10 Awesome Characters Who Deserved Better Death Scenes
2. Blake
Died In: MASH Back when MASH was a huge deal, TV deaths just weren't cricket, and the death of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Braymore Blake, M.D. caused some serious waves back in 1975, not least because he was pretty much just dumped as an after-thought after being given an honourable exit earlier in his final episode. When the actor playing Blake - McLean Stevenson - confessed that he wanted to leabe the show, at the height of its success, he was initially scripted to decided to be discharged and sent home, but the show's writers pulled an almighty switcheroo at the last minute, and wrote in a scene that reported that Blakes plane has been shot down over the Sea of Japan, leaving no survivors. The scene was all but kept a secret, with the pages being handed over by producers Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds just minutes before filming, to keep everyone (except Alan Alda) in the dark and thus inspire authentic reactions from the cast, who duly obliged. But regardless of the scene's impact, the off-screen death of a character as major as Blake was a betrayal of the character.