MASH’s Failed Spinoff Almost Recast An Iconic Character With A Legendary Singer

When one MASH cast member refused to return for the show’s spinoff, a jaw-dropping replacement idea was suggested. MASH ran for 11 seasons between 1972 and 1983 and proved groundbreaking for many reasons. From the shocking death of Henry Blake to the record-breaking finale, the impact and legacy of the show are still being felt. It was a MASH cast vote that ended the show, with the ensemble sensing during the tenth season it was time to wrap things up before the quality took a serious nosedive.

Of course, MASH was still a solid ratings success, and CBS wanted to keep it running. It was then suggested that the actors who voted to keep it on the air (Jamie Farr, Harry Morgan and William Christopher) should front a spinoff instead. On paper, this sounded like a solid pitch, but in reality, AfterMASH was a disaster. Taking place in a Veteran’s Hospital, the spinoff may have been better served as a drama instead of a sitcom, and AfterMASH’s ratings tanked so hard its final episode never aired and was lost for 30 years.

AfterMASH Tried (And Failed) To Bring Back OG Characters Like Hawkeye And Margaret

Writer Ken Levine recalls CBS hitting the panic button on their MASH spinoff

Famed comedy writer Ken Levine (Cheers) worked on both MASH and AfterMASH and in 2022 recalled the original plan to build a series that wasn’t dependent on bringing back former cast members. On his blog By Ken Levine, he then recalls that CBS started to worry when the ratings started to dip, and the network wanted to bring back as many MASH actors as possible. The only issue there was that most of them had moved on already.

Well Alan Alda and Mike Ferrell were not remotely interested. Neither was David Ogden Stiers. We did manage to get Gary Burghoff to do an episode (which turned out to be one of our better episodes).

Considering how acclaimed MASH’s finale was in 1983, it makes sense that Alan Alda or Mike Farrell had zero interest in returning for guest appearances only a year later. The finale was the perfect farewell, so if AfterMASH was going to succeed, it had to do so on its own terms. An appearance by Alda’s Hawkeye or Loretta Swit’s Margaret may have helped ratings in the short term, but the show had fundamental issues that no guest appearance was going to solve.

20th Century Fox Wanted To Recast Margaret After Loretta Swit Passed

The studio felt bringing “Hot Lips” back would be an event no matter who played her

According to Levine, 20th Century Fox executives were particularly keen to bring back Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan for AfterMASH. That issue there was that Swit passed on returning, just as pretty much every other OG cast member did. While plenty of MASH actors exited the series during its run, Swit and Alda were the only actors to have appeared in both the show’s pilot and finale. In short, she was as closely identified with the character as Alda had been with Hawkeye.

Despite this, the executives at Fox felt they could bring back Margaret with a new actor. While Levine underlined that bringing Margaret back would only be an event if she was played by Swit, they pushed the notion that any actress could play the role and that other shows had substituted actors. When the writer jokingly suggested they could get singer Diana Ross to play Margaret, Levine was stunned the response was “Say… that’s kinda interesting” by the executive he was speaking with.

AfterMASH Never Approached Diana Ross About Playing Margaret

None of the Supremes were offered roles on AfterMASH either

In the same blog post, Levine made it clear that despite the suit finding his Diana Ross pitch “interesting,” the singer wasn’t approached. Ross may have few acting credits to her name, but she proved with projects like the 1994 TV movie Out of Darkness that she was a fine actress. Still, it would have been a truly bizarre move to bring Margaret back on AfterMASH and reunite her with Morgan’s Potter or Farr’s Klinger but have her played by the “Upside Down” singer.

If nothing else, Levine’s story highlights how desperate the network became. AfterMASH wasn’t a disaster during its first season and even earned respectable ratings and reviews. Regardless, CBS wanted it to be as successful as its parent series had been and was willing to resort to gimmicky guest appearances to make that happen. Mercifully, the notion of recasting Margaret or any other MASH character was dropped.

As Levine mentions, bringing back Gary Burghoff’s Radar resulted in one of AfterMASH’s more affecting episodes. Even then, the network took the wrong lesson and tried to develop a Radar spinoff called W*A*L*T*E*R, where Burghoff’s lovable farmboy became a police officer; the idea never made it past a badly received pilot. Had AfterMASH been given more of a chance to develop its own tone and voice, maybe Alda or Swit could have been talked into an appearance in a later season.

CBS doomed AfterMASH by pitting it against ratings juggernaut The A-Team during its second season. This was a huge error, and the spinoff tanked so utterly against its rival that it was canceled only nine episodes in. Incredibly, AfterMASH has never been released on home media (be it VHS, DVD or Blu-ray), or been made available on streaming.

Bringing Back More Characters Wouldn’t Have Saved The MASH Spinoff

AfterMASH was a flawed idea from its inception

A cameo by Hawkeye or B.J. Hunnicutt may have given AfterMASH a ratings bump, but it wouldn’t have masked the core issues with the offshoot. It’s been noted that the central premise of doctors treating war veterans had potential in itself, but it would have worked better as a straight drama. Instead, the MASH spinoff attempted to merge comedy and drama and fell flat on both counts. It also lacked a leading man in the Alda mold to pull it all together, while placing characters like Klinger front and center was a bad idea.

If by some miracle CBS had convinced Alda or Swit to sign up for AfterMASH, perhaps it could have been salvaged in its second season. That wasn’t to be, and it instead became one of TV’s most notorious failures. It doesn’t quite deserve that legacy, but while AfterMASH’s heart was in the right place, the execution was lacking.

Again, the series was a modest success in its first season, but it was CBS’ unwillingness to let it be its own thing that led to AfterMASH’s swift end. If nothing else, the cancellation of the spinoff convinced the network that MASH was truly done, and no further attempts have been made to continue or reboot it – not yet, at least.

Source: By Ken Levine