M*A*S*H (television)/Awesome

• Even though he was M*A*S*H's usually deserving Butt Monkey Frank Burns was allowed one awesome moment in a Season Five episode. Margaret has been acting so incredibly tactless and insensitive about her engagement that even Hawkeye and BJ are giving him a break. At the end of the episode, after he's recovered from a mini-breakdown and she's still bragging, he gets her back:

Frank Burns: Listen, Pierce, why don't you and I go out on the town tonight, hmm?
Hawkeye: Well, this is so sudden, Frank, I don't have anything to wear.
Burns: Well, I mean, get a couple of nurses, go over to Rosie's bar, have a little fun.
Hawkeye: Sounds good to me.
Burns: There's this little redheaded nurse who's had her eye on me. And tonight her wish will come true.
Margaret: Do you mean that new girl with the freckles on her nose?
Burns: Yes, that's the one.
Margaret: She's a little young for you, isn't she, Major Burns?
Burns: Oh, I don't know. I thought a little youth might be nice for a change.

It's also heartwarming, because then Hawkeye and BJ laugh, and for quite possibly the first and only time, they are genuinely laughing with Frank as opposed to at him.

• Winchester gets one at the end of his introductory episode, "Fade Out, Fade In" when he turns Hawkeye's joke back on the prankster himself, calmly listening to classical music during Hawkeye's following rant, and responding only:

Winchester: Please, Mozart.

• Another for Winchester that may also count as a Tear Jerker - the Season 8 episode "Morale Victory" where he convinces a concert pianist who's had one of his hands irreparably damaged that his musical career is not over, when Charles explains his own frustrated desire to be able to make music.
  • And also possibly as Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, as Winchester tracks down some piano scores that can be played one-handed - and makes a point of skipping a party that the rest of the unit is having to be with the soldier as he plays them.
• And yet another episode-long one for Winchester that also counts as Crowning Moment of Heartwarming - "Sons And Bowlers" - being there for Hawkeye when he's worrying about his Dad going in for an operation (and even revealing that his own father-son relationship had always been strained) while teaming up with BJ to help their unit win the bowling match they had with a rival camp by sabotaging their star player.
• Potter also got one in his introductory episode when he gives Klinger the what for, not at all impressed by the later's Section 8 stunt.
• B.J. got two: being revealed as the prankster at the end of "Dear Sigmund" in the fifth season, and the elaborate prank he pulled on Hawkeye in "The Joker is Wild" in the eleventh.
• Mulcahy had his when he performed an emergency tracheotomy on the back of a jeep while being shelled with only a skittish Radar for a nurse. Keep in mind Mulcahy is the unit chaplain.
  • He got a better one in "A Holy Mess." He held onto his religious principles against military law, and at the end disarms a soldier pointing a rifle in his face. This is what it means to be a man of God.
  • Also when he races against the star runner from another camp, being the only one in good enough shape to even compete. During the race the guy toys with him the entire time letting him get close and then zooming away until Malcuhy pulls ahead at the last stretch. A foot from crossing the line he makes everyone swear to give the money that they were gambling with to the orphanage. Later on you find out that every time his opponent would get close, he would lament about how terrible the conditions were at the orphanage until the guy took a dive. A man of God and a smart one too.
• Even Klinger got one, when he dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, complete with flaming torch, for MacArthur's visit.
  • Even better: MacArthur saluted him as he drove by.
  • Another favorite Klinger moment(shared with Mulcahy) was in "Tea and Empathy". Mulcahy heard a confession from a soldier who had helped black marketeers steal penicillin from the camp. Unable to break the seal of the confessional but wanting to help the camp deal with a penicillin shortage, Mulcahy takes Klinger to the site where he was told the black market was keeping the penicillin, under a heavy school bell at a bombed-out schoolhouse. Klinger and Mulcahy manage to retrieve the penicillin, although Klinger ends up losing his dress when it gets pinned by the bell.

Houlihan: "Go cover yourself, you hairy creep!"
Klinger: "I am covered! Covered in glory!"

• Radar went out with bang in "Radar's Farewell Part 2." Radar and Klinger have been unable to get a new generator for the 4077 when wounded arrive. Radar instead asks his contact for "every jeep and truck" he has and sets up an operating theater outdoors by the light of headlamps.
  • Radar also got a good one in "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", when Hawkeye was temporarily blinded by an exploding stove. Potter sent Radar to contact an eye-surgeon, which led to;

Radar O'Reilly: "Now listen, you dumb clerk; this is General Walter O'Reilly, three stars and real mad: If Major Overman isn't here by the time they crack my powdered eggs for breakfast, I'll have you digging a latrine for every GI in Korea!"

• Hawkeye in "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," the final episode of the series.
• Another for Winchester when Colonel Baldwin, the man who assigned him to the unit to avoid his gambling debt, arrives. Winchester spends the whole episode desperately trying to get on his good side so he can be reassigned, but then Baldwin assumes a little too much of Margaret and tells Winchester he'll get his reassignment if he backs Baldwin up that she came on to him. After Potter arrives, Winchester hesitates briefly, then says that Baldwin is lying before going on a huge rant that he'd never destroy a friend's career to be reassigned. Potter leads the rest of the camp in applause.
  • The moment in question:

Winchester: "I've groveled! I have endured your insufferable cribbage playing! I have kissed your brass! But I WILL NOT, even for a return to that pearl of the orient Tokyo, lie to protect you while destroying a friend's career!"

