April Fool's Day draws nigh with Hawkeye, B.J., Charles, and Margaret all getting into the spirit with various pranks (such as spring-loaded boas in a praline can or pockets full of minnows); Potter insists that he be excluded from the hijinks, doubly so when Klinger passes him a message that the Surgeon General's office is sending Colonel Daniel Webster Tucker, a notorious stickler for Army regulations, to the 4077th for a top-to-bottom inspection. He orders Margaret and the Swampmen to suspend their pranks while Tucker is at the camp, but they're in the middle of an Escalating War and are not ready to check their joy buzzers. Meanwhile, a conversation with Rizzo gives Klinger a new angle to get a Section 8: Reverse Psychology. He decides to pretend he really loves the Army and then unexpectedly switch gears.
The prank war between Margaret and the Swampmen peaks when the surgeons steal Margaret's tent, leading her to attack them with a pillow and demand its return... just as Col. Tucker arrives, ensuring they make the worst possible first impression with him. By contrast, Klinger creates the best possible first impression by presenting himself as a model of discipline and decorum as he greets the colonel and carries his bags to his tent.
The next day, a group of wounded arrive, and Tucker gets a chance to see how professional the staff are in OR, but he dismisses their performance by noting that they're only doing what's expected of them: saving soldiers' lives. He is similarly rude while touring Post Op, and finally the two captains and the two majors reach boiling point and confront him, only for Tucker to vow to court-martial them for gross insubordination and conduct unbecoming officers. As for Klinger, he moves on to the next phase of his scheme by dressing as, and pretending to be, Cleopatra, leading Tucker to believe he has cracked under the pressure and promise to get him a Section 8 discharge, despite Potter's insistence that he's being duped.
Reasoning they have nothing left to lose, Hawkeye, B.J., Margaret, and Charles decide to play one last revenge prank on Tucker, so they rig a Bucket Booby-Trap full of beer to dump all over him in the Officers' Club. But just as Tucker is raging over the prank, he seems to collapse from a heart attack. As the various officers rush to attend to him, he tells Hawkeye he has just one thing to say: "April Fool!"
Tucker's visit was one big April Fool's joke, one of many he and Potter have pulled together over the decades. They knew that if he worked hard enough to provoke the four officers, they would try to get revenge on him, leading to the payoff of making them think they'd killed him. The prank victims take it in stride, congratulating the two colonels on a gag well executed... and laughing themselves silly when Klinger shows up, still dressed as Cleopatra and still convinced he's about to get his Section 8.
Attention, all personnel! The following tropes are off limits for the duration of Col. Tucker's April Fool's Day visit:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Hawkeye's reaction, along with Graceful Loser, when he realizes that Col. Potter's April Fool's Day prank in conjunction with Col. Tucker outdid all of theirs.Hawkeye: Fellow pranksters, we are in the presence of greatness! We have been royally had!
- April Fools' Plot: The premise of the episode.
- Batman Gambit: Twice over:
- Potter's April Fool's joke requires a visiting inspector, Col. Tucker, to enrage the doctors so much that they'd try to pull a major prank on him; he would lose his temper and fake a heart attack, making the doctors think they'd killed him. If they didn't try to prank Col. Tucker, the gag wouldn't work, but Potter knew they would. Granted, the nature of the payback prank did not depend on how they would act - only the timing.
- Hawkeye's prank on the colonel requires knowing not only that the colonel would come to the Officers' Club that evening, but knowing that he and Col. Potter would take the first available table (he did have to move Rizzo to open it up) and Col. Potter would offer Col. Tucker the first seat, which is where the trap was rigged.
- Given the nature of Potter's prank, it's likely Potter had whoever was working at the Officers' Club tell him what Hawkeye was doing to help it succeed.
- Bucket Booby-Trap: Filled with beer, serving as the chaser to Col. Tucker's shot.
- Class Clown: Col. Tucker pretends to be a General Ripper, but according to Col. Potter, Tucker was always this.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Father Mulcahy is not even remotely amused when someone steals his robe while he is in the shower and replaces it with the sort of dress Klinger used to wear, responding to a chorus of wolf whistles with a Big "SHUT UP!".
- Escalating War: Margaret gets revenge for Charles putting minnows in her pockets by putting oatmeal in Hawkeye's boots and Tabasco in B.J.'s mouthwash, while she writes "KILROY" on Charles' bald head while he sleeps. So the Swampmen team up to get revenge on her by stealing the canvas exterior of her tent and hiding the skeleton from Potter's office in Hawkeye's cot when she storms in to confront them. This is as far as the battle gets before Col. Tucker arrives.
