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House Arrest: Directed by Hy Averback. With Alan Alda, Wayne Rogers, McLean Stevenson, Loretta Swit. After Hawkeye makes an insulting remark about Margaret, Frank snaps him with a towel and Hawkeye responds with a nicely placed right cross to Frank's eye.
- (656)
- Comedy, Drama, War
- Hy Averback
- 1975-02-04
It originally broadcast on February 4, 1975. Plot. In the OR Margaret is not performing up to par and is continuously chided by Hawkeye. Margaret admits that she is nervous about Colonel Reese, the most decorated nurse in the army, coming to the 4077th.
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- Synopsis
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- Recurring cast/Guest stars
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was the 18th episode of Season 3 of the CBS-TV series M*A*S*H, also the 66th overall series episode. Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum and directed by Hy Averback, it first aired on February 4, 1975.
After getting punched in the face by Hawkeye, Frank Burns demands a court martial and Hawkeye is placed under house arrest, which he begins to enjoy.
Margaret is uncharacteristically making a lot of mistakes during surgery; she reveals that she is nervous about the impending arrival of a Colonel Reese, the most decorated nurse in the Army. But after one too many flubs, Hawkeye dismisses her. She berates Hawkeye in the scrub room, but after he insinuates she got where she is by sleeping around, Margaret demands Frank defend her honor. Frank's idea of that is to snap a towel at Hawkeye's backside, resulting in Hawkeye nonchalantly punching Frank in the face.
Despite Henry's attempts to dissuade him, Frank demands that Hawkeye be court-martialed. Radar informs them that the accused officer is to be placed under house arrest pending an investigation, meaning that he is to be relieved of all duty and confined to his tent, which is welcomed by Hawkeye. Trapper later tells Henry what he himself witnessed in the scrub room, concocting a story of Frank slipping on a bar of soap and hitting his face on the sink. Henry goes along with the farce and has Radar write it up.
Margaret arranges for Reese to bunk with her in her tent; she arrives in camp and is shown to be leather-tough, but not near as uptight as Margaret. Reese then meets Frank, who is waiting in Margaret's tent and now sporting a terrific shiner. Reese guesses correctly that Frank is unhappy in his marriage and fooling around with Margaret, but indicates that she has no problem with their dalliance.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye is enjoying his house arrest, even thanking Frank for slipping on the bar of soap and blaming him for his injury. Trapper delivers Hawkeye's meal: water buffalo steak, compliments of the Mess Sergeant who made it special for Hawkeye when he heard he decked Frank. Father Mulcahy delivers a POW package, and when he mentions the movie of the evening is Leave Her To Heaven with Gene Tierney, Hawkeye asks him to intervene so he won't miss it. Mulcahy comes through, and most of the camp arrive at the Swamp for the special screening.
Annoyed that Hawkeye is being treated like a king despite his house arrest (and also at being unable to get to his things in the Swamp), Frank goes to see Margaret in her tent but finds Reese there alone in her robe and nightgown (Margaret is in Post Op). She invites Frank in to talk, which he accepts. As he opens up about the "stresses" in his life (he mentions that he feels like he is "cursed with perfection" complaining that his wife is always messing up his marbles), Reese starts rubbing his shoulders and then brings up his unhappy marriage. She then softens him up with a shot of blackberry brandy, and insinuates that, with her help, Frank could be a Colonel, serving at Walter Reed hospital in Washington, D.C. tending to the top of the tops - congressmen, senators, generals; when Frank asks if G-Men are on that list, Reese replies, "I can put J. Edgar Hoover's gall stones right in your pocket!"
Flush with passion, Reese plants one on Frank's lips just as Margaret walks in. Caught in the act, Reese starts yelling "Rape!", causing the whole movie audience to congregate outside Margaret's tent (with Hawkeye quipping "What a night! Movie and vaudeville!"). Reese wants charges filed against Frank, but when Hawkeye says he doesn't want him sharing his house arrest, a jealous Margaret turns on Frank and now declares Hawkeye innocent saying that Frank did indeed slip on a bar of soap.
•Mary Wickes as Colonel Reese
•Jamie Farr as Klinger
•William Christopher as Father Francis Mulcahy
•Bobbie Mitchell as Nurse Baker
•Jeff Maxwell as Igor Straminsky
•Dennis Troy as M.P.
•Anachronism: Hawkeye comments that the patient he is operating on has a "gut full of shrapnel from a claymore." Claymore mines weren't introduced until 1960.
•Anachronism (sort of): Frank's remark that Hawkeye "is a prisoner and he's treated like the Aga Khan" is a slightly anachronistic connection to Gene Tierney, who co-starred with Cornell Wilde in Leave Her To Heaven (1945), the film being shown in the Swamp. The connection being that in 1952 Tierney had become engaged to Prince Aly Khan (son of the Aga Khan III) while he was going through a divorce from another Hollywood femme fatale, Rita Hayworth. The Aga Khan III was firmly against Aly marrying another Hollywood starlet, and thus his engagement to Tierney ended.
•When Frank formally accuses Hawkeye of assault, he invokes the Articles of War, which at the time defined military law. The Articles of War would be supplanted by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) when it went into effect on May 31, 1951 after being signed into law by President Truman a year earlier. The invocation of the Articles of War would place the timeline of this episode before May of 1951.
•Army regulations actually prohibit the superior officer from pressing charges if they provoked the person of lower rank to strike them.
•It is never explained how or why Burns was acquitted, nor why Margaret took him back.
•Leave Her To Heaven was originally released on December 20, 1945. The film was later nominated for four Oscars including Best Actress (Tierney), and won for Best Cinematography (Leon Shamroy).
Synopsis. During surgery, Major Margaret Houlihan (Loretta Swift) is absent-minded and messing up because she is worried about a Colonel Reese coming to inspect her. Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) calls her out and then tells another nurse to take over.
Junior looks for diversions to relieve the tedium of house arrest, and eventually finds one in the company of a police widow. Having dodged a legal bullet, Tony is advised by his lawyer to...
Henry Blake : By jamming his fist in Frank's eye? Henry Blake : All right, now how did Frank get the black eye? Army Capt. "Trapper John" McIntyre : When he fell he hit the sink.
People also ask
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Does Frank leave the swamp if he's on house arrest?
When he refuses Colonel Reese's advances, she lies to Colonel Blake that Frank raped her, calling him "savage" and even pulling down a corner of her robe as "evidence". Everyone, including Margaret, sides with Colonel Reese, and poor Frank is punished with house arrest.
