Why Trapper and not Duke in the TV series?
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slokes — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 06:41 PM)
We do see Duke in the movies get his orders to go home, in his final scene while helping Spearchucker with a tricky brain operation. There's a flash-forward shot of him on the tarmac embracing his family with a huge grin. He's the only character in the film and series who gets to do that for us to see.
Maybe that was the one moment they didn't want to play with? I agree with Revolver about his character more or less being folded into Trapper's for the TV show. Was Trapper a family man in the movie, like he was on the TV show? -
ExplorerDS6789 — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 12:43 AM)
Duke was mentioned once in the show. Hawkeye and Trapper talked about a Captain Forrest and said he went back home to open a toy store.
I'm still not convinced that Duke and "Captain Forrest" are the same character. It could be a coincidence, or they just borrowed his name. -
ExplorerDS6789 — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 05:16 PM)
It is a coincidence. Why would they refer to a friend as Captain Forrest and not Duke Forrest?
Exactly, and besides, Forrest is a relatively common name.
Maybe they excluded Duke from the series because they only wanted two protagonists to focus on: Hawkeye and Trapper. Pretty ironic, since Trapper was stripped of credentials and shoved to side almost instantly. -
couchpotato67 — 9 years ago(January 25, 2017 02:18 PM)
I've only seen the movie a couple times and it has been over 30 years since I saw it. But I seem to remember that Duke was more of the lead and Hawkeye was the sidekick, with Trapper being a bit of an oddball. I guess in a TV show you can't have everyone so they decided to drop Duke.
Obviously the Captain Forrest mentioned on TV was not the character from the movie as we never actually saw him or ever heard another mention of. But I think it was just a little subtle joke the writers threw in.
I do wonder why they had characters like Spearchucker and Ugly John around and just drop them after a few episodes. -
dawnbaxter34 — 9 years ago(January 25, 2017 07:19 PM)
They dropped Spearchucker either because they found out there were no African-American surgeons actually present in a MASH during the Korean War (official reason) or else they were trying to pare down the number of characters.