Gilligan's Island Episode: Seer Gilligan

"Gilligan's Island" was a comedy that originally aired on the CBS television network from 1964 until 1967. The show's first season, 1964-65, was broadcast in black and white, but the show began airing in color with the 1965-66 season. The basic idea of the series was that seven people had been shipwrecked during a severe storm after the tour boat they were on sailed from Hawaii. The boat was beached on a small uncharted island where these seven representatives from various parts of American society had to learn to get along in order to survive. Gilligan was a good and well meaning guy, but no matter how great his intentions, he always managed to bungle things. The show was the creation of Sherwood Schwartz. After CBS cancelled the show and it ceased production, its original episodes began broadcast all over the world, something that has continued pretty much ever since. The show's popularity spawned three full-length movies in the late 1970s and early 1980s featuring all of the original cast, except Tina Louise, who remained embittered about how the show had damaged her career, as movie and television execs felt she was too tied to her "Ginger" character from the show, and this restricted the roles offered to her. Some of the other cast members were embittered too, until they came to realize how beloved they and the show were to so many people around the globe.    

 

This episode first aired in January 1966 and only the regular cast appears in the episode: 

Bob Denver ................. Gilligan
Alan Hale, Jr. .............. (the) Skipper
Jim Backus ................. Thurston Howell III
Natalie Schafer ........... Mrs. Howell, aka "Lovey"
Tina Louise ................ Ginger Grant
Russell Johnson ......... the Professor
Dawn Wells ............... Mary Ann

 

 

Comment: Interestingly, this episode was filmed and broadcast well before the Internet, but there is a connection between the two in a certain way. Some of the Internet tech people, like Mark Zuckerberg, saw the potential of the Internet as a great way to bring people together from all over the world, but he and the others seemingly DIDN'T see, or fully comprehend, the potential for negatives and misuse, something they perhaps wanted to be reserved just for themselves, when they took people's personal information and followed their every move on the Internet. No siree, none of this Mata Hari-like spying for these power hungry and money grubbing Internet lords, whose companies compiled profiles of each user; perhaps, the word "dossier" is even more appropriate. They sold malarkey to the public that they had to have all of this personal information to use targeted ads; thus, they wouldn't have to do the same as television, radio and the print media and compete with those entities head-on to get advertisers to use the Internet to market products and services on the Web. Then there were those who provided false information on the Internet, some doing so by mistake or by accident, but others deliberately floating misinformation for political purposes (think Putin, Trump and others). There are those who have become very wealthy and powerful people because of the Internet, and they know by controlling it, they may control us. If you think this isn't potentially serious, it is VERY serious, and with the likelihood that abortion will become illegal in several parts of the U.S., there is also "talk," right now just talk, about using people's internet records to track them down for abortion violations. If that happens, everything will be on the table, and control of all of us will be a fact, not a theory. (Note: To be clear, Mark Zuckerberg is not the only tech person involved in all of this, but his success has made him one of the best known, if not THE best known tech person, so I use his name here, fairly or unfairly, and I have no sympathy for him anyway.) 

The episode opens with the Skipper looking and calling for Gilligan, who is getting ready to build a birdhouse for a family of birds nesting in a tree. When the Skipper gets to Gilligan, Gilligan says, "The Professor's checking the lobster traps," and then, "I'm building a birdhouse." The astonished Skipper tells Gilligan he answered his questions before he could ask them, but Gilligan says "I can't read your mind," but the Skipper replies, "Well then how can you tell what I'm thinking?" Now even Gilligan looks astonished. The Skipper tests Gilligan again, and Gilligan reads his mind; so, the Skipper takes Gilligan to the others and tells them Gilligan can read minds, but the Professor says it's "a scientific impossibility." The Skipper has Gilligan read his mind again, and then the Professor gives it a try, and sure enough, Gilligan reads his mind too, then Mary Ann, then Ginger, then Mr. Howell. Now the question is, how does Gilligan do it? This is a question that keeps the Howells taking turns pacing back and forth, complete with an alarm clock to signal that it's the other spouse's turn to begin pacing. Mrs. Howell suggests it could be something in the food Gilligan eats; so, Mr. Howell decides he will eat the same things Gilligan eats. Gilligan is skinny, but Mr. Howell finds out that Gilligan eats a lot, so much, that when Mr. Howell eats the same, he unsteadily goes back to his hut and lies down on the bed, only to be told by Mrs. Howell that he has to get up, because it's time for dinner. hahaha 

 

