“So, Alan,” the podcast host asked, leaning into the microphone, “everyone talks about the intense surgery scenes, but I want to know about the outdoor shoots. Was it as miserable as it looked?”

Alan Alda leaned back, a wide smile spreading across his face as the memory hit him.

“You have no idea,” Alan laughed, his voice carrying that familiar rasp.

He explained that people always assume shooting a television show in Southern California is a luxurious, sun-soaked experience.

But the outdoor camp scenes weren’t filmed on a cozy Hollywood soundstage.

They were shot on location at the Malibu Creek State Park.

And in the dead of winter, the Santa Monica Mountains were brutally, punishingly cold.

“We would get out there at five in the morning,” Alan recalled. “The wind would be howling through the canyons, and the frost would be thick on the ground.”

“And here we are, playing soldiers, dressed in these incredibly thin, unlined cotton fatigue uniforms.”

“We were freezing.”

Alan described how he and his co-star, Wayne Rogers, who played Trapper John, were standing by the mess tent one morning, completely miserable.

Their teeth were chattering so loudly that the sound mixer was picking it up on the audio track.

Wayne, who was always a problem solver, looked at Alan with a glint in his eye.

Wayne had a brilliant idea.

“He pulled me aside,” Alan told the host, “and he said he knew exactly how we were going to beat the cold.”

He told Alan they needed to secretly wear full-body scuba diving wetsuits underneath their baggy army fatigues.

The thick rubber would trap their body heat, block out the canyon wind, and no one would ever know.

It sounded like absolute genius.

The next morning, they arrived at their trailers early.

They squeezed themselves into these skin-tight, quarter-inch thick neoprene wetsuits.

They pulled their green cotton uniforms over the heavy rubber.

They felt incredibly warm.

They felt completely invincible.

Alan and Wayne walked out of their trailers, ready to conquer the morning.

They took their marks in the middle of the camp compound.

The director called for action.

And that’s when it happened.

“Action!” the director yelled, expecting a smooth, casual stroll through the camp from his leading men.

Alan and Wayne stepped forward to begin the scene.

Or, at least, they tried to.

“The thing about thick neoprene,” Alan explained to the host, laughing so hard he had to catch his breath, “is that it is designed for swimming. It is not designed for walking on dry land.”

The moment they tried to bend their knees, the thick rubber fought back.

When they tried to swing their arms naturally, the wetsuits firmly resisted the movement.

Instead of walking like relaxed army doctors, Alan and Wayne were suddenly moving like stiff, heavily armored robots.

“We looked like Frankenstein monsters,” Alan confessed, wiping a tear from his eye. “We couldn’t bend our elbows or our waist.”

They waddled into the frame, their arms awkwardly jutting out from their sides, taking these bizarre, rigid steps.

But the visual comedy wasn’t even the worst part.

It was the sound.

Neoprene rubbing against neoprene, especially when tightly compressed under cotton clothing, creates a very distinct, very loud noise.

With every single step Alan and Wayne took, the rubber let out a high-pitched, echoing squeak.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

They sounded like two giant balloon animals aggressively rubbing against each other.

The podcast host burst into laughter as Alan painted the ridiculous picture.

“The sound mixer immediately threw his headphones off,” Alan remembered, shaking his head. “He looked completely frantic, like he was in physical pain.”

The mixer waved his arms wildly, shouting to the director that there was massive audio interference, a terrible, rhythmic squeaking noise entirely ruining the dialogue track.

The director yelled for a cut, looking around the quiet mountain set in total confusion.

“What is that noise?” the director demanded. “Who is squeaking?”

Alan and Wayne stood there, frozen, their arms still awkwardly hovering away from their torsos.

They tried to play it cool.

Wayne attempted to casually lean against a nearby jeep to look natural.

But because the rubber was so thick and tightly sprung, his arm literally bounced right off the metal hood.

The camera operator, who was watching this bizarre, stiff-armed behavior through the lens, couldn’t hold it in anymore.

He started laughing so hard that his shoulders heaved, and the heavy camera literally began shaking on its rigid mount.

Soon, the entire crew realized exactly what was happening.

The sight of the two leading men, trapped in hidden rubber suits, squeaking with every tiny movement, brought the entire production to a screeching halt.

Multiple retakes failed entirely because every time they tried to do the scene, a rogue squeak would escape, and everyone would break character.

But the universe was not done punishing them for their brilliant idea.

“Because here is the other thing about the Malibu mountains,” Alan told the host, leaning in for the final punchline. “Yes, it is freezing at five in the morning.”

“But by ten in the morning, the California sun comes over the ridge.”

And when that sun hit the valley, the temperature skyrocketed.

Suddenly, it was seventy-five degrees outside.

Alan and Wayne were still trapped inside full-body, thick rubber insulating suits designed to keep deep-sea divers warm in icy waters.

“We started sweating,” Alan whispered dramatically, leaning back into the podcast microphone. “And I don’t mean just a little glisten of sweat. I mean absolute buckets of sweat pouring down our backs.”

Because wetsuits are waterproof, the sweat had absolutely nowhere to go.

It couldn’t evaporate.

It couldn’t soak into their clothes.

It just pooled.

“By noon,” Alan laughed, “we literally had pools of our own sweat sloshing around in the ankles of our boots.”

When they finally broke for lunch, the two actors had to waddle back to their trailers in pure agony.

They squeaked all the way across the compound, squishing with every step, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind them.

They had to recruit the wardrobe department to help peel the skin-tight, soaking wet rubber suits off their exhausted bodies.

They threw the thick, heavy wetsuits into the darkest corner of the trailer and promised each other they would never, ever speak of Wayne’s brilliant idea again.

But of course, the crew never let them live it down.

For the rest of the season, anytime Wayne had a good idea or suggested a new way to play a scene, someone on the crew would just make a quiet, high-pitched squeaking noise in the background.

Looking back, those unpredictable, deeply uncomfortable moments are often the exact ones that build the strongest bonds and the best memories among a cast.

What is the most hilariously terrible idea you or a coworker ever had to try and solve a problem at your job?