• Yet another for Winchester: The Christmas episode in which he follows his family tradition of donating a special chocolate to a deserving family.
  • In the same episode, Hawkeye, BJ, Houlihan and Mulcahey team up to keep a soldier from dying on Christmas Day proper, so that their family won't have to remember that as the day they lost their father. Counts as a MAJOR Tear Jerker and Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
  • The best part is they don't even make it on time. They falsify his report to show that he died at 12:30 AM, December 26th.
• When Hawkeye pushes a superior officer and Colonel Potter simply responds "Pierce shouldn't have pushed you, he shoulda decked ya."
• Every time they save someone that you become emotionally invested with through the course of the episode.
• When Father Mulchey went to give the last rights to the boy moments before he was to be shipped off, believed to be dead, and a tear came out of his eye.
• Charles Winchester gets a Crowning Episode of Awesome, when he pulls a flawless The Plan on Colonel Flagg to divert Flagg from his usual fruitless hunts for spies, traitors and Communist sympathizers. Winchester actually nearly gets Flagg to arrest the Mayor and Police Chief of Uijongbu by convincing him that the two are actually North Korean agents.
  • It gets more awesome when the Fridge Brilliance kicks in and you realize that Flagg didn't appear again after that.
• In "Bug Out," under intelligence that the front is moving, the camp moves out to another site further south... except for Hawkeye, Margaret and Radar, who stick around because they have a patient who literally couldn't be moved in time to join the rest of them. Repeat: they risked their lives/becoming POWs to make sure a patient could walk again.
• In the pilot, the team needs to come up with money to send the local teen who has been working for them to school; to do this, they concoct a plan by which they will auction off a trip with the hottest nurse in camp to Tokyo. One problem: she's engaged and faithful. They therefore rig it so that Father Mulcahey gets the trip, so that nothing will happen.
• While away from camp, Margaret and Hawkeye are trapped in a hut by rain and shelling. Margaret has just received a letter from her husband that was meant for another woman (whom he was far more passionate with). After spending their own "passionate night" in the middle of nowhere, Margaret gets back by constructing her own letter describing the events with Hawkeye and mailing it to Penobscott.
• Hawkeye is the only character to appear in every single episode of the show. Part of this is because Alda was the producer; another part of this is because he did one episode with just him and a Korean family, effectively having a 22-minute nigh-monologue (in the show to keep him from falling unconscious with a concussion).
• Charles is listening to a U.S.O. accordion player perform in the Officer's Club. After Charles makes a few snide remarks the accordion player walks over to the piano...and proceeds to blow Charles away with a flawless rendition of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata in C Minor.
• Margaret gets one in season 4: Frank's wife finds out about Margret so he lies and proceeds to insult Margaret's appearance and even call her a battle axe just to keep his money..... Margaret happens to be listening, and is especially mad since Frank just won't leave his wife because he's too weak and proceeds to rip the phone out and throw it outside.... which Frank gets a glimpse of and gets an epic Oh Crap face as he realizes what's happening.
• Radar gets another in the season 4 premiere "Welcome to Korea": he, Hawkeye and BJ are on their way back to camp from Seoul they come across a Korean farmer making his daughters checking a field for land mines to know that it will be safe for the ox. While Hawkeye is yelling at the farmer and trying to get the girls out a land mine goes off. Without hesitating Radar charges into the field, picks up the injured girl, then carries her and leads her sister safely to the jeep.
• The 4077th has been getting a lot of "business" from the colonel of a unit who sends his men out to retrieve their comrades who have died in battle, causing them to become casualties themselves. After said colonel visits the 4077th Hawkeye gives him an "appropriate aloha" - he arranges for a helicopter to fly over the colonel's jeep and drop a large amount of garbage all over the colonel.
• Hawkeye finally swallowing his claustrophobia enough to go inside the cave to help treat a patient during the bug-out in C*A*V*E.
• In one season 8 episode a Congressional aide comes to the 4077th and accuses Margaret of being a Communist sympathizer, and spends much of the episode harassing her to get her to give him the names of more suspected sympathizers. The aide pays Margaret a little social visit later in the evening and promises to "fix" things for her if she'll sleep with him - only for Klinger to pop out of Margaret's closet and photograph the two of them in a passionate embrace. He, Margaret, Hawkeye, Charles and BJ threaten to send the picture to the aide's wife if he doesn't leave Margaret alone. That would be crown enough, but at the end of the episode it turns out that the Congressional aide got his just desserts when a Stars and Stripes article reveals that his wife had been caught having an affair with the very congressman that he was aide to!
• Henry had one when he was being threatened with a court martial after Frank & Margaret ratted him out to the Army for giving Meg Cratty supplies for her civilian clinic. At first, Henry is overwhelmed and scared. Just when it looks like he's doomed, Hawkeye, Trapper, Meg and one of her patients walk into the hearing and speak up for him. Emboldened, Henry stands up, forcefully explains how he helped her without payment or depriving his own wounded, and dares the brass to "hang my butt from a flag pole". Henry is cleared moments later.