On the second anniversary of Bob Denver's death, we thought it would be appropriate to honor him with our tribute and bewildered musings on the happenings on Gilligan's Island. Enjoy!
RANDY: Gilligan died.
PAT: Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!
RANDY: I guess he's now first mate on the boat that crosses the River Styx.
PAT: "TV critics were less kind, dismissing the show as inane. But after it was canceled by CBS in 1967, it found new audiences over and over in syndicated reruns and reunion films, including 1981's The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island.'
Thank God we got to see what would happen if a fake basketball team got to the island.
RANDY: I think a more interesting plot would have been Gilligan Trots in Harlem and centers on him running to get out of the area while pursued for two hours by local thugs.
DAVE: Do basketballs bounce on sand?
PAT: I'm pretty sure they just spun the ball on their finger and whistled "Sweet Georgia Brown" in between Gilligan's hat beatings. The movie was 4 1/2 hours.
RANDY: Wasn't the premise for how the Globetrotters got onto the island that a bolt of lightning hit one of the indigenous lemon trees and turned the fruit into Meadowlark Lemon? If it wasn't, it should've been.
DAVE: Why was it Gilligan's island?
RANDY: Gilligan was a homesteader and he claimed it under the Homestead Act. His horses and cattle drowned on their way to the island.
PAT: He had incriminating photos of the rest of them.
DAVE: Pics of Mr. Howell in a dress.
RANDY: Thurston Howell Sr. and Thurston Howell Jr. were cross-dressers as well, so Thurston Howell III was just carrying on a family tradition.
PAT: That makes sense because I am pretty sure "Lovey" was a man.
RANDY: I don't think it would have mattered. With nothing but fruit to eat day after day and virtually no protein, Lovey, Ginger, and Maryann would have been menopausal inside a year.
DAVE: They could've eaten Gladys the gorilla (sometime-lover of Gilligan).
If I were on the island, I’d have killed them all, made a raft out of their corpses, and sailed away with the Howells’ riches. Now THAT'S comedy, folks!
RANDY: Dave's "Wilson" would have been the Professor's head bobbing in the water.
PAT: Best episode ever: Giant stuffed spider in a cave dangling from a string. They scare it back into the cave with a mirror.
RANDY: And that episode with the Japanese soldier……….whom they scared back into the cave with a mirror.
They ran out of ideas pretty quick.
DAVE: There's always a canal!
RANDY: Dave's been screaming that for a month. Nobody knows why.
The one I most remember was when Gilligan got struck by lightning and his mouth became a radio. I tried for years to get that to happen to me, but I finally broke down and bought an RCA Victor.
PAT: Remember when they would put on plays for themselves? Was that the only way to keep entertained? What about doin' Maryann and Ginger? Didn't they ever think of that?
RANDY: The castaways weren't members of SAG either. They should have been prosecuted the moment they stepped onshore after their rescue.
PAT: How about the TV movie where they are rescued, decide to take a boat trip again, and get stranded on the same island?! I mean, are you KIDDING me?! And none of these people committed suicide?
RANDY: At the very least, murder among the castaways would have been inevitable. The HMS Bounty's crew that marooned themselves on Pitcairn Island started killing each other left and right over food and women. Don't tell me Gilligan wouldn't have sank into a primal state and taken out the Skipper, his chief rival as alpha male.
PAT: Not to mention, these people get on a boat with the Skipper and Gilligan again? Their ONLY experience with them is them losing control and getting shipwrecked. I would politely say "No thanks."
RANDY: They probably thought lightning couldn't strike twice and figured that getting on a boat again with Skipper and Gilligan is about the safest place they could be.
RICH: There was a sequel to that movie. It was just a shot of their feet swinging back and forth after they had all hanged themselves. The soundtrack was the sound of the palm-frond ropes creaking and wind in the leaves.
RANDY: There's supposed to be a "lost" episode in which Lee Marvin lands on the island and beats the hell out of each castaway in turn. Maybe one day the Marvin estate will cancel the injunction...
DAVE: I remember one of the last ones where they escape from the island and pull into a port full of cheering people on a triple-deck bamboo yacht.
RANDY: Wasn't that converted into the world's largest lawn chair?
