Fun Flashback: Remember this embarrassment from 1988?

 

Yeah, these electronic "labor saving devices" will never catch on....

There's something really sad about seeing the cast of what was, for three or four seasons, the best show of the 1970s (and then went on to be a middling comedy, and then a mediocre comedy, and then an entirely forgettable comedy, as it went on and on before shuffling off the stage* having lasted roughly three times longer than the Korean War that was supposed to be it's setting) pimping for International Business Machines five years after their seminal roles left television.   Someone in the comment section points out that this commercial features the very first appearance of Colonel Potter and Trapper John in the same scene- they never met in the series, so it's kind of strange that they would know each other here.  The absence of Alan Alda is striking as well; no, it's not because he was "too good" to shill for a computer company.  It's because he was already under contract with COLECO, selling their somewhat less successful ADAM system.  Remember that one?  The computer that could only receive power through the printer port, meaning that if the printer broke down the computer wouldn't work?  Me neither. 

*Of course, M*A*S*H left television with the most-watched final episode in television history (more of a tv movie than final episode,) but it really ought to be remembered that the finale was so popular because it was a throwback to the quality and tone of the film and the early seasons of the show, and discarded the weak and often gimmicky scripts and direction of the last third of its run.