Trapper (Wayne Rogers): Full house. Ha ha!
Radar (Gary Burghoff): I guess that beats two pair, right?
Trapper: It sure does! What were they?
Radar: Tens.
Trapper: Yeah? Tens and what?
Radar: That's it. Two pairs of tens.
As the viewers of the 2018 Winter Olympics have been reminded, the winters in Korea are notorious for their severity, and the folks at Quartermaster Corps were forever sending the wrong things to the 4077th.
By "wrong," of course, I mean inappropriate.
In the latest round of harsh winter weather, the 4077th received a shipment of mosquito netting and summer underwear — items that would be useful in about six months when the rugged Korean summer set in. What everyone needed — and only one person had in the episode of MASH that aired on this night in 1973, "The Longjohn Flap" — was long underwear.
Hawkeye (Alan Alda) was that solitary individual. He had received some longjohns from home.
But he was an old softie at heart, and he gave his long underwear to Trapper (Wayne Rogers) when Trapper started sneezing.
That was only the beginning. Before the episode was over the longjohns had made their way around the camp and had, seemingly, been in everyone's possession — however briefly — at one time or another.
Trapper, in an attempt to make back what he had lost in poker, bet the long underwear against Radar (Gary Burghoff) — and lost. Radar, in turn, used the longjohns to score some points with a pretty nurse but changed his mind and swapped the longjohns to the cook for a leg of lamb and mint jelly.
That was when Frank (Larry Linville) entered the picture. Frank was giving the cook a hard time about the cleanliness of his kitchen and threatened to bust him a rank. That was when the cook decided to bribe Frank with the longjohns.
Frank ended up giving the longjohns to Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) to prove his love for her (after he declined, once again, to divorce his wife), but Klinger (Jamie Farr) stole the longjohns from Hot Lips when she wasn't looking.
Overcome with guilt, Klinger confessed his sin to Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) and left the longjohns with him. The priest took them to Henry (McLean Stevenson), who promised to stay close to them until he had spoken to everyone in camp in an effort to find the rightful owner.
"Look, I'm planning on conducting a very thorough investigation," Henry said. "It might take a couple of months."
Henry never got a chance to conduct a tent–to–tent search, though. Hawkeye and Trapper had to rush him onto the operating table before his appendix burst. They were successful, which was reported to the camp by way of the P.A. system. The announcement drew mild applause. Then it was announced that the longjohns had been saved. By the raucous celebration, one would assume peace had just been declared.
In gratitude, Henry returned the longjohns to Hawkeye.
It was a format that would be revisited about a year later when Hawkeye, in need of a new pair of boots, struck deals with everyone in the compound. The house of cards ultimately collapsed, and Hawkeye wound up on the losing end in that episode.
But in the episode that aired tonight, he was the winner — even though Trapper started sneezing again.
