Recap / M*A*S*H S9 E3: Cementing Relationships

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The staff decides to replace the old wood floor in the O.R. with a concrete one, to combat an infection issue with the wood floor. The surgeons do the menial labor and Klinger acts as foreman (he knows cement and it's not that hard). Meanwhile, an Italian soldier falls head-over-heels for Margaret.

Attention, all personnel! Please mix the following tropes in the proper ratio:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Margaret gets one in an Italian patient who follows her around the camp relentlessly, even staying behind when he is supposed to be shipped back to his unit. Unlike many examples of this trope, De Simone is not unattractive; he's simply boisterous and clingy, and while Margaret appreciates passionate men, her big issue seems to be that she's a nurse and he's a patient, which is a line she doesn't cross. Plus he's kind of nuts.
• Blatant Lies: De Simone insists that he is nothing if not discreet. One Smash Cut later, he is warbling like a giant bird outside Margaret's tent in the middle of the night.
• Dramatic Drop: Margaret accidentally flings an entire tray of full coffee cups (accompanied by a yell of shock) when De Simone pops out of a bush right next to her.
• Gilligan Cut: De Simone tries to lay the moves on Margaret, who is too polite to simply turn him down - in her defense, he was on the rebound after receiving a "Dear John" Letter - and she protests, saying that there are people around. He says he understands, assuring her that "A De Simone is nothing if not discreet." Cut to him singing at the top of his lungs in Italian outside Margaret's tent that evening.
• Idiot Ball: When giving instructions on how to make cement, Klinger somehow manages to reverse the ratios, leading to the cement floor being a soupy mess.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: In a unit of several dozen people, many of which are enlisted men and corpsmen, it somehow falls to the nurses and surgeons, who could easily injure their hands, to do the work of laying the cement floor.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Winchester and Houlihan both yell "Don't talk back to me, I'm an officer!" when Klinger yells at them for not only walking on the floor he's trying to mob but also not mopping (which they're interrupting him in doing).
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Margaret makes it plain to De Simone that she's not interested in him, he assumes she must be involved with another man. She seizes on this as a way to get rid of him, and enlists a bewildered Charles to go along with it.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The Army in this series may be wacky and hidebound, but installing concrete floors for a mobile surgical unit that's ostensibly going to follow the progress of the front lines is regarded as a waste of time, even though the unit hasn't moved in months and it would help save lives. The alternative (having new lumber delivered for a new floor, which is what Quartermaster Corps had done before) is rejected because it would work as a short term solution but would eventually put them back in the same spot when the wood gets contaminated.
  • Klinger never said the Quartermaster workers he called and conned into delivering the cement would install the concrete floor for them, only that they would deliver the materials. The Army Engineers (who already turned them down) build stuff, Quartermaster just delivers stuff.