Major Franklin Delano Marion Burns

Frank Burns is a surgeon at the 4077th who considers himself the only serious professional in a camp of clowns. He's rigid, sanctimonious, quick to invoke rank and regulation, and openly contemptuous of the goldbricking around him. He's also carrying on a not-so-secret affair with Major Houlihan and constantly aggrieved that no one takes him seriously.

Linville plays Frank with such committed, whining self-righteousness that he becomes the perfect pressure valve for the show's anarchic sympathies — every eye-roll and swindle by Hawkeye and Trapper lands because Frank makes smugness so richly punishable. He's a hypocrite you can laugh at without ever once wanting him proven right.