- Exact Words: Potter forbids Margaret and the Swampmen from pulling any April Fool's Day stunts during Tucker's visit. However, the Swampmen are all anxious to get Margaret back for pranks she has pulled on them, and Hawkeye notes that Potter only ordered a stop to the pranks during Tucker's visit - he said nothing about before...
- Fate Worse than Death: Played for Laughs when Charles laments the fact that Leavenworth is in Kansas!
- Foreshadowing: The main hint that Col. Potter is up to something is that he announces Col. Tucker's arrival after just barely glancing at the letter.
- Hollywood Heart Attack: Col. Tucker appears to be having one of these after Hawkeye pours beer on him, but it's all part of the gag.
- Hurricane of Puns: When Margaret attacks the Swampmen with her pillow, demanding to know the whereabouts of her tent, Hawkeye says they pitched it somewhere, B.J. says they gave it to a dog and it's now a pup tent, and Charles tells her not to hit a pillow when it's down.
- Lame Pun Reaction: When Father Mulcahy shows up to the clerk's office in a dress, which someone swapped for his bathrobe while he was showering, Klinger laughs, "Better not take it off, Father, you'll be a de-frocked priest!" Mulcahy is in no mood for jokes, and asks, "How would you like the last rites - and a few lefts!?"
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hawkeye's expression after Col. Tucker collapses clearly says this until the prank is revealed.
- Not Me This Time: After Hawkeye and B.J. prank Charles with a spring-loaded boa in a praline can, they hear Margaret screaming in disgust and point to each other in confusion. But when Margaret shows up with a venomous look and two pockets of dead minnows, the culprit is revealed to be Charles.
- Not So Above It All:
- Major Winchester is just as enthusiastic about April Fool's Day as his bunkmates, even telling Col. Potter that the hilarity of the holiday can't be contained in just 24 hours when Potter points out that it's still March.
- Right after being the target of a prank from B.J., he is revealed to have pulled a prank of his own:Margaret: All right, who left the dead minnows in my pocket?
Charles: They were alive when I put them there. You've killed them! - He also joins Hawkeye and B.J. in their revenge prank against Margaret by stealing her tent and showering her with a Hurricane of Puns when she confronts them about it.
- Right after being the target of a prank from B.J., he is revealed to have pulled a prank of his own:
- Col. Potter revels in his prank with absolute childish glee after having pulled one over on the rest of the senior staff.
- Major Winchester is just as enthusiastic about April Fool's Day as his bunkmates, even telling Col. Potter that the hilarity of the holiday can't be contained in just 24 hours when Potter points out that it's still March.
- Refuge in Audacity: The surgeons' excuse for playing a final prank on Tucker, when he's about to ruin their careers and they seemingly have nothing to lose. Little do they know that they're playing right into Potter's hands.
- Reverse Psychology: Klinger decides to try this approach, going all gung-ho for Colonel Tucker before switching to his usual self - all while denying anything is out of the ordinary to make it look like he's cracked under the pressure of the war.
- Sarcastic Clapping: When Potter tries to defray tensions between Tucker and the medical staff, Tucker gives an insincere apology for not giving them the recognition they deserve for doing their jobs. He punctuates this put-down with a round of sarcastic applause.
- Seen It All: Potter's justification for being excluded from the April foolery is that he's seen all the pranks there are to see after his many years in the armed services. This does not stop Hawkeye and B.J. from clamping a tail onto the back of his shirt - or Potter himself from conspiring with Col. Tucker to prank the two captains and the two majors.
- Straw Misogynist: Tucker comes across as one, when Margaret tries to support him to the other doctors. He shrugs her off with, "I hardly need the support of a woman!" Don't worry, It Makes Sense in Context.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Tucker reacts as though this trope has been invoked during his OR observation session when B.J. congratulates Charles on finding an errant shell fragment in their patient; as far as Tucker is concerned, the doctors are only doing what is asked of them, which is hardly worth praising.Tucker: What do you want, a medal?
- Wrong Insult Offence: As she attacks the Swampmen with a pillow, Margaret calls Hawkeye a crumb, B.J. an idiot, and Charles a schmo. When Tucker arrives and demands an explanation for their antics, Margaret says the "crumbs" have hidden her tent, to which the Swampmen object - only Hawkeye is a crumb, while B.J. is an idiot and Charles is a schmo (though they initially get the latter two reversed).
