MASH's 30th Anniversary Reunion Makes the Show Even Better (How to Watch)

MASH's 30th Anniversary Reunion Special brings together most of 2002's cast to celebrate its legacy and is easy to find online.

Watch MASH's 30th Anniversary Reunion Special, which aired in 2002. MASH is known to last nearly four times as long as the conflict it portrays; the Korean War lasted three years (1950-1953), while the drama itself ran from 1972 to 1983, a total of eleven years. A natural stopping point for the show was the end of the war, with the finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" seeing the main characters being sent home. Incredibly, MASH is the highest-grossing television series in history. While it spawned spinoffs like AfterMASH, it was never resurrected.

The closest was The MASH 30th Anniversary Reunion Special, which reunited most of the cast and crew to celebrate the show's legacy. Interviews with Alan Alda, Wayne Rogers, Loretta Swit, co-creator Larry Gelbert, and more shed light on how the show was made, including how bad it was in terms of first season ratings, and many groundbreaking scenes such as Colonel Blake's death. Copies of the Reunion Special have been uploaded to YouTube in varying quality, Track&Field Fan's version is one of the best. It still includes some 2002-era ad insertion and tracking effects - which only adds to the retro experience.

The Reunion Is The Only MASH Episode With Wayne Rogers & Mike Ferrell

MASH's 30th Anniversary Reunion Special was especially lighthearted as the cast shared memories of their work on the show. Late actors, such as Colonel Blake actor McLean Stevenson, still appear through archival interviews. The special does offer a unique element, as it's the only time stars Wayne Rogers and Mike Farrell have been onscreen together in a MASH episode. Farrell's B.J. Hunnicutt takes over from Rogers' Trapper, who served as Hawkeye's best friend for the first three seasons. Farrell served in that role for the remaining seven seasons.

Why A MASH Revival Never Would Have Worked

As mentioned above, the MASH 30th Anniversary Reunion Special is pretty much the closest viewers will get to a reunion. "Goodbye, Goodbye, Amen" is a feature-length series depicting the end of the Korean War, so the chances of a revival series bringing the cast back to the same conflict are slim. It would also enhance the show's believability by taking them back to another battleground, like the Vietnam War, and there's a sense that MASH -- which dropped its laugh track -- has spoken out about the futility of war.

In a sense, the 2000s Medical sitcom Scrubs became MASH's spiritual sequel, and both share the same mix of comedy and drama. There were attempts to keep MASH alive with AfterMASH or the failed pilot WALTER — which depicted the adventures of Gary Burghoff's Walter "Radar" O'Reilly — but neither connected with audiences. Since the MASH 30th Anniversary Reunion Special aired, other cast members including Wayne Rogers and Henry Morgan (Colonel Potter) have passed away, making the reunion even more special.