#hawk meta

the use of "saint" here is loaded. a person must have died before the catholic church will begin the process of canonization, which occurs without the input of the canonized. hawkeye will not be resigned to that fate. he is constantly looking for ways to demonstrate his agency and personhood, yes to people who will listen, but more crucially to people who have not and likely will never listen.

this happened deliberately as the show shifted from satirical plotlines that emphasized the moral bankruptcy of the systems that prop up the war machine to a show about how being in the war wore on the characters individually and changed them as people.

season 4 and onward focus more on individual character drama, highlighting the flaws and virtues of each character, their interiority, their changing relationships with one another and brings in their relationships with offscreen characters - most infamously, Peg and Erin Hunnicutt but also Dr. Pierce Senior, Radar's mother and uncle who eventually passes and Honoria Winchester. Even minor characters get at least one episode that focuses on some offscreen relationship, Mulcahy's sister Kathy and Klinger wife/ex-wife Laverne.

maybe with the (blessed) exception of Frank Burns, I think the function of all the characters changes from 1-3 to 4-11 as the show made this shift.

Trapper is a lancer. we get some glimpses into there being more to him, in Kim and Check-Up - but most of what we see is him performing a specific function, propping up Hawkeye, who in turn props up the messaging of the show. I would have loved to see Trapper's interiority explored more in the later years but I'm not mad about it missing in 1-3 - it's not about him getting "more", he got plenty in terms of what he was created to do. him having 'conflict' with Hawkeye isn't something that would've ever occurred to the writers at that time and you would never hear trapper say something like 'i can't divide myself emotionally' he doesn't have enough of an emotional self to divide.

when it comes to Hawkeye, in 1-3 i think the details of his life beyond what we see of him on screen are extraneous. hence the inconsistencies with his backstory, his sister, his mother, him being form vermont - this stuff just didn't matter back then. focusing on it now can be fun if you're trying to explore the character in fanwork, but the reason Hawkeye's sister (who i've affectioned named 'benjamina pierce') disappears is because they weren't really thinking too hard about her in the first place, you're not supposed to remember her and so the show assumes you won't.

Hawkeye writes home to his father but we don't learn a whole lot about Daniel Pierce at the time, he's only there for Hawkeye to narrate to, that doesn't mean Hawkeye doesn't love him, it's just that the writers don't intend for you to focus on their relationship until at least The Late Captain Pierce.

Other major developments wrt to Daniel happen much later on: he is retconned into being a doctor in the later years when the show wants to care about developing those details of Hawkeye's life and in season 10 we get Sons and Bowlers.

Hawkeye gets a little more character stuff than the rest of the cast because he's the protagonist but there's still a marked shift between 3 and 4, starting with his emotionally charged personal drama re: Trapper - before that, he does have moments where he emotes but it's always to fulfill the show's anti-establishment messaging: Yankee Doodle Doctor, Carry on Hawkeye and yes, even Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde. again, that doesn't mean we can't diagnose him with a laundry list of issues based on that episode when constructing headcanons but his mental state alone can't be divorced from the messaging at this point. "why does he do these things?" asks Henry at the end of Pierce/Hyde, and Trapper replies not that Hawkeye is damaged or hurting or broken (even though he may be all these things) but with the show's central thesis "he took this oath never to stand by and watch people die" - his breakdown directly ties back to the show's criticism of state violence. compare to Bless You Hawkeye, which might've taken place anywhere whenever Hawkeye smelled mouldy pond water.

so if even Hawkeye is more of a device than a character in the early years, what can we say for Margaret?

the Margaret character does her job. the hypocrisy of "fighting for peace" is paralleled perfectly in her relationship with Frank. these are two people who claim to be god-fearing, well-to-do, conservative Americans, but they engage in the same vices as Trapper and Hawkeye: drinking, promiscuity and scheming and worse, Frank and Margaret look down on others for it.

