M*A*S*H Top 20 Episodes (1-5)

And finally...I present MY top five M*A*S*H episodes of all time... these are the best of the best to me for being able to watch over and over and laugh every time.  Thanks to my good friend Justin for letting me borrow and watch the full collection on his DVDs, to see parts that are lost in syndicated re-runs, and take on one of the largest ranking projects I've ever done.  In the future, I hope to rank the Seinfeld, Friends and Grounded For Life episodes.

5. House Arrest (Season 3)
Frank Burns has Hawkeye placed under house arrest after Hawkeye punches him. It takes Frank being falsely accused of rape by a visiting female colonel (and subsequently under house arrest himself) to get the charges dropped.

4. To Market, To Market (Season 1)
Thieves hold up a truck full of medical supplies for the 4077, thus rendering them in desperate need of hydrocortisone. In retaliation, Hawkeye and Trapper meet with a notorious black marketeer, hoping to get some replacements. When they realize they have nothing to trade with him, they are forced to go to drastic measures to get what they need.

3. Deal Me Out (Season 2)
As everybody gathers for the regular poker game (including visiting senior officers), a wounded intelligence agent is brought in to the operating room. Hawkeye must choose between standing orders against treating him (for fear the agent will divulge secrets under anesthesia) or saving his life. Radar accidentally runs over "Whiplash Hwang," a Korean who makes a career of faking injuries and filing personal injury lawsuits. This episode sees the first appearance of Lieutenant Colonel Flagg (after season 3, a Colonel), albeit under a different identity (possibly a pseudonym).

2. 5 O'Clock Charlie (Season 2)
At exactly 5:00 every afternoon, an inept North Korean pilot in an obsolete plane flies over the 4077th, trying (and failing) to hit a nearby ammunition dump with a hand-thrown bomb. The whole camp finds him amusing except for Major Burns, who has an anti-aircraft gun delivered to the camp in hopes of shooting him down. Worried that the gun might draw enemy fire, Hawkeye and Trapper come up with a plan to get rid of both it and the dump.

1. Major Fred C. Dobbs (Season 1)
Hawkeye and Trapper's latest scheme succeeds where no other one has; Frank has finally demanded that he be transferred to another unit and Hot Lips has followed suit. However, when Hawkeye and Trapper discover they will be assigned double duty until replacements are found, they decide to trick Frank into staying by convincing him there a fortune in gold to be found near the camp.

Ironically, per Wikipedia - "Among those involved in the making of M*A*S*H, this is often considered to be the worst episode, centering as it does on Hawkeye and Trapper trying to keep Majs. Burns and Houlihan at the 4077th."