62. Private Charles Lamb

December 31, 1974 (B-310)

Written by: Larry Gelbart and Sid Dorfman
Directed by: Hy Averback
Guest Stars: Ted Eccles as Private Chapman, Titos Vandis as Colonel Andropolis, plus a bunch of uncredited Greek-ish extras.

Plot: In a letter Hawkeye tells his father about the most recent casualties - a bunch of Greek soldiers who got injured. Radar is very much the animal fan - he's pinching salad vegetables to feed his pets and telling Henry all about his animals back home. A Greek Colonel arrives, and offers a Greek Easter feast to the 4077th as the holiday will fall when his men are still in hospital. (Yes, the Greek Orthodox Easter is on a different Sunday to the ordinary Protestant and Catholic one, in case anybody was wondering). Meanwhile, one of Hawkeye's patients, Private Chapman, is revealed to be suffering a self-inflicted wound - normally a court-martialable offence, Hawkeye gives him a break and a bit of a talking-to. Chapman agrees to go back to the front. The enormous pile of food arrives for the feast, including bread and pickles and preserves and olives and a live lamb, which will be spit-roasted - much to Radar's horror. Burns isn't too pleased with it either - he seems to think that a traditional Greek Orthodox Easter celebration will be immoral and pagan. He goes to talk to Father Mulcahy about it - finding the Father absent, he stops to leave him a note. While writing it, Private Chapman, thinking Burns is the priest, comes in for confession and tells Burns how he shot himself. Burns is furious. Radar can't bear the thought of the lamb being eaten, and gets Henry to sign a set of emergency leave papers for one Private Charles Lamb - a short, curly-haired guy, according to Radar! Burns tries to report Private Chapman to Henry, but Hawk and Trap point out that in order to report the crime he'd have to confess to impersonating a priest, possibly even more serious as an offence. The lamb has vanished, Radar admitting that he had it shipped back to Ottumwa, so to stop Henry getting into trouble the boys promise to produce a lamb. The party kicks off, with traditional Greek music and folk-dancing (including one bloke dressed up as an Evzone, which must be a terribly uncomfortable outfit) and everybody hooks into the Ouzo. The piece de resistance finally arrives - the boys have made a fake lamb out of spam. The party is a huge success, which Henry caps off by passing out on the remains of the spam lamb.

Glitches: This is a bit picky, but Trapper tells Mr Kwang that medicine was invented in ancient Greece by a bloke called Hippocrates. It's not entierly incorrect, in that Hippocrates did do a lot to turn medicine from a magic-related pseudo-science into the institution we enjoy today, but there was a lot of ground-work done in Egypt a good number of years earlier by a gentleman called Imhotep. But I think we'll let him have this one. Especially since the point seemed to be that Burns was denegrating Greeks when they may have been the source of his profession.

AWOL: Hot Lips is in Toyko, apparently.

Great Lines: Hawkeye: 'If you'd studied at all, Radar, you'd know that the Greeks invented the Edible Complex. That's where a boy likes his mother's cooking better than eating out.'
Radar: 'What's he gonna do with that lamb?' Hawkeye: 'If I know our cook he's gonna make pork chops out of it.'
PA: 'Be on the lookout for a white, caucasian lamb. He is reported to be unarmed and considered to be delicious.'
Henry: 'I've got command on my tail, and a hospital full of Greeks waiting for a lamb who's sitting on a plane on his way to Iowa to become Radar's little brother!'

Continuity is for Wimps: Radar has suddenly turned into a vegetarian? When the hell did that happen? This is the man that ate a mountain of chicken legs and a whole lamb roast! (See 19. The Longjohn Flap in Season One!)

Je ne parle Korean...do I? The majority of the Greeks don't seem to speak much English (except the good Colonel) but that's OK because none of the gang seem to speak any Greek at all.

Notes: Radar is a vegetarian (apparently). Henry doesn't react too well to ouzo (that's OK, I don't think anybody does).

Comments: EEK! The soldier waking up in the middle of that operation? AWFUL! I think that would have to be one of my worst fears.
The lamb really was incredibly cute. Just one of the reasons I buy my meat at the butcher rather than at the farm-yard.
The drunk Radar punching the even drunker Henry on the arm and knocking him off the bench is awfully funny.
Nice to see some exposure for the non-USA countries that participated in the Korean war. The story of Radar, Mr RSPCA 1951, was rather sweet but at the same time sort of frustrating because it wasn't done particularly subtlely. Almost from the outset, with him pinching the salad vegetables, it's obvious that something was going to be made of it before the end of the episode.

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