-page right here at Sitcoms Online.

Here's an article about AfterMASH from TV Guide ( Nov. 5-11, 1983 Ed.)

WILL AFTERMASH SURVIVE?

Operation Transplant

With some of the M*A*S*H* flavor and personnel, the sequel comes home to America sporting frewsh ideas for Nielsen survival

By Steve Gelman

Backstage and in breaks on stage through M*A*S*H 's final months, concern about the future softened celebration of the past. Candidly, nostalgically, members of the cast would talk among themselves, wondering where they might find sufficient , if not equivalent, fulfillment next. Alan Alda said that for him, it would not be as an actor in series TV. Mike Farrell said the same. Others were ambivalent. But not Harry Morgan and not Jaime Farr. A year earlier, in fact, when the M*A*S*H actors had met to determine if there was interest in going on for one last season, it was Morgan and Farr-along with William Christopher-who had argued most vigorously yes. So now, their ambitions did not at all coincide with Alda's. Do other series? Absolutely. But what would it be?

Which gave rise to a running gag. " Harry and I were trying to come up with an idea for a series with the two of us," Farr remembers, " and we decided to take all the worst ideas that have been done in television and put them together. That way we'd have a hit." They knew for sure, they would be private detectives. In Hawaii. Hearing that, says Farr, others began to volunteer " all their awful ideas . We had to have a certain kind of music, a certain kind of car. Alan was going to write some episodes. Mike was going to direct." Bill Christopher recalls volunteering to " play the chief of police. There's always got to be some bumbling chief of police in one of these things."

" Then one day," says Farr , " I got very serious. I said, " You know, really I am concerned. What the hell am I gonna do when this is over? And Alan said to me , ' I wonder what happens to all those patients who were in post-op.' That triggard an idea. What did happen to all those patients when they went home? I ran to Harry. I said, ' Harry, I think we got an idea here that's terrific. Veterans Administration hospital. What happens to us when we get home? What happens to those patients? He thought the idea was terrific, too, and we took it to three of our producers on M*A*S*H . They, to our surprise, turned it down. They thought it was too maudlin. They thought the show would be compared to M*A*S*H. They said, ' Why don't we just let M*A*S*H rest and let it die and let it be done?'

" Harry and I called our agents. We told them, 'We really love this idea. How do we proceed?' My agent said, ' You know the man that would be the perfect catalyst for this project would be Larry Gelbert.' Years ago, Larry had developed M*A*S*H for television and now he'd just written 'Tootsie' and it was a big hit. We said, " Well lets figure a way that we can reach him."

" While we were doing all this without the studio knowing about it, the studio was doing something that we didn't know about. Harris Katleman ( president of 20th Century-Fox TV) had contacted Larry Gelbert and asked him if he would like to create a show for Harry Morgan, Jaime Farr, and Bill Christopher. And Larry had said yes and come back with this idea: Col. Sherman Potter, retired, Max Klinger, civilian, and Father Mulcahy, resident Catholic priest, all working in a Veterans Administration hospital.

" Then they took it to CBS. And CBS said, ' too maudlin. How could you possibly provide humor out of this Veterans Administration hospital? Our people said, ' the same way we did with a series called M*A*S*H!' And somebody at CBS said ' yea, but M*A*S*H had a hit movie that preceded the series.' And our people said, ' Yes, and here we have a hit series that preceded this series.' CBS said OK."

The challenge, then was decidedly Zen: how do you make it different yet keep it the same? For commerce, obviously, and also for its creative character, for its tone of voice, the new series had to call upon the old. But some of the key people signing on for AfterMASH were the same ones who had urged cancellation of M*A*S*H,who had shared executive producer Burt Metcalfe's view that " you don't want to be like an old boxer who just fights himself into oblivion." Not only did they now have a unique piece of television history to live up to, but they were at risk of being accused, in Christopher's words, " of trying to squeeze the last drop out." The dilemma, the challenge, spoke to anyone who one day has done milestone work and then had to confront the next in exactly the same arena.

