An O. Henry Ending

A couple of folks have written to me to say that they recall watching the "Abyssinia, Henry" episode of M*A*S*H when it first aired and that they recall the scene where Radar announces Henry's death as being in the tag, not before the last commercial. They're wondering if the show was edited for reruns.

That would make a certain amount of sense. When the show went into syndication, stations had to cut out a few minutes from each episode and much of the time, they'd omit the tag as part of that editing. You wouldn't want that scene to get cut from that episode so I can imagine the syndication version being edited, trimming other things out so they would move it to before the last commercial and creating a new, cuttable tag.

But I don't remember it that way. In fact, I remember that montage tag. I even remember thinking it trivialized the closing scene a bit. Maybe I'm merging the memory of the first viewing with a later viewing.