RICH: Skipper to passengers after leaving harbor: "I gotta tell ya…I'm reeeeeeeeeal drunk. So is Gilgame...Gilligis...I mean Gilligamagen…"
RANDY: Wouldn't a competent captain have prohibited the Howells from bringing a year's worth of clothing on board before they even set sail? I think the "Skipper" probably was just an ordinary guy who showed up at the harbor wearing a captain's hat and boatjacked the Minnow for a joyride.
RICH: Someone I used to know came up with a great idea for a short movie: The Professor vs. MacGyver. You see each one paddling to an island from opposite sides, they each run to a bush (the island is tiny and the two bushes are the only thing on it), and 10 seconds later, there is a nuclear explosion.
RANDY: You figure that uncharted isle on which Gilligan et al were marooned would have been used for atomic testing, it being the early 1960s and the Cold War and all. That would have been a great final episode -- Gilligan and the gang squint up to the sunny sky:
"Skipper! A plane!"
“A plane, little buddy! We're saved!"
RICH: "I think it's dropping supplies!"
DAVE: I vaguely remember an "Old West" episode too...
RICH: Did you guys ever see the pilot episode? It was in black and white.
RANDY: Wasn't there an eighth member to the cast? I think it was a "Chuck Cunningham." They decided to drop him after the pilot, and then he showed up uninvited on the set of the Happy Days pilot ten years later.
RANDY: If they went on a three-hour tour from Hawaii, that means they were, at most, an hour and a half sailing time off the islands. The storm in which they were shipwrecked apparently carried them about a thousand miles away……..which is about as plausible as Tina Louise having an acting career in the first place.
DAVE: It takes a fast catamaran about 30 minutes to get from Kauaii to Niihau. On the Minnow, they'd still be able to see the Hawaiian Islands after 90 minutes.
RANDY: Woulda been kind of cool if the island on which Tom Hanks had washed ashore in Cast Away was Gilligan's Island and we briefly see Hanks come across a skeleton in a red shirt and white pants and hat. Nothing need to be said for that scene, but it would've been a neat homage.
DAVE: Didn't every episode end with someone running or swimming away with the film sped up so it looks really funny and fast?
RANDY: Yeah, but they had to do that because every episode always ran about thirty seconds too long due to the Skipper's "Keep the reds out of Southeast Asia" message directed at the kids.
Hey, the producers' hands were tied -- it was in Alan Hale's contract...
RICH: Yeah, with the same laugh track used over and over again. Is there such a thing as a sob track?
RANDY: Yeah. They use it when a character is chopping onions.
DAVE: A "Getting-up-with-a-stiff-back" track.
"Arrr... Oh man. Jeez."
PAT: I like when all the visitors would get away somehow. It was quite a heavily travelled unknown island.
RANDY: They never had an episode in which the island was visited by Canadian Mounties. There were a lot of possibilities there...
RICH: I think Jurassic Park should have taken place on the island.
PAT: "Uh, Professor, I think you can stop trying to power that radio with a coconut now. They are cloning dinosaurs over there, for chrissake!"
RANDY: You know the Professor never really invented anything truly sophisticated enough to help them in a tangible way. I'll bet he was just a professor of philosophy or something.
"Professor, a plane! Do something!"
"I can only stand here and be stoic…"
RICH: Dr. Grant: "So…What have you been feeding the raptors, Mr. Hammond?"
Hammond: "Er….Stuff and things…"
RANDY: T.Rex burps out Gilligan's hat.
RANDY: Or at least King Kong should have been there. Then Kong has to decide which chick to covet -- Ginger or Maryann.
DAVE: I would've like just one episode where they all just sit in silence staring into space with glazed-over eyes.
RICH: And Mr. Howell delirious with fever, trying to eat his own foot.
RANDY: That happened in a Mr. Magoo episode…..although that had to do more with Magoo's poor eyesight than raging delirium.
DAVE: When I was a kid, I thought the theme song said "if not for the mighty sailing crew, the middle would be lost."
I mean, a boat without a middle. You're screwed, man.
RANDY: “I mean, a boat without a middle. You're screwed, man.”
That was the opening line in the original folio of Moby Dick.
DAVE: I thought it was "Call me... crazy! But I can't get enough of that ooey gooey fish chowdah!"
