AfterMASH

In the one-hour pilot episode "September of '53"/"Together Again", Colonel Potter returned home from Korea to his wife Mildred (Barbara Townsend) in Hannibal, Missouri. He soon found physically enforced retirement stifling, and Mildred suggested he return to work. Potter was soon hired by the bombastic and bureaucratic hospital administrator Mike D'Angelo (John Chappell) as the chief of staff at General Pershing Veteran's Hospital ("General General"), located in the fictional River Bend, Missouri.

Max Klinger had found himself in trouble with the law in Toledo. Colonel Potter wrote to him and offered him a job as his administrative assistant. Klinger's nemesis at General General was D'Angelo's executive secretary Alma Cox (Brandis Kemp), a mean-spirited woman who was forever trying to "get the goods" on him, from rifling through his desk to giving him just one day to prepare for a civil service exam, the latter of which, despite her underhanded efforts, he still manages to pass.

Father Mulcahy, whose hearing was damaged in the final episode of M*A*S*H, was suffering from depression and drinking heavily. Potter arranged for Mulcahy to receive an operation at another VA Hospital in St. Louis. After his hearing was surgically corrected, he stopped drinking and joined Potter and Klinger at "General General" as its Catholic chaplain.

Also on hand was the idealistic, talented, and often hungry young resident surgeon Gene Pfeiffer (Jay O. Sanders), attractive secretary Bonnie Hornbeck (Wendy Schaal), who had an eye for Klinger, and old-timer Bob Scannell (Patrick Cranshaw) who served under then-Sergeant Potter in World War I and was now a hospital resident of 35 years (thanks to his exposure to mustard gas). Unlike the other patients and staff who addressed Potter by his retired rank of colonel, Scannell called him "Sarge" at Potter's request.

Halfway through the first season, Dr. Mark Boyer (David Ackroyd) was introduced as a hardened veteran who lost a leg in Korea and had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. Despite only having signed on for two episodes,[1] his character began appearing more often toward the end of the season, so often that Dr. Pfeiffer was suddenly pulled from the cast after Dr. Boyer's debut episode.

The only other main character from the original series to appear on AfterMASH was Radar (played by Gary Burghoff), who appeared in a first season two-part episode. As Potter, Klinger, and Mulcahy prepare to head to Iowa for Radar's wedding, Radar shows up in a panic at Potter's house in Missouri, believing his intended fiancée has cheated on him in "It Had to Be You". The Radar character later appeared in a pilot called W*A*L*T*E*R, in which Radar moved from Iowa to St. Louis, after his wife left him on his wedding night, and he became a police officer. (The series was never picked up, and the pilot was aired in July 1984 as a TV special on CBS exclusively in the Eastern and Central time zones; the show was pre-empted in Pacific and Mountain time zones by the 1984 Democratic National Convention. The pilot/special was broadcast by CBS only once.)

The season included home scenes with the Potters, most notably when they were deluged with guests in "Thanksgiving of '53", and Potter tried to keep the phone occupied so Klinger could not call his relatives, who were on the way over to surprise him; this episode also marked the only onscreen appearance of Potter's oft-mentioned daughter, Evvy Ennis, and Potter's grandson, Corey. One of the season's standout episodes was the Emmy-nominated "Fall Out", where Potter and Klinger considered leaving General General, but reconsidered when they linked the leukemia seen in a patient with exposure to atomic testing; writer-director Larry Gelbart received a Peabody Award for this episode. The season closed in March with Klinger being arrested for assaulting a real estate agent as pregnant Soon Lee went into labor. In May, CBS announced the show was renewed for a second season.

Season Two opened with Klinger escaping from the River Bend County Jail to attend the birth of his child and remaining a fugitive until a judge sent him to the psychiatric unit at General General, where Klinger feigned insanity to avoid prison and the Potters took in Soon Lee and the (as yet unnamed) baby. Mike D'Angelo was transferred to Montana and was replaced by smarmy new administrator Wally Wainwright (Peter Michael Goetz). Anne Pitoniak was brought in to replace Barbara Townsend as Mildred Potter. David Ackroyd was promoted to a regular cast member after multiple guest appearances in the second half of the first season. An attractive new psychiatrist, Dr. Lenore Dudziak (Wendy Girard), arrived to begin the daunting task of evaluating Klinger, while Potter was horrified that Wainwright assigned Alma Cox as his new secretary.

The recurring M*A*S*H character Colonel Flagg (played by Edward Winter) appeared in the second season, now working for an unspecified intelligence agency whose agents are authorized to carry sidearms in their shoes; he is only too eager to testify against Klinger in "Trials". Character actors Arliss Howard, Timothy Busfield, William Sadler and David Graf all appeared as patients.

Only three other characters from M*A*S*H were ever mentioned in the sequel series. Hawkeye was referenced in the one-hour opening episode in a voice-over thought by Mulcahy. Frank Burns was mentioned once in the first season (Episode #14: "Chief of Staff") and once in the second season, both times by Sherman Potter. In a second-season episode (#26: "Madness to His Method"), Dr. Potter writes a letter to Sidney Freedman, who is mentioned as now working at the University of Chicago, but does not appear in the episode. There is also a touching moment at the end of the episode "Chief of Staff" in which Potter is surprised to see that his hospital office has been redecorated with his desk, paintings, saddle, and other items from the 4077th as "Suicide Is Painless" is played; Potter's portrait of Radar and his group portrait of Hawkeye, BJ, Houlihan, Winchester, Klinger, and Mulcahy (from the 10th-season episode "Picture This") continued to be seen in his office through the remainder of the sequel series.

In the penultimate episode, "Saturday's Heroes", the Klingers' baby is finally named. This episode (the final broadcast of the series) aired on May 31, 1985. (Several sources incorrectly claim that this episode ran on December 11, 1984, which was the originally intended air date for this episode. However, CBS had put the series "on hiatus" just a few days earlier and abruptly pulled the episode from the scheduled airing of December 11, even though it had been advertised in several newspaper listings and in TV Guide for that date.)

AfterMASH made frequent references to M*A*S*H, and likewise featured storylines that highlighted the horrors and suffering of war, from the non-combat perspective of a veterans' hospital. The series was canceled after twenty-nine broadcast episodes. "Wet Feet", the thirtieth episode, was never aired.

AfterMASH premiered in late 1983 in the same Monday at 9 p.m. time slot as its predecessor, M*A*S*H. It finished 10th out of all network shows for the 1983–1984 season according to Nielsen Media Research television ratings. For its second season, CBS moved the show to Tuesday nights at 8 opposite NBC's Top 10 hit The A-Team, and launched a marketing campaign featuring illustrations by Sanford Kossin of Max Klinger in a female nurse's uniform shaving off Mr. T's signature mohawk, theorizing that AfterMASH would take a large portion of the A-Team audience.[3] In fact, however, the opposite occurred, as AfterMASH's ratings plummeted to near the bottom of the television rankings, leading to its cancellation just nine episodes into its second season, while The A-Team continued until 1987, with 97 episodes.