Today in History—February 28: M*A*S*H Ends: “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”

At 11:03 pm on this night in 1983, the flow rate in New York City’s water tunnels jumped by an extraordinary 300 million gallons: The series finale of M*A*S*H had just ended, and everyone was going to the bathroom at once.

That’s because 77 percent of televisions turned on in America were tuned to the same thing. For two hours, the country stood still. City councils and school boards canceled meetings. Bars were empty. Streets were deserted.

The show, set in South Korea, was based on a film (1970) based on a book (1968) by a surgeon who served in the Korean War. It ran more than three times longer than the war it depicted, taking America from a completely different war in Southeast Asia all the way to Ronald Reagan’s presidency. With laughter and grief on the same operating table, it established the dramedy (“comedy” + “drama”) genre.

The ensemble cast of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (hence the show’s name) had become household names. A few figures anchored it, including Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce (played by Alan Alda), Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit), Father Francis Mulcahy (William Christopher), and Corp. Walter “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff).

The finale was a long way from the show’s early days of laugh tracks and orders not to show blood. More than 106 million people watched “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”: It remains the most-watched episode of scripted television in history. M*A*S*H happened at exactly the right moment to command those ratings: Americans had only a handful of networks.

Those viewers were not rewarded with laughs. Hawkeye is piecing together the trauma of seeing a woman kill her fussing child to remain undetected by soldiers. This story came from real accounts that the show’s writers heard when they interviewed those who served in Korea.

The political undercurrent grew more explicit as the show aged—but a show about one war, airing while the country was fighting another, had always been a little political.

America sat together and watched that night—and then it was over.