Behind the curtain of a life lived in print
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- May 3, 2025
- 329
Very few successful movies have spawned respected TV offspring.
In fact, “M*A*S*H” may be the only one.
You might be able to make a case for “The Paper Chase,” but very few people probably even remember the series. The same thing could be said for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but I’ll always list it among my favorites, though it’s a minority opinion.
Allow me a quick tangent.
Back when I was just beginning my tenure as an entertainment editor, I devoted an entire column to “Buffy,” which aired on something called the WB, a cable station very few knew about.
I went on and on about Joss Whedon and his marvelous creation, praising the acting, the writing, the cinematography, the attitude, everything about the show and how no one should miss an episode.
After I’d submitted my work to the Sunday editor, who normally had very little criticism for what I’d written, a red-ink scrawled proof of my piece landed on my desk under the words “NOBODY WANTS TO READ 75 INCHES ON AN UNKNOWN SHOW!!”
I was advised, quite sternly, to cut it in half and then trim it again.
And you thought newspaper columnists lived a charmed life.
It’s been a good way to make a living, though I sometimes wonder if growing up in public — to lift a line from Lou Reed — might have been the smartest choice or the wisest course of action. It’s not for everyone, that I know for sure, because there are trip wires and unexploded land mines buried under any unexplored terrain.
I remember one particularly harrowing Monday morning …
I had barely settled in after my 25-mile drive to work when the managing editor called me into the office and, without preamble, said, “You have until 3 o’clock to fix this, or you’re finished here.”
There’s no need to rehash the details of my transgression, aside from saying I learned the difference between libel and slander.
You just never know how many people read your words until one of them takes umbrage and threatens to have you fired. In my defense I used no names, listed no town of residence and avoided even disclosing the gender of the person. Alas, that didn’t save me.
What did rescue me was the cunning of a colleague who put me in touch with an attorney skilled in such delicate matters. His advice was to apologize in print, using it as a teachable moment, something that took the focus off me and shed light on a solution.
“You sound like a smart guy,” he said. “Write something special.”
Lawsuit averted, career preserved, lesson learned.
On a somewhat lighter note, I wrote a column about something unrelated to dentistry, though I did use an urban legend that revolved around the extraction of wisdom teeth as a transition.
It was pretty basic scary stuff; i.e., there were reports confirming that occasionally the optic nerve got tangled up with the roots of a tooth, and once it was yanked out, the person lost sight in one eye.
“Mike,” said the receptionist on the intercom. “Call on line two.”
“I have patients who are afraid to sit in the chair,” said the dentist, who I knew socially. “They think that I’m going to make them go blind or something crazy like that. Just thought I’d let you know.”
Which brings us back to “M*A*S*H.”
A couple of years after Robert Altman’s film, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, was released to critical and popular acclaim, some brilliant minds at CBS got together and decided America was ready for an adult comedy about the absurdity of war.
This was at the height of Vietnam, and even though the series was set against the backdrop of the Korean conflict, it wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Seldom had a television series taken so many chances, upset so many people and delivered so many gut punches.
I was a senior in high school and had registered for the draft, as required by law, and “M*A*S*H” hit me hard. As a columnist for the school paper, I devoted significant effort to a piece I hoped would convince others my age to tune in once a week.
Not that anything I wrote mattered much. The show became a hit.
Over a decade or so, “M*A*S*H” evolved into a new kind of television program, one that wasn’t afraid to tackle issues like women in the military, the psychic scars inflicted on veterans, the struggles of gay soldiers and the tragedy of civilians caught in the conflict, innocents whose lives were forever changed by the horror.
The years produced a number of casting changes, not the least of which was the introduction of Charles Emerson Winchester III, superbly played by David Ogden Stiers, who replaced Frank Burns.
“I do one thing at a time,” the Harvard-educated surgeon said in his first episode. “I do it very well, and then I move on.”
That’s the closest anyone has ever come to defining what I’ve tried to do for a living over the last 35 years … and I salute him for it.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, where the years melt away and memory lane is open.