BJ Hunnicutt is my favorite M*A*S*H character and my all-time favorite television character. Dr. BJ Hunnicutt, named after his mother, Bea and his father, Jay (hence no periods on the initials), replaced “Trapper John” Mcintyre who was discharged and sent home while Hawkeye was on R&R. In reality, Wayne Rogers never unpacked his bags and was threatening to leave the show since almost the very beginning (More on this on the “Trapper John” Cache).
BJ was from Mill Valley, California where he was married to Peg and had a little daughter, Erin, who had just been born. Erin, by the way, is also the name of Mike Farrell’s real life daughter. BJ was a clean cut seemingly innocent new doctor, which is a stark contrast to his eventual partner and the man he was replacing. This dichotomy gave the show new life as Hawkeye and BJ looked at life and war from different angles, where Hawkeye and Trapper, in the TV show, were pretty much identical. An example of how the two are different is shown in the episodes “White Gold” from season 2 and “Preventative Medicine” from season 7. In the season 2 episode, in order to stop Co. Flagg from taking penicillin to sell on the black market, Hawkeye and Trapper put something in his drink to make him sick, then tell him that it is his appendix and they operate and remove the healthy appendix without discussion, even making a joke about it in the OR. In the season 7 episode, in order to get a Colonel with an extremely high casualty rate off the line, they do the same thing, though in the case, BJ calls it gastritis, and Hawkeye calls it appendicitis and wants to remove his appendix, to which BJ vehemently disagreed with and argued with Hawkeye about in one of the best scenes of the entire series.
BJ is extremely dedicated to his wife and daughter and remained faithful (except for one time in the incredible episode “Hanky Panky”). His family keeps him sane and completely grounded. It is a grounding that very few others in the 4077th have. BJ is also an athlete, unlike Hawkeye (though according to the movie and book, Hawkeye played college football, this was never mentioned in the TV show). BJ is also a motorcycle nut as they showed a couple of times, including in the finale, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”.
There is another side of BJ. BJ is the camp prankster. If Hawkeye is the class clown looking for a laugh, BJ plans out his antics sometimes even weeks in advance. In “The Joker is Wild”, Hawkeye was proud of the fact that he “could not be got”. BJ set up an elaborate prank involving everyone else in the camp to prove that Hawkeye could, in fact, get got. Hawkeye turned into a paranoid mess waiting for the joke that actually never came. In “The Winchester Tapes” BJ was concerned about Charles’ weight fluctuations helping him when in fact he was replacing Charles’ uniform with different sizes to make Charles think his weight was going down, then drastically up. In “Dear Sigmund”, Sidney also said "The one person I can't figure out, even with all you've taught me, Sigmund, is BJ Hunnicutt. He's an enigma in size 13 shoes." There was a rash of practical jokes and Sidney was shocked to learn that BJ was the unknown prankster.
In the spirit of BJ being an Unknown, so is this cache. Solve the puzzle to find the cache.
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