i am a new alan alda fan........i was sick for twelve months and could not perform my nursing duties...i purchased the mash collection out of interest as i watched mash on television years ago.....to watch the series every morning was uplifting and now my family tell me i am mashed......the series depicted a lot of reality.....i nursed a surgeon who worked in korea an operated at times in the trenches.....an amazing man who i nursed until he died.......he would often tell me stories of his time in korea and watching mash reminded me of him......i love the series and think alan alda made it what it was....a great actor with an amazing way of portraying the human side of a surgeon in war time.....but i have to say they were in 1952 and i picked up some things that were contrary to the time some quotes were of years ahead of their time and thought how well they just kept on working and not recognizing their mistakes...the whole mash team were great....klinger was a real laugh and radar also .......on the whole the entire mash team were fantastic and when i worked in theartre at the hospital .....one of the nursing managers had a prosthetic eye......joking with him one day i called him hawkeye.....his response to me was well your just like hotlips holihan.....and the names stook to us both by everyone.....we used to use some of the mash language in theatre which in difficult circumstanes created some humor when things were really tough......so glad mash lives on......well done mash team i would love to meet alan alda one day this guy has the best natural sense of humor ever seen on the screen.......