Title: The Acme Judgment Company (Uncloseted Remix) by Sabine/iamsab
Fandom: M*A*S*H
Pairing: Hawkeye/BJ, Hawkeye/female
Categories:
Length: Medium (4,900 words)
Warning: Fidelity, sobriety and truth are the first three casualties of war, so, hold on.
Rating: Author rates at 'T for Teen'


Author on LJ: The Sabrary
Website: punkandsabfiction. Her West Wing fiction is heavily featured on The National Library


Summary:"You want disapproval? You disapprove. I'm not the ACME Judgment Company." - BJ, The More I See You


Review:

An outsider's point-of-view on the Hawkeye/BJ relationship. Carlye Breslin (now Walton) was once Hawkeye's live-in girlfriend. When she is posted to the 4077 MASH as a nurse they take up again more or less where they left off - except that this time Carlye is aware that there's someone else in Hawkeye's life. It becomes apparent as the story progresses that, although he is fond of Carlye and fonder still of having sex with her, Hawkeye is - despite his own protestations - emotionally committed to BJ.

Naturally as we are seeing all this through the eyes of a third party it is a little short on specifics as far as the guys are concerned. To balance that, however, we have a coherent and well-constructed picture of Carlye as a concerned friend who understands Hawkeye better than he understands himself, sees through all his blustering and recognises the full significance of his relationship with BJ.

If I have one quibble, it would be that the author's chronology just doesn’t stack up. I don’t know if we were ever told Hawkeye's date of birth, but given that Donald Sutherland played the part at the age of 35 and Alan Alda first at 36 we can reasonably assume that Hawkeye was born in about 1915-1916; this makes it very difficult to believe that he could have been dumped by his live-in girlfriend on the day after the 1929 Stock Market crash. Indeed, he could hardly even have been a medical student then, unless he was Doogie Howser.

This aside, what we have here is a perceptive piece of work showing Hawkeye coming to grips with the central fact of his life - that he is in love with BJ. As a result it is no surprise to learn, through Carlye, that by 1954 the two of them are in an established relationship and sending out Christmas cards together from Mill Valley. It would have been nice to know more about this, but alas the story ends here.

I have slight reservations that the path of true love would be quite so smooth for these boys, but be that as it may Sabine has achieved something very unusual with this story - a third-person POV on a slash relationship that manages to be both revealing and discreet. It is a very delicate balancing-act, in which she has succeeded superbly.



Link: The ACME Judgment Company