RANDY: With the proposed cover an etching of Captain Ahab holding a can of chowder and giving the thumbs-up sign.
PAT: Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!
RANDY: I guess he's now first mate on the boat that crosses the River Styx.
PAT: "TV critics were less kind, dismissing the show as inane. But after it was canceled by CBS in 1967, it found new audiences over and over in syndicated reruns and reunion films, including 1981's The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island.'
Thank God we got to see what would happen if a fake basketball team got to the island.
RANDY: I think a more interesting plot would have been Gilligan Trots in Harlem and centers on him running to get out of the area while pursued for two hours by local thugs.
DAVE: Do basketballs bounce on sand?
PAT: I'm pretty sure they just spun the ball on their finger and whistled "Sweet Georgia Brown" in between Gilligan's hat beatings. The movie was 4 1/2 hours.
RANDY: Wasn't the premise for how the Globetrotters got onto the island that a bolt of lightning hit one of the indigenous lemon trees and turned the fruit into Meadowlark Lemon? If it wasn't, it should've been.
DAVE: Why was it Gilligan's island?
RANDY: Gilligan was a homesteader and he claimed it under the Homestead Act. His horses and cattle drowned on their way to the island.
PAT: He had incriminating photos of the rest of them.
DAVE: Pics of Mr. Howell in a dress.
RANDY: Thurston Howell Sr. and Thurston Howell Jr. were cross-dressers as well, so Thurston Howell III was just carrying on a family tradition.
PAT: That makes sense because I am pretty sure "Lovey" was a man.
RANDY: I don't think it would have mattered. With nothing but fruit to eat day after day and virtually no protein, Lovey, Ginger, and Maryann would have been menopausal inside a year.
DAVE: They could've eaten Gladys the gorilla (sometime-lover of Gilligan).
If I were on the island, I’d have killed them all, made a raft out of their corpses, and sailed away with the Howells’ riches. Now THAT'S comedy, folks!
RANDY: Dave's "Wilson" would have been the Professor's head bobbing in the water.
PAT: Best episode ever: Giant stuffed spider in a cave dangling from a string. They scare it back into the cave with a mirror.
RANDY: And that episode with the Japanese soldier……….whom they scared back into the cave with a mirror.
They ran out of ideas pretty quick.
DAVE: There's always a canal!
RANDY: Dave's been screaming that for a month. Nobody knows why.
The one I most remember was when Gilligan got struck by lightning and his mouth became a radio. I tried for years to get that to happen to me, but I finally broke down and bought an RCA Victor.
PAT: Remember when they would put on plays for themselves? Was that the only way to keep entertained? What about doin' Maryann and Ginger? Didn't they ever think of that?
RANDY: The castaways weren't members of SAG either. They should have been prosecuted the moment they stepped onshore after their rescue.
PAT: How about the TV movie where they are rescued, decide to take a boat trip again, and get stranded on the same island?! I mean, are you KIDDING me?! And none of these people committed suicide?
RANDY: At the very least, murder among the castaways would have been inevitable. The HMS Bounty's crew that marooned themselves on Pitcairn Island started killing each other left and right over food and women. Don't tell me Gilligan wouldn't have sank into a primal state and taken out the Skipper, his chief rival as alpha male.
PAT: Not to mention, these people get on a boat with the Skipper and Gilligan again? Their ONLY experience with them is them losing control and getting shipwrecked. I would politely say "No thanks."
RANDY: They probably thought lightning couldn't strike twice and figured that getting on a boat again with Skipper and Gilligan is about the safest place they could be.
RICH: There was a sequel to that movie. It was just a shot of their feet swinging back and forth after they had all hanged themselves. The soundtrack was the sound of the palm-frond ropes creaking and wind in the leaves.
RANDY: There's supposed to be a "lost" episode in which Lee Marvin lands on the island and beats the hell out of each castaway in turn. Maybe one day the Marvin estate will cancel the injunction...
DAVE: I remember one of the last ones where they escape from the island and pull into a port full of cheering people on a triple-deck bamboo yacht.
RANDY: Wasn't that converted into the world's largest lawn chair?
