An infant girl is found abandoned outside the Swamp with a note explaining that her father was an American GI, but he's gone and her mother is unable to care for her. The entire camp quickly becomes enamored with the baby, but Father Mulcahy is more reserved. He knows that her fate is likely to be unhappy; the local Koreans don't treat mixed-race children with kindness,and she faces a future of ostracization at best, mutilation and/or death at worst. He says her best chance is to be left at a local monastery, where she'll have a safe but narrow future. Everyone else decides to try to find her a better option - Hawkeye and BJ go to the Red Cross, who say she's not their responsibility; Hawkeye and BJ go to I-Corps, who tells them the road to adoption is near-impossible; Hawkeye and Potter go to the local Korean mayor, who says he can't overturn tradition and points out that America is the only country in the conflict who doesn't provide for the orphans their soldiers leave behind; and finally, Hawkeye and Charles try the U.S consulate in Tokyo, who won't grant asylum. Finally, they end up leaving her at the monastery, each one saying a final goodbye.
Attention, all personnel! The following tropes have been left on the Swamp's doorstep...
- Ambiguous Syntax: The note says that the GI father is "gone," but as to whether he abandoned the mother and child, or was killed in action, we don't know for sure.
- Berserk Button:
- The I-Corps representative suggests that the only reason Hawk and BJ only care about the baby is because one of them is the father. BJ replies that it's a good thing he's a doctor, as he's gonna break every bone in his body. Hawkeye also looks ready to do some osteotomy on the guy himself. When they get home an irritated Potter reprimands them for among other things threatening to file "the adjutant general's aide under "D" for Deceased."
- Charles also breaks out in uncharacteristically selfless indignation at the lack of cooperation or empathy from the U.S. consul in Tokyo, and damn near gets physical with him as well.
- Bittersweet Ending: The child is saved from a hellish future in Korean society, but it's going to be a very limited life for her for quite a while. In the meantime, the racial prejudice from Koreans and Americans alike towards such children isn't going away anytime soon, nor are the bureaucratic hurdles.
- Disappeared Dad: One way of reading the note left with the child is that the American father abandoned the mother and child (a scenario we've seen happen before at least once on this show), but it remains unclear if it was abandonment or him being KIA that led to this scenario.
- Doorstop Baby: Happens twice in one episode. First, the baby is left with a note in front of the Swamp by her unseen mother. Then, after the bureaucrats won't do anything to help her, she's left with the monks.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: What the mixed-race child can look forward to in war-torn 1950s Korea. The mayor regrettably admits that the horror stories they've been told are true, that centuries as a unified race and culture has predisposed the Korean population to look upon such mixed heritage as an impurity amongst their people.
- Hidden Depths:
- Charles apparently did time in pediatrics (naturally considering himself one of the best), and proves to be quite affectionate to and fiercely protective of children. note
- Klinger is surprisingly good with kids, even giving all of the nurses a quick lesson on how to make a Lebanese diaper.
- Both Hawkeye and (to a lesser degree) Charles are able to read enough Korean to figure out what the note left with the baby says.
- Hypocritical Humor: While Col. Potter is chewing out BJ for his loss of control with the Red Cross rep, he's rocking the baby in an improvised cradle (55-gallon drum cut in half with a long pole to push), and pushes a bit too hard when his dander goes up.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Despite the overall lack of tact from almost all of the bureaucrats involved, they all raise one inescapable point: without a formal process for doing so, sending a Korean-American baby overseas to the States without knowledge/consent of the child's surviving relatives, or dropping them into a problematic adoption system in a not-so-racially-progressive 1950s USA, could be a big problem for any agency that tried to tackle it.
- Mood Whiplash: Fr. Mulcahy's all smiles and rainbows about hooking up the new infant with the local orphanage... until he sees the kid's mixed. Everyone's baby joy goes south real fast after that.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Pretty much everyone who could help with the child can't, either due to lack of resources, policy requirements the 4077th's people could never hope to meet, or basic callousness to the child's plight. Usually, it's all three.
- Parental Neglect: Averted. Despite the child being abandoned, a physical reveals that she wasn't ill-treated beforehand.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The mayor of Uiejongbu gives a polite, subdued, yet effective one about how the US armed forces, in contrast to the rest of the UN force member nations, does not provide any arrangements or care for the abandoned children of their servicemen.Mayor Kim: Americans are not the only ones fathering such children, but they are the only ones who ignore them. France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, acknowledge a responsibility for these unfortunate babies of their military. They will support and help them, offer them citizenship, but the United States — where all men are created equal — refuses to do this. You reject the children of your own people.
- Sent Into Hiding: What leaving the child and the convent entails. They'll raise her as an acolyte, then maybe try and transport her out of Korea when she gets older, but she'll never interact with the outside world for quite a long time.
- Squee: Everyone at the 4077 completely loses it when they see the baby, with all of them wanting a turn feeding, holding, or watching her. Lampshaded by Colonel Potter when he remarks that he's always amazed at how perfectly normal adults turn into blubbering idiots when they see a baby.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite the best efforts of everyone at the 4077th to find a way to get the baby to safety, the bureaucratic obstacles prove to be too much to overcome, and they're forced to take the least bad option available by leaving her at the monastery.