i get why people want something 'more' (really, something 'else) from Margaret and I'm glad we did eventually get that because it was sorely needed, but tbh i adore early Margaret and i think it's a little silly to call her a 'bad person' or 'underdeveloped' - she's just a villain clocking in.

similarly i don't think we're meant to reflect on Hawkeye/Trapper/Henry's philandering as assessments of their character so much as they are clear statements on traditionalism and sexual liberty. you can personally dislike whatever you want in a character but i think the context of the show airing in 1972 when attitudes towards sex, particularly female pleasure, were starting to finally loosen, is relevant.

some people want character drama from MASH and that's their preference, but character drama isn't inherently 'deeper' or 'more complex' than satire. on the contrary some of the writing is so technically strong in the early years, the jokes on-the-ball, the witty criticisms of American foreign policy and the traditional values that uphold it buried within objectively hilarious episodes like Tuttle (where they create 'the perfect American man' except that he's not real and make fools out of ranking officers while they're at it)... I'd argue that that's highly complex.

i don't see the point in getting hung up on the morals of a character who clearly intended to be a villain when judging whether or not they're a 'good' character or not. calling her 'flat' when they're all somewhat 'flat' because the show is not trying to get you overly invested in their personal lives seems unfair to me. same can be said for comparisons of Frank and Charles which are critical of Frank. or my most beloathed criticism: of Henry for being an 'incompetent CO' - that is a feature, not a bug.

Sidney is so much a tool for storytelling that I would liken him to punctuation. He exists to draw out the inner thoughts, fears and desires of our more three-dimensional characters, most notably Hawkeye but also Margaret, Klinger, Charles and the patients he treats on the show. Their psychoses are so often based in their fears, their denial, their disbelief, their unwillingness to take personal responsibility for their circumstances – which is not usually how real mental illnesses work, but still makes for good television. 

I’ve also used to term “Sidney ex machina” to describe his function:

Deus ex machina; plural: dei ex machina; English "god from the machine" is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.

The 4077th will hit a wall with a patient (sometimes the patient is Hawkeye) that they cannot overcome, because they’re experiencing an illness of the mind and they don’t specialize in that type of illness - although you could make an argument for Hawkeye “therapizing” his friends (Margaret in Images, Radar in Hepatitis, BJ in Period of Adjustment) but he’s still not trained. When this happens, someone will go “get Sidney on the line” and every time without fail, Sidney successfully fixes the problem. This wouldn’t land so well if he was a recurring character on the show. 

Hawkeye is so in touch with the inner workings of his own mind and heart I wouldn’t necessarily put it past him to be able to monologue his way through his problems, coming to the solutions on his own (maybe with the exception of GFA or Bless you Hawkeye) but you still get the sense that he already knows the answer, he just needs someone to help draw it out of him. That’s Sidney’s role. He’s really just there for Hawkeye’s voice to have something to bounce off of so it becomes audible to himself and us, the audience. 

There’s one brief exception to Sidney being used this way and lol, it’s no surprise to me its in the Written-by-Alan-Alda Dear Sigmund. Alda’s episodes do tend to deal more with character drama, and I imagine he couldn’t resist taking a stab at Sidney. We learn that Sidney’s struggling with the loss of a patient – but only after Hawkeye and BJ read his private letters, really his journal, which is rude as fuck btw, but to me unintentionally emphasizes how much of a barrier there is between the audience and Sidney’s thoughts/feelings/fears/desires. But I can’t think of any other occasion where we get to see what’s beneath his calm, cool, professional exterior. 

There’s other times I was curious about that.. In War of Nerves he’s supposed to be at the 4077th as a patient, but he leaves the mess tent because he has a head injury that no one is considerate of, and he ends up treating people when he’s the one who’s supposed to be recovering. 

