Trick or Treatment is the 242nd episode of the CBS-TV series M*A*S*H, also the second episode of Season 11 of the series. Written by Dennis Koenig, and directed by Charles S. Dubin, it originally aired on November 1, 1982, with a repeat on May 16, 1983.
Synopsis[]
The 4077th's preparations for a big Halloween party turn into an even bigger nightmare when they are deluged with casualties, one in particular whom everyone else thinks is dead.
Full episode summary[]
It's Halloween night at the 4077th, and a battalion of visiting Marines (known as "the Pusan Piranhas") have arrived at Rosie's Bar and are wasting little time getting wasted. Hawkeye, B.J., Potter, Margaret, and Klinger are all in costume, planning to head over to the party.
- Hawkeye is dressed as Superman
- B.J. is dressed as a clown
- Potter as a cowboy in chaps
- Margaret as a geisha in a revealing dress she bought in Tokyo
- Klinger in a Zoot suit
Charles, wanting nothing to do with any Halloween celebration, has volunteered for Post Op duty and quickly gets his first patient: a Marine with a pool ball stuck in his mouth. According to Klinger, the Marine, named Private LaRoche, lost a bet that he could stick a pool ball in his mouth and then take it back out. In Pre Op, Charles "examines" the Marine while messing with his head for a few moments, then, after sarcastically calling LaRoche "Private Mosconi", gives him a not-so-friendly warning that, "The next time we meet, I plan to perform major surgery...whether you need it or not".
Before everyone else can get to the party, wounded arrive, including one soldier who was toe-tagged at Battalion Aid prior to being brought in, and because the deluge is already building up too fast, the doctors have no time to examine the seemingly dead young man, so his body is put off to the side while they tend to the others. After he is laid down, his hand moves slightly, but nobody sees it. Two men from Graves Registration later arrive to pick up the dead soldier; they casually load him into the back of their truck and go to the mess tent for coffee.
During the session in OR, each of the doctors take turns telling ghost stories. Everyone is spooked by the stories, except for a highly skeptical Charles. Wounded continue to arrive and keep the doctors busy, including more casualties from the Halloween party:
- Another Marine lost a bet that he could stick his hand in an electric fan and pull it out before it got sliced up.
- A drunken Corporal Hrabosky, who was injured when he and another Corporal decided to have a backwards jeep race, during which Hrabosky crashed into a chicken coop to avoid hitting a chicken that got in his way.
One of Hawkeye's patients, a Private Scala, comes in with a shoulder wound; Hawkeye notices he is unusually thin, and during surgery when it is discovered that Scala has an arrhythmia, the only thing the surgeons can surmise is that Scala is undernourished, as he would have failed his physical if he had been like that before being drafted. Later in Post Op, Hawkeye persuades Scala to reveal that after he and his unit had stood their ground in a hard battle at Heartbreak Ridge a few weeks prior, their CO rewarded them with an early Thanksgiving dinner. Scala and three of his buddies were in a foxhole enjoying their meal, and Scala had eaten his quickly so he wouldn't miss out on seconds. While he was getting his tray loaded down again, the unit was hit by another artillery burst. Scala ran back to the foxhole only to find all of his buddies dead - with looks of surprise frozen on their now-lifeless faces. Since then, Scala has been starving himself out of survivor's guilt, tearfully saying, "I would've been dead, too, if I hadn't been such a pig." Hawkeye understands Scala's situation and arranges an appointment for him with Sidney Freedman.
At the end of the deluge, Father Mulcahy returns from a Halloween party at the orphanage and runs into Hawkeye, who informs him of the one casualty that "came in dead", adding that he was Catholic. Just as the men from Graves Registration are about to drive off, Mulcahy stops them, wanting to give the dead man last rites, to which they agree. Mulcahy climbs into the back of the truck and begins the ritual, but when Mulcahy sees a tear trickling from one of the soldier's eyes, he abruptly stops and shouts for Hawkeye. Later in Post Op, all the doctors and Margaret surround the young man, now on his way to recovering. Father Mulcahy is upset that Battalion Aid declared the soldier dead so quickly, but Potter explains that the area was in chaos when he arrived, and with little to no time to make an accurate diagnosis, mistakes can happen. B.J. remarks this is "the first time being 'dead' wasn't terminal", with Hawkeye musing, "This is definitely one ghost story nobody's gonna top."
Epilogue[]
Later that night as the three surgeons are asleep in the Swamp, the light hanging over Charles' bed begins to sway, seemingly by itself. It stops when he awakens, but starts up again when he tries to go back to sleep. What Charles doesn't see is the rope attached to it from above, strung up through and over the roof, then down and back underneath the other side of the tent; the other end of the rope is being gently tugged by B.J., as he and Hawkeye secretly smile to one another at having finally evoked Charles' sense of terror.
Research notes/Fun facts[]
- Interestingly, this Halloween-themed episode first aired on the day after Halloween, November 1, 1982, an All Saints' Day. Halloween fell on a Sunday in 1982, and M*A*S*H aired on Monday nights.
- Scala specifically mentions the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge, an actual battle of the Korean War that took place in September and October 1951.
- Charles' referring to Private LaRoche as "Private Mosconi" is a reference to champion pool player Willie Mosconi. The joke is not only slightly obscure, but also remained ambiguous by the fact that it is never made clear in the dialogue that "Mosconi" is not the character's real name; he is only identified as Private LaRoche in the credits.
- At the time this episode aired, George Wendt (Private LaRoche) was just beginning his 11-year stint on Cheers playing the role of Norm Peterson. Wendt was not yet a star, as Cheers had only been on the air for five weeks when this episode first aired. Moreover, during its first season, Cheers was one of the lowest-rated shows on television.
- The story of a soldier starving himself out of grief is very loosely based on a report of a US Army officer who stated that while having Thanksgiving dinner in the Hürtgen Forest in November 1944, he was shelled by the Germans; and that for years afterward, he couldn't eat turkey at Thanksgiving without feeling sick first. [See short side article "The Grimmest Thanksgiving" from article "Bloody Huertgen: The Battle That Should Never Have Been Fought" from American Heritage magazine 1979, volume 31, issue 1.] Of course, this is not the first time the show took an incident from a different war and twisted the facts out of sequence, such as in "A Full Rich Day", nor would it be the last, as in "Foreign Affairs".
- There are several medical conditions that could render a patient in a state such as the "dead" soldier, especially in wartime, where he would be alive and even conscious, but unable to make others aware of it. Being Catholic, the soldier apparently heard Father Mulcahy giving him the last rites, and knowing what was going on, began to weep - which ended up saving his life.
- Watching the almost-dead soldier recover, Potter says to Mulcahy, "Welcome to the club, Padre. You saved a life." This assumes he hadn't saved one before - forgetting how Father Mulcahy saved a soldier's life by performing an emergency tracheotomy under fire in "Mulcahy's War" (a previous episode, "Letters", made this same mistake).
Recurring/Guest cast[]
- George Wendt as Private LaRoche (in credits only; his character's name was never mentioned in the episode)
- Richard Lineback as Private Scala
- Andrew Dice Clay (credited as Andrew Clay) as Corporal Hrabosky
- James Carroll (credited as James Lough) as Private Crotty
- Herman Poppe as M.P.
- R.J. Miller as Graves Registration driver
- Arnold F. Turner as Graves Registration assistant
- Arlee Reed as soldier