Plot

The 4077th is chosen as the site for a documentary featuring 'false heroics' about MASH units in Korea. After destroying the film, Hawkeye and Trapper make their own movie as a replacement.

Brig. General Clayton sends Lt. Bricker with Special Services to make a special film documentary at the M*A*S*H 4077: "Yankee Doodle Doctor." Henry, Hotlips and Frank are all agog from the prestige; Frank is narrating the film. But, Hawkeye and Trapper are soon disgusted with the pious hypocrisy and propaganda and they decide to scrap the film: literally. With the help of Nurse Cutler and Radar, the good doctors borrow from the Marx Brothers to make a film a little more to their liking. But will Gen. Clayton like it?—LA-Lawyer

Lieutenant Bricker (Ed Flanders) is making a documentary about MASH units and Gen. Crandell Clayton (Herb Voland) recommends the 4077th which has the highest fitness record amongst all MASH units, plus is commanded by Blake, who is a friend of Clayton, in command of the finest team of surgeons in Korea. Bricker wants one of the doctors to "star" in his documentary and Hawkeye Pierce agrees when faced with the possibility that the role could go to Frank Burns.

The documentary is nothing more than turgid propaganda. Bricker wants patients to smile, while serving their nation. He wants Hawkeye to look serious and conferring with other doctors. He wants something dramatic inside the operating theatre. Bricker is not satisfied with Hawkeye and eventually asks Frank to take over the acting duties. Frank's script indicates that the doctors are all volunteers, and working hard to save American lives. The surgeons are called Yankee-Doodle doctors. Hawkeye and Trapper know that Bricker is only filming a bunch of lies for a fairy tale documentary.

In the night, while Radar occupies Bricker at dinner by getting him to tell stories of his movie career, Pierce and McIntyre destroy the film by exposing it to light. Blake figures out that Hawkeye and Trapper were behind ruining the film and confronts them. Hawkeye and Trapper know that there is no proof against them. Bricker decides to re-shoot the entire movie again without Hawkeye. Blake says Hawkeye is the heart and soul of the 4077 and wants Bricker to compromise a little. But Bricker would rather wrap up the shoot at the 4077 and go back to Seoul instead. Blake tells Hawkeye that Bricker and Clayton will simply shoot their movie at another MASH outfit and that will leave the 4077 out in the cold.

They persuade Blake to let them make their own film (by sending Bricker back to Seoul, but keeping his camera guy and all his equipment) and turn it into a comedy, casting Hawkeye as a Groucho Marx-type doctor, Trapper as a Harpo Marx-esque surgeon, and Radar as their hapless patient. The movie is screened at the mess tent at night, with General Clayton in attendance. The surgeons are shown as skirt chasers. The doctors don't admit any patients unless they have a reservation (which is of-course, absurd). The surgeons are depicted as hapless buffoons inside the operating theatre. They use a hammer as anesthesia. and a rusted saw as scalpel. The doctor leaves his wrist watch inside the patient, after surgery. They party all night and indulge in sex, debauchery and booze.

The final scene is a somber monologue by Hawkeye about the grim realities of war, delivered at the bedside of a patient in the post-op ward. He says patients have a 50-50 chance. Guns and mines have more power to take life than the doctors have to preserve it. No promises, no saints in surgical garbs. Blake is mortified and Clayton is unimpressed at first, while the rest of the crowd loves the film. Afterward, Clayton tells Blake to destroy it but save one copy for him, so that he can have something to laugh at once the war is over, and he will also use the final scene in his own documentary.