Remember When Radar Left the 4077th?

You know there’s a crisis at the 4077th when Hawkeye quits whining for a couple of minutes. The crisis that slaps him out of his bellyaching is a death in Radar’s family, which threatens to send the company clerk back to Iowa for good in “Good-bye, Radar” a touching two-part M*A*S*H (Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m. on KTTV) originally aired in October, 1979. Radar (Gary Burghoff) doesn’t want to leave Korea because it looks as if Klinger (Jamie Farr), even dressed in men’s clothing, can’t hack it as Radar’s replacement.

But Radar does end up going, after he decides that his friends-and the war-can get along nicely without him.

And he turns out to be right. The series had no problem going on for an additional three seasons without the war-weary Burghoff, the only principal from “M*A*S*HS the movie to play the same role in the series. After all, it already had survived the loss of more important characters: Trapper (Wayne Rogers), Col. Blake (McLean Stevenson) and Frank Burns (Larry Linville).