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Farmer Al Falfa is back on the farm and Felix is the farm cat. Things go badly for the farm when Felix starts hanging out with the hens to the point that they stop laying eggs and instead dance to jazz music Felix is playing all day long for 3 weeks. There is a funny joke about the hens becoming "sophisticated" and not laying eggs anymore, it being "old fashioned", an obvious reference to then current 1923 women's rights and social movements. What makes this memorable for me is that it gets crazy violent with Felix and Farmer Al Falfa going one on one in an escalating death match with only one survivor. Rumor has it that Farmer Al Falfa had refused to do the closing scene because it was past his character's limit of violence but when the studio head intervened, Farmer Al Falfa relented. This may have been his acting downfall. Killing such a beloved character as a cat resulted in him getting less and less acting roles. Just kidding, its a dark ending though for a 1923 cartoon and the main reason why I'm giving this an 8! It's kind of a forbidden video, IMO. This may be the first cartoon with a dig your own grave scene but it wasn't the last. Check out Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in The Old Grey Hare from the 1940s, that's probably the best version of that skit.

Before I had cable TV and online media to watch, there was 1970s TV after school on broadcast TV channels. The line up I would watch daily included Get Smart, Star Trek, F Troop, The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple and of course Gilligan's Island! Being in middle school, I don't remember being amused by any of the comedy shows (except The Brady Bunch), but rather would be interested in the sub plots. I didn't want Max and 99 to be killed, and I didn't want the castaways to stay marooned on the island. I wrote a review on the Gilligan's Isle episode called Gilligan's Living Doll. That one has the space robot land on the island and Gilligan botches it up. I was in the 4th grade and thought for SURE they were going to be rescued, lol. I almost broke the 19" "portable" TV I was watching I was so upset at the ending. Even though this episode originally aired before that one, I watched it in reverse order seeing this after the robot one. This was a coming of age moment for me because my childish brain started to figure out they would never by rescued. Although admittingly, as a teen, when I watched the Gilligan's Island TV movie, I thought they were going to be rescued then too, lol. If you are an older kid or an adult watching this for the first time it's probably not a 10, but for me, having the memories of when I was 10 years old and still retaining those memories 50 years later, it rates a nostalgic 10. As the Skipper always says, "GILLIGAN"!

There are a few Gilligan's Island episodes that I can clearly remember and this is perhaps the one I remember the most. Flashback, I am in the 4th grade or so in the 1970s, watching GI on TV right after school. Like Get Smart, it was a comedy that also had an adventure sub plot in it and as a kid I didn't really laugh at either show but would be worried about Max and 99 getting killed and the Castaways getting off the island. In my childish mind I had full suspension of belief going on, and I thought in every episode the Castaways would get off the island! And of all the episodes I would watch, the robot one ending was the one that almost made me smash the TV set (a 19" B/W on a rolling stand, lol). I was angry the rest of the whole day and probably couldn't sleep thinking of how Gilligan messed it up. The next closest episode to make me that angry that they didn't escape and it was Gilligan's fault was the Space Probe episode. By the time I watched that one I finally put two and two together and for me the show would never be the same again. I was finally on to the gag that they were (spoiler alert) never going to escape, lol. Actually, later I thought they were going to escape in the TV movie too and I was a older teen by then, lol. I was looking for something light to watch at bedtime and thought I'd watch this with my wife 50 years after watching GI after school. It was pleasant comfort food for my brain, and my wife never watched it growing up so it was new for her. Same show, I remembered almost everything. Imagine holding those memories in your brain when you could have been learning something, lol. 10 of 10 for something I loved so much as a kid that I even got angry at Gilligan, I was completely taken in.