M*A*S*H (TV series) the parent show's Monday night time slot and featured several of its characters reunited in a Midwestern hospital after the war. The more successful "Trapper John, M.D." (1979–86) took place nearly three decades after the events of "M*A*S*H" and depicted Trapper John McIntyre as chief of surgery at a San Francisco hospital; its producers argued successfully in court that it was based on the earlier movie rather than the TV series. In an unpurchased television pilot, "W*A*L*T*E*R" (1984), Walter "Radar" O'Reilly joins the St. Louis police force after his farm fails following his return to the US. "Making M*A*S*H", a
M*A*S*H (TV series) Larry Linville, Wayne Rogers and Gary Burghoff. Series co-creator and joke writer Larry Gelbart departed after Season 4, the first featuring Mike Farrell and Harry Morgan. This resulted in Farrell and Morgan having only a single season reading scripts featuring Gelbart's masterful comic timing, which defined the feel and rhythm of Seasons 1–4 featuring predecessors Rogers and Stevenson, respectively. Larry Linville (the show's comic foil) and Executive Producer Gene Reynolds both departed at the conclusion of Season 5 in 1977, resulting in "M*A*S*H" being fully stripped of its original tight comedic foundation by the beginning of Season 6 — the