Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce

Hawkeye Pierce is a draftee surgeon at the 4077th, a wisecracking Boston doctor who treats the horror around him with martinis, skirt-chasing, and relentless jokes at the brass's expense. He hates the war, hates rules more, and would rather bend regulations than watch another kid die on his table for the sake of protocol.

Alda plays the gag and the grief as the same reflex, not opposites — the joke is often the only thing holding the scene together. What keeps Hawkeye from being just a wit is how seriously the show takes his anger: the flippancy is armor over a man who cannot make peace with what surgery under fire actually costs.