The Late Captain Pierce

Infobox Television episode
Title = The Late Captain Pierce
Series = M*A*S*H


Caption =
Season = 4
Episode = 4
Airdate = October 3, 1975
Production = 404
Writer = Glen Charles
Les Charles
Director = Alan Alda
Guests = Richard Masur
Eldon Quick
Sherry Steffens
Kellye Nakahara
Episode list = List of "M*A*S*H" episodes
Prev = "It Happened One Night"
Next = "Hey, Doc"

"The Late Captain Pierce" is an episode from "M*A*S*H". It was the fourth episode of the fourth season and aired on October 3, 1975 (first-run) and April 6, 1976 (repeat). It was written by Glen Charles and Les Charles and directed by Alan Alda.

Guest cast is Richard Masur as Lt. "Digger" Detmuller, Eldon Quick as Captain Pratt, Sherry Steffens as Nurse Able and Kellye Nakahara as Nurse Baker.

Overview

A bureaucratic mistake leaves the army thinking that Hawkeye is dead, and he simultaneously enjoys the lack of responsibility that comes from being legally deceased, with trying to contact his father back in Maine to tell him he's still alive.

Detailed story

The episode opens with Klinger waking up Captain B.J. Hunnicutt, whom Hawkeye's father wants to speak with over the phone. Unfortunately, they are soon cut off and all Hunnicutt catches is the question "how and why?"

The next morning, Lieutenant "Digger" Detmuller arrives at the camp looking for Captain Pierce. When he finds Pierce in the shower, he expresses shock that he is alive. He explains how Pierce was listed as being dead and that he has arrived for the body.

At first, Hawkeye accepts this fallacy in good humor, delivering his own eulogy and using it as an excuse to get out of the camp exercises. However, he turns bitter when he discovers he cannot get paid and that his mail is being withheld. Worse, security for President-elect Eisenhower's sojourn to Korea makes contacting Pierce's father next to impossible.

Eventually, Colonel Potter gets help from headquarters. Captain Pratt promises to fix the error, but the paperwork involved is extensive and in the meantime Pierce will have to remain, in Pratt's words, an "unperson." In a fit of frustration, Pierce decides to accept his fate and desert as a suppositious cadaver.

Pierce climbs on board Digger's bus and prepares to leave. As a helicopter arrives with wounded, Hunnicutt attempts to talk Hawkeye out of his plan. Hunnicutt is unsuccessful and the bus drives off. However, it stops in front of Rosie's bar and Hawkeye climbs off the back, looks around, and heads back to the camp so he can operate on the incoming wounded.

The episode ends with Hawkeye talking to his father on the phone, casually explaining how he's still dead as far as the Army is concerned and asking if he could be sent his allowance for a while.

Plot hole

* When Trapper John McIntyre left the 4077th, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt was sent to replace him. If the Army believed Pierce was dead, they would have done the same thing.
* President Dwight Eisenhower's visit to Korea occurred in December 1952.

Notes

* Many people mistakenly think Captain Pratt's reference to "1984" is an anachronism. However, it is not a reference to the actual year, but to George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", which was published on June 8, 1949. Furthermore, this episode aired almost ten years before the real 1984.
* Pratt's usage of the term "unperson" is incorrect. In "Nineteen Eighty-Four", an "unperson" was someone who had been killed by the state and erased from existence. Hawkeye was neither dead nor erased from existence--he was simply misreported as being dead.
* Although listed in the Main Credits, neither Loretta Swit or Gary Burghoff appear as Margaret and Radar.

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