MASH
always makes me laugh! Some of the dialogue seems really sexist from today's perspective but I can forgive a lot because the show is so hilarious over all.
The "Sonja Henie" episode that I remember best is the one where they show one of her films and Col. Potter says something like "
watch, she's gonna do a triple axel." That drives me nuts -- Henie was the 1st woman to perform a 1A in competition (1920s) but as any skating fan knows, she sure never did triples, at least not in competition. Even
doubles didn't happen until decades later: Dick Button did the 1st men's 2A in competition (1948) and Carol Heiss followed for women in 1953. Midori Ito landed the 1st women's 3A in 1988.
Lots of basic Axel history in this article:
en.wikipedia.org
And yeah, this probably means I'm a figure skating fan...
I watched that episode (Series 7, Episode 10: "Baby, It’s Cold Outside") a couple of days ago. Yeah, that was rather a clanger. But, hey, I can forgive it. The programme was made 25 years after it was set, and the writers are not figure skating specialists. It was an easy to make mistake. If it had been a programme specifically about figure skating, though, that would be another matter. I would be getting up on my high horse Sophie, and leading the offensive. But it isn't.
I had to laugh, though, with a conversation between Potter and Hawkeye in a different scene in the episode.
Potter: "I've got Sonja Henie warming up in the projector".
Hawkeye: "I never thanked her for the autographed herring".
I don't actually understand this reposte. Did Sonja do advertisements for fish fingers or something?
Anyway, the conversation continued:
Potter: "They say skating's in the thighs, did you ever notice Sonja Henie's thighs?"
I just burst out laughing when he said this. Because, when scrolling down pages on here, I have been known to pause and admire Sonja's legs whenever I reach a post from
@norwegianfairytale!
Of course, Hawkeye had to get in an ironic reposte, saying
"Not me. I'm only interested in her mind".
Seriously, though, the continuation of this conversation was very funny. And something which I think we can all relate to. Potter says:
Potter: "In my younger days, I used to dream about skating away with her down a frozen fjord in Norway. Yeah, I really fell for her. Again, and again, and again!"
Each time he said "again", he hit his backside with his hands. And I just smiled and thought "yes, I know what you mean!"
And here is one more sign of being a Figure Skating fan which was brought on by watching a subsequent episode of MASH.
...when you are looking up Marilyn Jones, the actress who played the nurse that Radar O'Reilly was talking to at the airport in Series 8, Episode 4 (which I will not name, as the title gives away a major plotline to the series), and you see that she is from Grosse Pointe. And you instantly think "Emilea Zingas is from a place called Grosse Pointe Farms. I take it this is the same place, and the editor of Marilyn's Wiki page just didn't realise that 'Farms' was part of the name". Then you look them up, and discover that they are actually different places, but are next door to each other!
As I keep saying, it is amazing the things you find out through being a figure skating fan!
I've another post for this thread that is unrelated to MASH, so I'll do it separately later on.
CaroLiza_fan