They killed off Henry … the other Tuesday night on "M∗A∗S∗H."… Henry was to have returned from Korea to the United States, to his wife and children. His plane crashed. There were no survivors….

[The] end of Henry hurt. I can't recall another sit-com's solving a personnel problem in such a drastic fashion, especially when the character is dear in our affections. On the day-time detergents, to be sure, characters are always disappearing, plunging out of mind as though, stage-left, there were a revolving trapdoor; we will hear later that their subscriptions were cancelled by a car crash or encephalitis or terminal apathy, that they emigrated to Australia and were eaten by wombats.

But these are dramatized actuarial tables, not comedy programs. Nobody dies on a comedy program. And Henry was lovable. The gods with a karate chop dispatched him. Where is the soft rain, the...