M*A*S*H
Temporary Duty
TV Flash files “Temporary Duty” as hour 141 of 251 in the TV Flash guide — M*A*S*H (1972–1983) on CBS, season 6, episode 21, aired 1978-02-13, 30 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S06E21: listed hour 141 of 251 in the M*A*S*H guide, hour 21 of 24 in season 6. It aired 1978-02-13 (30 min). The listed hour before it is “Mail Call Three” (S06E20). Next is “Potter's Retirement” (S06E22).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
A 'chest cutter' and a nurse from the 8063rd are sent to the 4077th in return for Hawkeye and Nurse Bigelow.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Temporary Duty sit in the M*A*S*H guide?
S06E21 is listed hour 141 of 251 — hour 21 of 24 in season 6, season 6 episode 21.
When did M*A*S*H S06E21 air?
Temporary Duty aired 1978-02-13 and is listed at 30 minutes.
Where should I start if I cannot watch all eleven seasons?
Start with the 1972 pilot to learn the tent's manners, then jump to Sometimes You Hear the Bullet and Abyssinia, Henry. Those three hours teach the joke-to-wound contract better than a clip reel.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Eleven seasons of a network comedy that kept rewriting its own permission slip — Korea as the set, Vietnam as the aftertaste, and a goodbye still quoted whenever someone needs proof a sitcom can stop the country.
February 28, 1983, CBS did not program a sitcom. It programmed weather. Goodbye, Farewell and Amen ate the night, the morning papers, and a ratings myth executives still quote like scripture — a two-and-a-half-hour close on a Korean War tent America had been visiting since September 1972. The helicopters were already folklore. The laugh track, by then, had learned when to shut up. On the palate: canvas, cigarette haze, and a three-act clock that could turn a punchline into a casualty without changing the lighting.
Filed against
- Alan Alda as Capt. Hawkeye Pierce
Alan Alda defined 1970s television as Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H, blending scalpel wit with antiwar ache until a two-and-a-half-hour goodbye stopped a nation. Actor, writer, and director of the series’ later seasons, he proved a sitcom…
- Loretta Swit as Maj. Margaret Houlihan
Loretta Swit’s Maj. Margaret Houlihan is the officer M*A*S*H had to let grow up — the Army nurse who started as a punchline and became a person inside CBS’s Korean War tent. Eleven seasons of gallows humor as appointment TV needed a…
- Jamie Farr as Cpl. Maxwell Klinger
Jamie Farr’s Cpl. Maxwell Klinger is M*A*S*H as a section-eight gag that grew a soul — dresses, Toledo longing, and wartime comedy that refused to leave him a punchline. Harry Morgan restabilized command; Farr restabilized the joke. On TV…
- Harry Morgan as Col. Sherman Potter
Harry Morgan steadied M*A*S*H as Col. Sherman T. Potter after the command shuffle — horse sense, heart, and wartime comedy craft. Dragnet-era roots as Officer Bill Gannon made him institutional memory on legs. On TV Flash he is the…
- Gary Burghoff as Cpl. Radar O'Reilly
Gary Burghoff played Cpl. Radar O'Reilly on M*A*S*H — the company clerk as the tent's nervous system, gallows humor that could hear the helicopters before the laugh track did. TV Flash files him as 4077th craft: the kid who made a war…