Lou’s List Of His Five Favorite Sitcoms For Memorial Day

First, I need to say thank you to all of the veterans. Our veterans have been through so much.

One thing that has happened through the years were tv sitcoms. I was watching M*A*S*H on TV Land the other night and I started to think about some of the other sitcoms that had something to do with veterans, and actually made us laugh.

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5) F Troop

F Troop was about the Calvary, and lasted a couple of years in the mid 1960s on ABC. It showed how a hero was put in charge, accidentally, and would lead the calvary charge the wrong way. It wouldn’t have been funny if everything went correctly. The stars were Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker.

4) McHale’s Navy

McHale’s Navy ran on ABC from the early 1960s to the mid 1960s. It’s been described as the misadventures of a misfit PT Boat crew during World War II. Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway and Joe Flynn were the main stars of this classic show.

3) Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

Gomer Pyle ran on CBS for five seasons in the mid to late 1960s. The show was a spin off from The Andy Griffith Show. Jim Nabors was the actor who portrayed the naive and extremely nice Private First Class in the U.S. Marines. He was always yelled at by the boisterous Sergeant Carter, played by Frank Sutton. According to the website IMDb, Jim Nabors had difficulty watching the opening of the show because many of the men that were marching with him were killed in The Viet Nam War.

2) Hogan’s Heroes

Hogan’s Heroes was on CBS from the mid 1960s and ran through the very beginning of the 1970s. Hogan’s Heroes took place in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Hogan, played by Bob Crane, lead some of the most brilliant plans of sabotage and espionage, to help beat the Nazis during WWII. The best part was, they did it all right under the German’s noses, all from the P.O.W. camp. Besides Bob Crane, some of the other stars were Werner Klemperer, John Banner and Richard Dawson. Thank my mom for getting me hooked on this show.

1) M*A*S*H

M*A*S*H is still my all time favorite. M*A*S*H had the longest run out of all the other shows. It ran on CBS from 1972 - 1983. The 4077th made a very successful transition from movie to tv show. It all began with a book from 1968 called ‘MASH: A Novel About Three ARMY Doctors’ by Richard Hooker. The setting for MASH was during the Korean War. The 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital had much success operating on wounded soldiers. There were some episodes that were somewhat serious, and they would be considered a dramedy instead of a sitcom. MASH featured an all star cast that included Harry Morgan, Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit, Gary Burghoff, Alan Alda and many more. Alan Alda has been one of my favorite actors and the way he handled the part of Hawkeye Pierce was amazing, as they all were.

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What was your favorite sitcom?