Unlike the actors, creative chief Gelbert had been reluctant to become involved. He had been with M*A*S*H for its first four years and since then the series had stood as a cornerstone of his considerable reputation. When he'd learn that " Fox and CBS were determined to do some sort of follow-up series," Gelbert was not delighted. " But knowing they were bent on going forward, Well I wanted to have some say in it. Because I have a hugh emotional investment in the original series and an inordinate amount of pride." Metcalf for his part, had repeatedly turned down offers to become involved with a sequel. Until Harris Katleman said to him: " How would you feel if Larry Gelbert were part of this? Would that change your mind?"

" Yes," Metcalf said." " Quite possibly."

Meetings followed, deals were arranged. With Gelbert and the three lead actors in place, Metcalf brought aboard three former M*A*S*H producer/writers: David Isaacs, Ken Levine and Dennis Koenig. Under Gelbert's supervision, they began plotting scripts in April, in the obvious shadow. " The challenge," Metcalf said, " is to try and get people to say, ' Hey, wait a minute, M*A*S*H was what it was and this, on its own, can stand as well."

First they collected material on VA hospitals in the 50's. Through conversations and correspondents with doctors, patients, psychologists and hospital administrators, AfterMASH researcher Michael Hirsh not only learned little facts to root the show in authenticity, but assembled files with more than 500 plot possibilities. " What's so nice," Dennis Koenig said one day, " is the freshness of it. We did the same kind of research at M*A*S*H, but in the last year we just ran out. There were times we'd have to take a little element-you know, Hawkeye gets a bathtub-and try to build that into an entire show."

It was determined from the start that AfterMASH, like M*A*S*H, would be a blend of comedy and drama. For the main characters-the hospital's chief of staff, Potter, his clerk, Klinger, the chaplain, Mulcahy-drama would be based, at least for openers, in their readjustment to civilian life. " Potter, for example, thought he longed for a simple little country doctor's practice," says Metcalf. " But he discovers he misses the action. That was a common syndrome for returning veterans. They discovered that their perception of what they wanted to do when they got out was not really what ultimately made them happy.

" Then there's Klinger, faced with even more mundane work paths. He talks about the excitement of saving lives and stealing equipment and conning people in the service. That was very common too."

" War is naturally immoral," says Gelbert, " and everyone has a kind of license to be immoral within that war. When you get home, you can't be immoral any more. And sometimes you find that the thing you thought you hated, you're missing to some degree."

The writing staff had to create new characters. Pivotal among them would be Klinger's Korean war bride and Potter's wife Mildred. Also a young doctor and two antagonists for the men from M*A*S*H-the administrator who heads the hospital and his executive secretary. There were concerns and cautions. With the exception of Klinger's bride, played by Rosalind Chao in the final episode of M*A*S*H, none of these roles would be cast until summer. Yet scripts had to be writen in spring. " It's a little frightening," Ken Levine said one day, at work beside a conference table heaped with pencils, pads, yo-yos and baseball bubble-gum cards. " You're flying by the seat of your pants. You hope the actor will be right for the part. You never know."

More of a problem was in preventing new characters from becoming replicas of old. " The last thing we want," said David Issacs, " is for people to say, ' Oh, yea, that's their Hawkeye and that's their Hot Lips and that's their B.J.' During script conferences, Metcalf said in July, they were finding themselves saying: " No, that's something Hawkeye would have said." Or , "No , we did something like that." The two antagonists, catalysts of tension in the show, posed particular worries. " In the sense that the executive secretary is conflictual," Metcalf said, " we know that comparrisons will inevitably be made to Hot Lips. Just as you could say the administrator is somewhere between Frank Burns and Charles Winchester; not that he's like them, but he fulfills that conflictual function.

" The young doctor," Metcalf went on, " is idealistic and anxious to do well. But he's not analogous to Hawkeye; he's considerably younger he's far less heroic. Look, in the sense of people making comparrisons, in saying, ' Well, I really miss Alan Alda in that show,' there's nothing I can do about that. All I hope is we'll be judged on our own merit."

" What has to happen," Bill Christopher said a while later, " is we have to take Hawkeye and break him into little pieces and spread him around. And we have to take the good of M*A*S*H and break it up and put it through a new spectrum. We have to bring it back in our own way."