RICH: Skipper to passengers after leaving harbor: "I gotta tell ya…I'm reeeeeeeeeal drunk. So is Gilgame...Gilligis...I mean Gilligamagen…"
RANDY: Wouldn't a competent captain have prohibited the Howells from bringing a year's worth of clothing on board before they even set sail? I think the "Skipper" probably was just an ordinary guy who showed up at the harbor wearing a captain's hat and boatjacked the Minnow for a joyride.
RICH: Someone I used to know came up with a great idea for a short movie: The Professor vs. MacGyver. You see each one paddling to an island from opposite sides, they each run to a bush (the island is tiny and the two bushes are the only thing on it), and 10 seconds later, there is a nuclear explosion.
RANDY: You figure that uncharted isle on which Gilligan et al were marooned would have been used for atomic testing, it being the early 1960s and the Cold War and all. That would have been a great final episode -- Gilligan and the gang squint up to the sunny sky:
"Skipper! A plane!"
“A plane, little buddy! We're saved!"
RICH: "I think it's dropping supplies!"
DAVE: I vaguely remember an "Old West" episode too...
RICH: Did you guys ever see the pilot episode? It was in black and white.
RANDY: Wasn't there an eighth member to the cast? I think it was a "Chuck Cunningham." They decided to drop him after the pilot, and then he showed up uninvited on the set of the Happy Days pilot ten years later.
RANDY: If they went on a three-hour tour from Hawaii, that means they were, at most, an hour and a half sailing time off the islands. The storm in which they were shipwrecked apparently carried them about a thousand miles away……..which is about as plausible as Tina Louise having an acting career in the first place.
DAVE: It takes a fast catamaran about 30 minutes to get from Kauaii to Niihau. On the Minnow, they'd still be able to see the Hawaiian Islands after 90 minutes.
RANDY: Woulda been kind of cool if the island on which Tom Hanks had washed ashore in Cast Away was Gilligan's Island and we briefly see Hanks come across a skeleton in a red shirt and white pants and hat. Nothing need to be said for that scene, but it would've been a neat homage.
DAVE: Didn't every episode end with someone running or swimming away with the film sped up so it looks really funny and fast?
RANDY: Yeah, but they had to do that because every episode always ran about thirty seconds too long due to the Skipper's "Keep the reds out of Southeast Asia" message directed at the kids.
Hey, the producers' hands were tied -- it was in Alan Hale's contract...
RICH: Yeah, with the same laugh track used over and over again. Is there such a thing as a sob track?
RANDY: Yeah. They use it when a character is chopping onions.
DAVE: A "Getting-up-with-a-stiff-back" track.
"Arrr... Oh man. Jeez."
PAT: I like when all the visitors would get away somehow. It was quite a heavily travelled unknown island.
RANDY: They never had an episode in which the island was visited by Canadian Mounties. There were a lot of possibilities there...
RICH: I think Jurassic Park should have taken place on the island.
PAT: "Uh, Professor, I think you can stop trying to power that radio with a coconut now. They are cloning dinosaurs over there, for chrissake!"
RANDY: You know the Professor never really invented anything truly sophisticated enough to help them in a tangible way. I'll bet he was just a professor of philosophy or something.
"Professor, a plane! Do something!"
"I can only stand here and be stoic…"
RICH: Dr. Grant: "So…What have you been feeding the raptors, Mr. Hammond?"
Hammond: "Er….Stuff and things…"
RANDY: T.Rex burps out Gilligan's hat.
RANDY: Or at least King Kong should have been there. Then Kong has to decide which chick to covet -- Ginger or Maryann.
DAVE: I would've like just one episode where they all just sit in silence staring into space with glazed-over eyes.
RICH: And Mr. Howell delirious with fever, trying to eat his own foot.
RANDY: That happened in a Mr. Magoo episode…..although that had to do more with Magoo's poor eyesight than raging delirium.
DAVE: When I was a kid, I thought the theme song said "if not for the mighty sailing crew, the middle would be lost."
I mean, a boat without a middle. You're screwed, man.
RANDY: “I mean, a boat without a middle. You're screwed, man.”
That was the opening line in the original folio of Moby Dick.
DAVE: I thought it was "Call me... crazy! But I can't get enough of that ooey gooey fish chowdah!"
RANDY: With the proposed cover an etching of Captain Ahab holding a can of chowder and giving the thumbs-up sign.
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