Ginger puts on the psychologist outfit and begins to ask Gilligan about his childhood and his parents. Gilligan at times answers before she can ask the questions, as he all the while munches on some seeds he has with him. He offers Ginger a couple of the seeds, and she suddenly answers a question Gilligan hadn't yet asked. She now realizes these are not regular sunflower seeds. Ginger and Gilligan go to the rest of the group with the news about the seeds and the Professor tests Gilligan's mind reading powers again, as Gilligan quotes back a complicated scientific formula the Professor was thinking about. The Skipper decides to get Gilligan back to their hut so that he can try to find out the location of the bush with the seeds for himself, but Gilligan is too tired and he keeps falling asleep. Mr. Howell later sneaks into the hut and tries to make a deal with the half asleep Gilligan, where the two split things 70 to 30, and to which the greedy Mr. Howell says he won't let Gilligan take anything less than 30%. hahaha  After Mr. Howell, Ginger makes a sexy appeal too, but Gilligan begins snoring. The next morning the castaways are complaining how Gilligan has disappeared without telling them, but he comes back with bags of seeds for all of them, and they mob him. Now the real problems begin, as the little group finds out that reading the minds of others gives no privacy, and that people have thoughts that are not always noble, but they're just thoughts, not always put into action.

 

Mrs. Howell reads her husband's mind and she finds that he wants to steal her seeds. The Skipper and Gilligan are working on one of the huts, when the always clumsy Gilligan causes an accident with the Skipper, who then reads Gilligan's thought that it wouldn't have happened if the Skipper weren't so fat. Ginger and Mary Ann think bad thoughts at one another, although we don't know what it's all about, except that Mary Ann says she is glad Ginger could read her mind, because she's "too much of a lady to say those things." Gilligan goes to talk with the Professor just as Mr. Howell stomps off from an argument with his wife. Gilligan and the Professor talk about all the bad feelings between the castaways now, and the Professor even notes that these have been the most serious disagreements they've had since being shipwrecked. Gilligan says, "I thought we'd all get along really well if we could read each other's minds," and the Professor agrees, adding, "I thought these seeds might even help world peace," but he stops when he reads Gilligan's thought that this is "a stupid idea." The insulted Professor now stomps off too. Later, Gilligan hears and observes the other six castaways arguing among themselves even further, but they begin to run out of seeds. They decide to try to find the bush, but when they set out to find it, Gilligan has already gone there and sets fire to the seed bush. The Skipper, Mr. Howell and the Professor see Gilligan and the fire and they go to him. He tells them he is burning the bush and all of the remaining seeds. Gilligan tells them they probably think it's another dumb thing he has done, but that before the mind reading seeds, they never fought and argued like they have been doing, and that maybe without the seeds, they can all be friends again. While initially irritated by Gilligan's action, they now see the wisdom in what Gilligan has done, and they are no longer angry. With things back to normal, the Skipper tells Gilligan a series of things he has for Gilligan to do before he can go fishing, and the list is extensive. Gilligan asks the Skipper, "Do you know what I think?" The Skipper answers, "No," to which Gilligan replies, "That's good." hahaha   

 

 

 Photo is from the Turner Home Entertainment/Warner Brothers' Complete Second Season DVD Set 

WORD HISTORY:

Nautical-This adjective is related to "navy," a word of Latin derivation borrowed by English from Latin-based French, and and to "navigation," another Latin word either borrowed from that language, with French reinforcement, or the other way around.^ It is also distantly related, through Indo European, to a word no longer in English; that is, Old English "nowend," which meant "sailor," and which was from the Germanic roots of English. "Nautical" goes back to Indo European "neh/nah," which meant "boat," and this gave transliterated Ancient Greek "naus," meaning "ship," which spawned Greek "nautes," meaning "sailor." This produced the Greek adjective "nautikos," meaning "(having to do with) seafaring or naval matters," and Latin borrowed the word from Greek as "nauticus," with the same general meaning. French took the word from Latin as "nautique," and English borrowed the word as "nautical" in the mid 1500s, with the meaning "having to do with ships, seafaring or sailors." The "-al" ending was taken from French or Latin (see note below), and its origin is uncertain, although it "may" have been taken by Latin from Etruscan, a mystery language, "possibly" related to some languages of the Aegean Sea area, including "Minoan." In ancient times, Etruscan was spoken in a fairly large part of what is now Italy, but it eventually died out when Latin came to the area, although some of its words were borrowed into Latin.

^ As I've noted here on occasion, French is a Latin-based language with some Germanic influences. Back hundreds of years ago when English was more commonly borrowing Latin-derived words, many scholars knew Latin, but they also often knew French; thus, they were familiar with many of the words being borrowed, but it's sometimes difficult to tell which language a particular word was borrowed from, and "navigation" is one of those words, although both languages undoubtedly played some role in the word coming into English.