If you choose to see Hawkeye as getting progressively worse as the war wears on him (and idk if I do personally because the show is so episodic but that’s another post) then I have to wonder what it feels like for Sidney to have to keep treating him, especially in Goodbye Farewell Amen, where we finally see a crack in Sidney’s normally neutral expression, his consummate professionalism, as Hawkeye comes clean about what really happened on the bus. Like… they’re friends, it’s already ethically questionable to have Sidney treat him, and then we see exactly why that shouldn’t happen when Hawkeye is understandably upset that Sidney has decided to send him back to the 4077th. There is a moment of forgiveness and gratitude that passes between them in Sidney’s final scene in the series when Hawkeye thanks him, not insignificantly while he (Hawkeye) is performing surgery (to me it feels like a nice callback to OR), which he’d previously wondered aloud to Sidney whether or not he’d ever be able to return to. 

And here I am again saying that “flat” characters, of which Sidney is MASH’s best example, aren’t poorly written when they’re fulfilling their intended purpose, which Sidney does very well almost every time we see him. He’s so good at his job that it even feels weird for me to talk about his thoughts and feelings in fic, I want to get him in there, have him draw out the interiority of whichever character he’s in conversation with and then be like “glad we had this chat, peace” and actually that is how I see him being used pretty regularly in fic. 

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all (gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, extended family, sexual preferences like top/bottom/switch, relationship with poetry, seriously anything)

the only one i feel kind of militant about is my interpretation of hawkeye pierce as being a confident, well-adjusted, generally optimistic person.

on the flip side of that i don't vibe with portrayals of him that cast him as a martyr, especially not in a romantic sense, or as someone who is a passive spectator of his own life. i feel that that is the exact opposite of the hawkeye we see in the show. he's action-oriented, he's invested, he's a go-getter, he's the guy who gets all worked up on behalf of himself and others and wants to do something about whatever problem has presented itself. like in fic i can only put up with him being pathetic and mopey for so long before i'm like ok, it's been 20 minutes, i'm poking him with a stick now.

i get that he's ripe for blorbofication and i'm not denying people their right to do that, but i don't see him as being helpless little meow meow at all. he's not uniquely helpless as a victim of the draft nor is he uniquely traumatized by the war - he is just the protagonist of the show.

i also don't think he needs to be rescued! it seldom gets to that point! and it's pretty clear that when he really does need help, he is willing to accept it and try to get better. that doesn't mean he doesn't need or want love, i just don't think he's the type to wallow in his sadness basically ever. and wanting love and affection and seeking it out and possibly facing rejection does not make everyone into a hermit who spends their days pining after a lost love. he's the type to say "onwards" - in pretty much every situation.

his lowest point (GFA) comes after the bus incident because it takes something that harrowing, the loss of a truly innocent life (and his perception that that is his fault) to break him. compare that to the low points of other characters on the show and i feel pretty confident in saying that he's the most resilient character. i really like that he's a guy who is vulnerable, compassionate, emotional... and those are portrayed as being his strengths. he doesn't dwell on his sadness for too long, because it'd get in the way of what he needs to do, which is loving others.

on a sillier note, i think even a normie watching MASH in 2023 would think he's bisexual. or at least they'd have a hard time calling him a "100% straight ladies man".

aaaand finally: he may be sub-leaning and bottom-leaning, but i'm camped out on 'hawkeye pierce is a switch' hill until i die.

The ideas that he can slip back into his community at home and still be close to the 4077 can coexist. He takes part in his first play after getting home and sends them all a playbill in his next letter.

-major majoranon

Yeah. Some of that is done to set up shipping which 🤷🏽‍♂️ it provides the basis of hurt/comfort and ill probably do it myself at some point. Im sure he'll have some hiccups post war, and ill exaggerate those.

And this shot is also to blame lol:

But Pierce / Hyde is an episode (noun)!! Yes he has more than one throughout but he is also the protagonist of the series. If this were the mike farrell or the loretta swit show i think it is fair to assume we'd have gotten a few more of these for them too.