Mike Farrell only seems to turn up in ads for the left-wing Nation magazine. A lot of people who "failed" as actors, though, go into producing and do alright. No need to worry about them.
The Frank Burns character was manufactured to be the conservative caricature to be knocked down constantly. They made him a horrid character that nobody could like (except Margaret Houlihan, and she dumped him eventually), then stuck every conservative label on him they could as a way to constantly trash conservatism. Examples:
1. He was religious but was constantly lying, cheating, and stealing to portray religious people as liars, thieves, and hypocrites that screw around on their spouses.
2. He was always condescending to foreigners’ faces, cursed them behind their backs, and advocated the US getting out of the UN, thereby propagating the stereotype that you’re racist and horrible if you don’t want the United Nations running the world.
3. Frank would often talk bitterly about how other governments would run their countries into the ground while America built the best standard of living in the world. What he said was absolutely true but having it come out of a terrible person like Frank Burns was a way to denigrate conservative America.
4. Burns married into money, had two cars, and a big house. Because we “know” that anybody with money is a sniveling little weasel that didn’t earn it, they screwed somebody for it. (But somehow rich liberals are as good as gold and are magically exempt from this stereotype.)
There’s gotta be a ton more examples.