Major Margaret J. "Hot Lips" Houlihan

Major Margaret Houlihan runs the nurses' corps at the 4077th with a spine of pure regulation. She's career Army through and through — sharp-tongued, exacting, and openly contemptuous of the camp's slapdash discipline. Involved with the equally rigid Frank Burns, she treats Hawkeye and Trapper's antics as an insult to everything soldiering ought to be.

She arrives as the show's designated scold, the straight woman built to be the butt of the joke — and Swit refuses to let that be the whole part. There's real steel and real hurt under the starch, glimpses of a competent, lonely officer surrounded by men who don't take her seriously, which gives the character room to grow far past the nickname.