CBS has commited to 13 shows. By August, scripts were already completed for 10. It was now time to see how the words and the players would blend.

A particularly challenging character to cast was Colonel Potter's wife, Mildred. There were special expectations here, existing images. For years, Mildred had been talked about on M*A*S*H. Her picture had sat atop Colonel Potter's table. " That picture actually was of my own wife," says Harry Morgan. " That was the image I had in my mind. Whoever got the part, it was so important that our chemistry be right. That's not so important in every relationship, but it is for this one, for a husband-wife."

Barbara Townsend, whose television credits included Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Father Knows Best, was selected for the part. But not before Metcalf and Gelbert brought her to lunch with Morgan in the studio commissary. " I saw her," says Morgan, " and I thought, ' Yes, the look is right'." Presently, he decided that " the chemistry was right too."

Other roles were filled. John Chappell, stage and movie actor, became the head of the hospital, Michael D'Angelo. Brandis Kemp, of the Los Angeles theater hit " Women Behind Bars," was cast as D'Angelo's executive secretary, Miss Alma Cox, and Jay O. Sanders, out of a mix of theatrical and television films, as the young doctor, Gene Pfeiffer. The executive staff and the lead actors were pleased. " Burt Metcalf," says Larry Gelbert, " has a green thumb when it comes to finding the right actor for the right part."

Naturally , there were growing pains. " The new people aren't used to our rhythm," Ken Levine said early on, at the sound stage. " They do a joke then wait a beat for a laugh. We don't want that here. We want the pace to keep moving." Gelbert's view, after the filming of the first two episodes, was that " it felt very much like the beginning. I saw actors who were looking for their place in a show that's looking for its place." When the fourth episode was done, Gelbert said, " I don't think the process is entirely finished yet. But I think the actors are wonderful. I think we have a good bunch of people."

On M*A*S*H where they held less prominent roles, Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy did not need as much depth as they would here. " That's still developing," Gelbert said. " They're still filling out." Farr foresaw Klinger as becoming " much more responsible, wiser. He's a man no longer trying to get out of something; he's trying to fit into something-into society, in 1953, in America, in a small town in Missouri." Morgan looked upon Potter as becoming " a lot more gentile, a lot more politic." Christopher envisioned Father Mulcahy as " a man who doesn't fall into any steriotypes. I want to stay away from clerical jokes all the time. I want to humanize him, make him a man with many dimensions."

These were long- range expectations; these were patient, reasonable men. " On this show," says David Issacs, " you don't have actors tearing up pages out of scripts when they don't like them or drawing little swastikas in the margins, like happens in some places." These were also men who suddenly at the center of an ensemble, had to set the tone, had to lead. As the weeks went by , Farr seemed the most gregarious, parading the set with greetings and jokes, enjoying even the exhaustion of late hours, explaining that " this is the thing you work for all your life." Christopher was outgoing and friendly, not quite as assertive, still sorting out new priorities, new patterns. Morgan, looked upon by most as the man with natural claim to the top, tended to look away. " I remember telling Alan," Morgan confided once , at the set. " I think it was the last week that we were shooting M*A*S*H. I said, ' You are the leader of this bunch and you always knew that you were the leader, but you never let on to anybody else that you knew it."

Of the three, Morgan seemed the most nostalgic. " You kind of, you know, miss people. I miss Loretta, Stiers, the rest of the gang. It's a little bit downhill after M*A*S*H, " Morgan said. There was a pause. " But then anything would be."

