14. Love Story

January 7, 1973 (J-314)

Written by: Laurence Marks
Directed by: Earl Bellamy
Guest Stars: Kelly Jean Peters as Nurse Anderson. Indira Danks as Nurse O'Brien. Jerry Harper as the sergeant.
Semi-regulars: Barbara Brownell as Lt Jones. Marcia Strassman as Nurse Cutler.

Plot: Radar is depressed and causing administrative errors, which he normally never does. A thorough physical fails to find anything wrong with him; the boys pressure him to let on what's going on. He eventually confesses that his fiancé has dumped him. The boys try to fix him up with another date to make him feel better. He ultimately gets eyes for a camp newcomer, Lieutenant Anderson - only Hawkeye, doing some preliminary reconnaisance, finds out she's far more intellectual than Radar. They give him a crash course on how to fake being smart, including literary criticism and basic classical music. It initially goes not completely badly, although Anderson seems a little unconvinced, but Hot Lips nonetheless wants to break up the 'affair'. When she threatens to make a complaint to General Clayton, Henry enlists the boys' help to keep her and Burns apart to show them what not having an affair around can lead to. Naturally, they succeed. And equally naturally, Radar soon blows how intellectual he isn't anyway.

Glitches: In the scene where Anderson first arrives, she jumps from rummaging in her handbag to buttoning up her coat.

Great Lines: Radar: '"Well, I'm partial to the fugue." Can I say that to a girl I hardly know?'
Hawkeye on the greatness that is love: 'Without love, what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents. Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals, walking around lonely.'
Hawkeye: 'That's why shaving was invented. To kill time before a date.'

Continuity is for Wimps: So, Radar is/was engaged, huh? Apart from the fact that he later seems to barely know what a girl is, he was trying to chat up a nurse only last week!

Comments: Ostensibly a Radar story, but it really is more Hawk 'n' Trap action. Nothing too solid, but fairly fun. Hawkeye's expression as Radar fails the practical side of his smart lesson is a classic. Not to mention Henry getting his hand caught on the fishing flies on his hat when he salutes. And let us never forget that classic - 'Ahh, Bach!' (Don't forget to include the hand gesture).

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