The entire Korean War lasted a little over 3 years. The most well-known tv show to use it as a subject, M*A*S*H, lasted 11. Nobody seemed to care though and it's likely that if the creators of the show had decided to bring it back for a 12th season it would have remained a ratings monster. But they didn't. Instead what we got was the mother of all finales. A 2 1/2 hour tv movie entitely "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", (the title itself seeming to exhibit a certain degree uncertainty if viewed through the Shakespearean prism: "(thou) doth protest too much, methinks").

The show was directed by Alan Alda and, like much of the series itself, was heavy on the melodrama and light on the comedy. A 30 second advertisement broadcast during the show cost $450,000 (nearly a million in 2011 dollars) and the show wound up being the most watched television broadcast in American history drawing a reported 121 million viewers (even surpassing the "Who Shot JR?" episode of "Dallas").