Indeed. Invariably, inevitably, that remains the burden. And yet, in perspective, isn't this a rather decent idea for a sequel in an industry that more commonly spins off Joanie Loves Chachi and creates infinate clones of its prime-time soaps? Few series, if any, after all, attracted more commendation than M*A*S*H. Few writers are more respected than Gelbert, few producers more than Metcalf. And beyond the legacy, beyond the talent, AfterMASH has important subject matter. The drama of returning veterans, and their hospitals, touches so many lives. A member of the AfterMASH staff had a grandfather in a veteran's hospital. A member of the cast had a father die in one. Friends and neighbors of Gelbet's and Metcalf's and Morgan's and others' have sought them out and revealed personal experiences, some embellished by decades of imagination, but nonetheless rooted in a sensibility of factual pathos and black humor more bizarre than could be contrived for a script. " My next-door neighbor, he's a physician," Morgan said. " He told me that at the VA hospital he worked in there was a man in bed on the sixth floor who'd had a stroke and was completely paralyzed and couldn't speak. This man was getting therapy down in the basement. They made an appointment for him one day to have some therapy at a certain hour and the people on the sixth floor put him in the elevator and he went down to the basement. But there'd been a screw-up. They weren't aware down there that he was coming. No one was there to take him off the elevator. So he was on this elevator and he couldn't speak and people on the sixth floor assumed he was being kept in therapy. And he rode up and down the elevator for three daays."

M*A*S*H, though set in the Korean War illuminated much later concerns in our nation's history. AfterMASH, though set in the Korean postwar, holds potential to do the same. " In so many ways," says Gelbert, " Korea is sort of a New Haven company for Vietnam." And, clearly, the problems of Vietnam veterans are among the most important issues reaching out for our attention today.

Always, attention is more easily obtained when issues are personalized. Without being shrill or somber. AfterMASH can help do that. " To North America, for 11 years, we were your family in the service," says Jaime Farr. " And now we're coming home. America, you can take the star out of the window. Your sons and daughters are coming home. Your family is coming home."

Another Article From TV Guide ( January 7-13, 1984 Ed.)

by Bill O'Hallaren

Rosalind Chao, Soon-Lee Klinger of CBS's AfterMASH has been sitting near the set chatting with a visitor about such earth-shaking matters as USC football and Chinese pancakes. She is called back to the scene and as she stands up , says suddenly and with surprising force, " You think you know who I am. Well you don't."

After doing lines with Jamie Farr and Harry Morgan, she returns to continue the challenge. " You have me all figured out. Everyone does. You think you see a person who happens to look Asian but is really just another California girl. Born here. California schools. USC graduate. Hip. With it."

She's told that sums it up pretty well. " All wrong. That's only the surface. The real me is very much Old World, very Chinese. I respect Chinese and Buddhist values. Sure I go to the beach. But one day last month my family went to the Buddhist temple to honor my grandparents' wedding anniversary. We kowtowed three times to their picture. That was very satisfying. That was Chao Jyalin ( her Chinese name) and not Rosalind Chao.

Almost anyone can be forgiven for tabbing Chao as among those multitudes of young Americans whose features reveal their ethnic backgrounds but whose language, values, and thinking are lightyears away from those of her grandparents. But don't count her among them.

" When my brother and I were growing up, we would watch the tv comedies and wonder, how can those children act like that to their parents? We would never think of being so disrespectful. In our house, if my father said to do something a certain way, that's the way we did it. We would never question anything he said."

And mother? " My mother is very strong but she lets my father be the boss ( a little giggle) even if she is the real boss, the woman behind the man. I like the way Asian women treat their men."

Both her parents left China before the Communist takeover, met and were married in California, eventually developed a successful restaurant down the block from Disneyland and are now building a Hotel nearby. Their daughter's upbringing was about as Chinese as possible in a California setting.

" On my first day at nursery school, the teacher took my mother aside and told her , " this little girl doesn't even know how to ask to go to the bathroom." My parents only spoke Chinese at home but then they switched to English. One day when I was about 7 or 8 a schoolmate invited me to dinner and they had pork chops and I was so embarrassed because I could only eat with chopsticks. That night my father sat me down and gave me my first lesson on how to use a knife and fork properly."

Father also gave lessons on how suportive a parent can be . " If I had said , I wonder if I can be President of the United States, he would have told me, of course you can. Once we were watching Here's Lucy and I said I would like to be on it. That was so foolish because what would a little Chinese girl do on Here's Lucy. A few weeks later there were auditions-Lucy was doing a Chinese-laundry show-and I was picked. Everyone was surprised except my father."

