Most of the reviews so far have damned "Gilligan's Island" with faint praise; most of the people have said that they either watched it as a kid (inferring that it wasn't meant for adults), or watch it only when nothing else is on.
Too bad. I pity them.
Too many people nowadays are trying to appear to be sophisticated and worldly; comparing the seven castaways with the Seven Deadly Sins, for example. "Gilligan's Island" was never meant to be fodder for college treatises or a locale from which to mine deeper, hidden meanings. It was a show that was meant to entertain the public....and for its brief three-year run, it did just that.
LET UP ON THE SHOW, ALREADY!! All you do is come off sounding like someone who, as my father used to say, wouldn't be satisfied if you had the moon with a fence around it. Just watch it and put the world on hold for a half-hour or more. Forget that you've got that test tomorrow, or the car needs to go into the shop, or the housework is piling up. So maybe it is/was far-fetched, and it had plot holes big enough to sail the "Queen Mary" through. You mean shows about a family of pop musicians ("The Partridge Family"), a genie ("I Dream of Jeannie"), a witch ("Bewitched"), a clan of hayseed multi-millionaires ("The Beverly Hillbillies") didn't stretch credibility beyond the breaking point either?
And remember another thing before you try to compare this to "Seinfeld", "Night Court", "Friends", or any other recent sitcom. "Gilligan's Island" managed to be humorous *without* falling back on sexual innuendoes a la "The Golden Girls", racial humor as heard in "All in the Family" or "The Jeffersons", or the foul, offensive language as heard in just about anything coming through my TV on the WB, Fox or UPN networks. Sorry, but if that is what is necessary for something to be "funny" today, I'll stay stuck in the '60s or '70s.
