Distinguished guests arrive for the planned medical conference at the 4077, which to everyone's knowledge is just a big marathon poker game played weekly by some of the unit's most prominent members and invited guests. But there are complications when trying to hold that kind of a game when there is a war going on and the roster of players frequently changes as the doctors must all attend to their duties.
Attention, all hands! We will see your bet and raise the following tropes. Sandwiches will be provided.
- Ask a Stupid Question...:Radar: Cut yourself shaving, sir?Col. Blake: No, Radar, I thought I'd wear three pieces of toilet paper tonight.
- By-the-Book Cop: Frank Burns follows regulations by not putting a patient who is from a counterintelligence service under anesthesia. If Hawkeye heard that... oh, wait a minute...Frank: Boy, if this doesn't take the cake. Officers laughing at a draft dodger while a real soldier lies bleeding in OR.Hawkeye: What do you mean bleeding?Trapper: Who's bleeding in OR?Frank: A CID man. His chopper crashed. Looks like multiple internal injuries.Hawkeye: So why aren't you operating on him?Frank: You can't anaesthetise a CID man without another one present!Sidney: Now that's crazy.
- Can't Believe I Said That: Sidney, in trying to calm Private Carter, says a few words in Frank's favour that clearly leaves a bitter taste in his mouth right afterwards.Sidney: He's a good man. One of the best in the profession. A terrific doctor and a great human being.Henry: [to Hawkeye] Maybe we should call Father Mulcahy.Hawkeye: He could give the truth the last rites.
- The Casanova: Hawkeye is mentioned to have separated from his latest Love Interest.Trapper: You have a lot of trouble with women, don't ya?Hawkeye: Every chance I can.
- Continuity Nod: Klinger and Sidney recall their first meeting back in "Radar's Report".Klinger: Ah, the psychiatrist.Sidney: Still trying to get out wearing dresses, Klinger?
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Klinger brings the card players something to eat from the mess tent.Klinger: Hi, sirs. Sandwiches from the mess tent.Hawkeye: Hope everybody likes carrier pigeon.Klinger: There's ham, chicken, and something brown that just lays there.
- Everyone is waiting for Henry to declare his next move in the game.Sidney: Fondling your chips is very infantile.Henry: Not now, Sidney.
- Radar asks if he can take a sandwich from the platter at the card game. Sidney warns him about them.Radar: Are these sandwiches for anybody?Sidney: Anybody with a death wish.
- Klinger brings the card players something to eat from the mess tent.
- Despair Event Horizon: Private Carter really does not want to go back to the front.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Radar could not tell whatever he ran over sounded like a thud or a thump.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Here, Colonel Flagg is a far cry from the comical caricature he is later in the series. note
- Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted when Frank doesn't find Klinger's story about his avoiding the draft board as laughable as the others when there's a dedicated soldier lying bleeding in the OR. It is turned around on him when Everyone Has Standards comes into play upon the others learning he followed regulations and chose not to operate on the man.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: In addition to the game, there's the injured CID man, Frank's patient, and Whiplash Hwang.
- Jaw Drop: Frank, when one of his patients tells him to stuff it.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Frank has been nothing but awful to Private Carter, dismissing his injuries and threatening to send him right back to the front. In return, Private Carter goes berserk and threatens to blow Frank's head off (in the shower, no less).
- Let Me Tell You a Story: Klinger regales the other card players with how the draft board came for him when he refused to enlist.
- Never Recycle Your Schemes: Sidney advises Klinger to find a more unique approach of proving he's crazy.Sidney: Klinger, be creative. I remember a guy insisting he was a cockroach and would only crawl along the woodwork.Hawkeye: That was Private Kafka, I believe.Sidney: Then I had a young man who claimed to be reincarnated. Said he was with George Washington at Valley Forge so he'd already done his military service.
- No Poker Face: Lampshaded - when Sidney reacts badly to the hand he's been dealt, Hawkeye responds, "What's the problem, Poker Face?"
- Oh, Crap!: Klinger deals Sidney a very bad hand during the poker game. Know When to Fold 'Em ensues.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: CID Capt. Halloran (who may or may not be Col. Flagg). He responds to Frank's request for supervision for the surgery on CID Lt. Rogers. He's ready to arrest Hawkeye and Trapper for doing the operation without supervision, until he hears it was a textbook operation with no complications. He doesn't hold it against Hawkeye and Trapper, but he's ticked off at Frank for the unnecessary summons. And he even joins the poker game.
- Reflexive Response:
- When Private Carter breaks down and goes on a rampage with a gun, Hawkeye mentions to Sidney it's time for him to go to work.Hawkeye: Sidney, front and centre.Sidney: I'm not going out there without a bulletproof couch.
- When Radar says "Sir...", everyone at the table but Klinger answers "Yeah?".
- When Private Carter breaks down and goes on a rampage with a gun, Hawkeye mentions to Sidney it's time for him to go to work.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Hawkeye and Trapper operate on the patient from CID.
- Staged Pedestrian Accident: The specialty of "Whiplash Hwang", the elderly villager who Radar supposedly hit with his jeep.
- Sudden Name Change: Major Freedman's first name was given as Milton in his previous appearance, in "Radar's Report". note
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Radar doesn't take Hawkeye and Trapper's jokes about his looks and size too well, so he steals their robes from the shower stalls and leaves them without anything to put on.
