At what point do you kill Gilligan?

He also found the grapefruit when the castaways were afraid they’d come down with scurvy. ISTR that whenever a vital plant or doodad was needed, Gilligan was always the one who found it on the other side of the island.

Why didn’t they move to that side?

I would never kill him, because I’m not an amoral monster. It’s that simple.

Huh? Gilligan was the Guinea pig for almost everything! Mammoth spider? Send Gilligan. Put out the volcano? Send Gilligan. Marry the native girl to not get killed by her family? Who else but Gilligan? Play Hamlet?

Without him, the rest are surely doomed. The Professor too. In terms of resource management, I’d start with Thurston and Lovey.

Even if you don’t have any benefits or good results from Gilligan - which others have pointed out- I don’t think you go directly to murder. Only after repeated attempts to curtail or prevent problems would you impose harsher methods. I.E. you have everyone travel with a buddy anywhere outside of their hut area. If things continue to be intolerable, confine Gilligan to his own hut with regular parole/free time.

Of course if you’re not in a realistic situation and are actually dealing with plot and choices from a higher level of reality (the meta) then you just work to survive and not to kill, because that will fail -if not backfire.

Courtesy of “SCTV”:

Another way to look at it is that others gave Gilligan tasks that he wasn’t up to. Aren’t the people supervising Gilligan equally to blame. He was an enthusiastic puppy of a person, but he could have contributed more than he consumed. Someone who won’t take orders, or stay in their lane, AND causes problems, is more of a malice person.

In the original song, the Professor and Mary Ann weren’t even named. They were “and the rest” after “the movie star”.

Note–from what I recall, in the first Season,everybody screwed up the rescue/escape, at least once, including the Professor.
I do not recall Gilligan screwing up the rescue in the first (black and white) season, at all.

This may be one of those things that “everybody knows”, that simply isn’t so.

Like Tokyo Rose being only one woman. Not true.

Like Timmy trapped in the well.

The Professor was writing a book called Fun with Ferns. If he was a botany professor, then perhaps he could be forgiven for not knowing how to repair a boat.

True. But even that’s not the original song. In the original song, Gilligan, The Skipper, Thurston, and “Lovey” were mentioned. Ginger, The Professor, and Bunny were not mentioned.

Being a 60s TV character, the Professor’s degree was in SCIENCE! Any scientific fact, in any field, the Professor knew it. That’s how science worked in those days.

Had no idea. Good thing they didn’t stick with the real original.

For inscrutable reasons the pilot episode was chopped up into a prelude to “Two Men on a Raft” and then a Christmas episode where their first days on the island were told in flashback. In a flashback we see Gilligan drop an armload of firewood on the transmitter they had managed to repair.

I recall the pilot episode as having a different theme song, and different cast members for the Professor, Mary Ann and Ginger, who were both secretaries as I remember.

Hey, watch it, that’s a plural! He had a B.A. from USC, a B.S. from UCLA, an M.A. from SMU, and he received his Ph.D from TCU at the age of 25!

ETA: it’s actually even more impressive:

Dr. Hinkley, a 35 year old high school Professor, holds 6 degrees in the fields of chemistry, botany, biology and geography. He has a B.A from USC, a B.S. from UCLA, an M.A. from SMU, and received his Ph.D from TCU at the age of 25. He also holds a master’s degree in psychology, and can speak fluent Marubi, Papuan, and Katubi, to name a few.

There is also Herb from WKRP, Matthew (Andy Dick) from NewsRadio, Kramer, and many more, people that are so very annoying and totally inept and useless, that IRL they’d be dead or fired. or eaten.

Gilligan served some sort of purpose.

Indeed, there was an episode in which, after reviewing the station’s lackluster ratings, program director Andy Travis says that he should have simply fired Herb and Les right at the beginning.

Les, apparently, does the Hog, etc news very very well. So, he has one good skill.
Keep Les for a morning Hog report. fire Herb.