For a time Chao seemed on her way to being the new Connie Chung. Chung, now an NBC anchorwoman, was then on a Los Angeles station and Chao while enrolled in communications at USC, met Chung, who told her there were oppotunities for her in broadcasting.

But when Chao was hired by the CBS owned radio station in Hollywood, " I found out I didn't like news at all. When a story broke, a big disaster maybe, everyone else would run around getting it on the air and I would just sit there reacting emotionally to the poor people in the disaster. I decided to go back to acting."

Her father thought it was a mistake. " He told me if I wanted to become an accountant, he would open an office for me. If I wanted to become a dentist, he would set up a practice. But he felt there was nothing he could do to help me as an actress and it made him very sad."

She did get work but the parts were usually small and disappointing and she's not happy with Hollywood's treatment of Asian actresses. " It's always the same role, this innocent little Asian girl is in trouble because she's lost a precious vase, or maybe her brother has disappeared and she just stands there being helpless until some brave American saves her."

For years she was on the outside looking in at M*A*S*H*. " They had so many roles I could have played but I couldn't get any of them." Ironically, younger brother Raymond, her only sibling , was on M*A*S*H* and likes to remind her that his episode, " Lt. Radar O'Reilly ," won an emmy.

She finally crashed the show because of executive producer Burt Metcalf's long memory. He first cast Chao 11 years ago, while working on a CBS series, Anna and the King. " When the time came to find a wife for Klinger, I recommended her. She auditioned with four or five others but was easily the best." But he concedes , " The field of Asian actresses who are young and beautiful and don't have language problems is very narrow."

Her Korean accent on the show is totally phony, developed in sessions with a Korean actress. Her natural English is faultless, " though my Chinese volcabulary is much bigger. There are so many things I know the Chinese word for but not the English."

On the set Morgan, Farr and William Christopher take delight in treating Chao as a sort of kid sister, a kid sister who gets a deal of chauvinist ribbing. Farr, whose normal speaking voice can be heard for two blocks announces, " The man who gets this woman in real life will go out to dinner every night because she is the worst cook in Southern California." This on a basis of a meal she prepared for him that she admits didn't go so well.

Chao tries with only moderate success to convince her showmates that she is Asian, not Oriental, and that many of her people find the latter adjective offensive. In a follow-up interview, Chao explains that the word "Oriental" does not personally offend her, but to her co-stars, she lectures earnestly on the subject as the group moves to the 20th Century-Fox commisary for lunch, where, unfortunately the menu proclaims the day's special is " Oriental chicken salad.."

They also fuss, as do half the actors on Hollywood sets, about smoking. Farr and Morgan favor huge cigars, while Chao wrinkles her tiny nose at even the smallest whiff. " A woman is only a woman," Morgan orates, " but a good cigar is a smoke." Chao tells him Kipling probably wrote a lot of other silly things too.

Despite the show's strong early ratings many critics have slashed at it and Chao thinks, " It's unfair. It's like they wanted to criticize us before they even saw what we were doing."

Farr is more strident, " They're vindictive. They try to knock you off and they enjoy it." Morgan doesn't think they should get so excited. " I don't believe it's vindictive, and after all, for some, this is a letdown from M*A8S*H*.

Chao hopes the series will have more stories based on actual experiences of Korean war brides and has tried to dig up some on her own without much success. " I went to the Korean community center and I thought I would find lots of women who would want to talk about their lives here, but I didn't. Some were too shy and some had negative experiences they didn't want to discuss. And so many of the Korean women seem to have been absorbed into the American culture and don't want to be singled out as someone different."

Chao, in her mid-20's, is unmarried and lives in a tiny apartment on the beach at Santa Monica, Cal., where she runs three miles every other day or so. She dates both Asian and Caucasian men and says her parents won't care if she marries a caucasian" if they know he will treat me right." But their reaction if the right Chinese man comes along? " Joy."

She's naturally anxious to do her best on AfterMASH and adds with a grin, " They tell me if I'm ever a bad girl I'll pick up a script and find Soon-Lee has flown home to Korea."

For an article on the proposed Aftermash spin-off called Walter go to http://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/walter.php