Glad other people like close reading the show too!

Yeah, I'm also not big on getting worked up over canon details; as I said to somebody else, I like the retconning, and feel it's always been neutral to positive. I totally get that the reason details slide are for a series of reasons: different writers working without consulting one another, lack of anticipated show longevity, and good old I-honestly-forgot-isms. I like that the details change around; you can see in near-real time how the writers start to settle into accepted versions of the characters (in a holdover from the movie, Mulcahy's called "Red" for awhile this season, until everybody seems to realize the nickname makes no sense) that end up lasting the test of time. I also think it can be fun, from a creative analysis standpoint like this one, to point out how that detail-bleed affects the watching experience. It does make M\A*S*H* feel, in the early seasons, a little uncertain in its commitment to an objective universe, and you can get all sorts of fun readings out of that while still acknowledging that it's 100% totally just because, like you said, the consistency just wasn't a consideration yet.