Chopper pilot "Smilin' Jack" Mitchell tries to break the record for delivering patients to win "Chopper Pilot of the Year". There's just one hiccup: he's diabetic and needs to be grounded. Meanwhile, B.J. and Radar talk to the casualty he brought in, who's been wounded twice before and is afraid to go back.
Attention all personnel! The following tropes have come in by chopper:
- All for Nothing: Just after risking his life and the lives of four soldiers to top Dangerous Dan's record, as Jack is getting on the evac bus, Dan comes in with two more men, with the probability of being able to retrieve more in the future.
- Always Someone Better: Dangerous Dan, who always manages to come ahead of Jack in his patient count.
- Anger Born of Worry: Colonel Potter gets this way when he learns that Jack has gone off on one last flight mission after being grounded. His concerns spike further when Jack reveals the even riskier stunt he’s planning to pull off.
- Bad Luck Charm: Radar's Four-Leaf Clover, which is a little squished after a Jeep ran over him while it was in his pocket.
- Body-Count Competition: Inverted. Jack is determined to beat Dangerous Dan's patient transport record before he's grounded.
- Brick Joke: In need of medical supplies, Potter offers to trade a case of after-shave lotion, which will be repurposed as specimen bottles - the use the 4077th had in mind for them. Later, while he's being examined, Jack is told to give a urine sample in a wine bottle as "Someone swiped our specimen bottles".
- Continuity Drift: The Tag features a reference to the Battle of the Imjin River
in April 1951, a battle in which the Gloucestershire Regiment suffered an over 80-percent casualty rate. However, season 4 began in September 1952. - Derailed Train of Thought: Hawkeye when theorizing how Jack is always able to flick a syringe so that it flies in the air and jabs an orange:Hawkeye: He peels the orange, puts a magnet inside and then he glues the rind back on the orange without a seam showing, and I don't know what the hell I'm talkin' about.
- Determinator: Jack is determined to win Chopper Pilot of the Year, even if it means disobeying orders to stay on the ground for his safety and overloading his helicopter to the point he can barely get off the ground.
- Hell Is That Noise: For Corporal Owens, the sound of twigs snapping and the squeak of nurses' shoes, which sounds like the sneakers worn by Chinese soldiers.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Colonel Potter and Smilin Jack have met before at the 121st Evac and are implied by their first scene, along with Potter’s genuine regret in grounding him, that they have been close friends since then.
- Not So Above It All: Frank becomes disgusted when he hears the helicopter pilots have made a competition about how many wounded they bring in and how they take photos of the patients as they are treated. Smiling Jack tells Frank to smile as he takes a picture of him at the anaesthesia pump, which Frank all too happily complies to.
- Poor Man's Porn: Radar makes a reference to his uncle catching him with his National Geographics, "with the Africa pictures".
- R-Rated Opening: The episode starts with three soldiers getting ambushed by shellfire, resulting in one of them being wounded, sent to a frontline medic, and finally to the 4077th.
- Remember the New Guy?: Smilin Jack has been around long enough to have delivered over eight hundred patients to MASH 4077 and to be a close friend to Colonel Potter, yet this is his first and only appearance in the show.
- Shout-Out: Smilin' Jack's nickname most likely comes from the title character of the long-running (1933–73) newspaper comic strip.
- Special Guest: Robert Hogan as Smilin' Jack Mitchell.
- Unusual Euphemism: The doctors refer to collecting a urine sample as "Toasting the Kaiser".
- War Is Hell: This exchange at the end:Hawkeye: Of the three wars, Colonel...Potter: Hmm?Hawkeye: Which would you say was the worst?P.A. Announcer: Attention, all personnel. By the close of today's fighting, the First Battalion of the Gloucester Regiment has lost an estimated 500 men of its 600-man complement.Potter: Each and every one, Hawkeye. Each and every one.
