Consortium of Seven: Year 4

    This past week included a few anniversaries of note.       On Tuesday, February 28th, it was the 40th anniversary of the broadcast of the final episode of M*A*S*H .        The series ran 11 seasons, 9 of which were in the ratings top 10 . 256 episodes. That its first season was so poorly-rated (coming in at #46) that it nearly wasn't renewed, largely buried on Sunday night, and so would have become a tv footnote, remains another of those important media lessons. Among them was that the show's second season, when it first became a top ten program, was when CBS moved it into a prime Saturday night spot after All In the Family , a spot vacated by the previous season's #5 ratings-getter, Bridget Loves Bernie , which had been canceled purely because of controversy and pressure from groups that objected to the premise of a Jew and a Catholic marrying.       M*A*S*H 's final episode, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"...

          A rough week coming out of a sometimes, personally scary weekend.        Ideally this will be self-publishing Friday morning, with me rolling into a holiday weekend in the late afternoon. Next Monday's Presidents' Day, and the company I work for has it as one of its odd holidays. Yay us. I know these three-day weekends tend to feel as if they go even more quickly than the standard variety, but I'll be trying to enjoy and otherwise make the reasonable best of it. Trying to achieve that unicorn blend of rest, enjoyment, and accomplishment.       Despite, or perhaps at least in part because of, the way it's been both compartmentalized and formulaic, I've been continuing enjoy the week-to-week of HBO's The Last of Us . Last week they gave us the weekly dose a couple days early (at least over on HBO Max), presumably because Sunday night had one of the last, remaining, true mass-media events -- The Sup...