Buffy vs. Gilligan's Island

Cafe Society
1

After this evening’s episode I note these differences:

In favor of Buffy:

  1. Good photography, good, moody lighting.
  2. Plots with unexpected twists.
  3. Characters with sympathetic, human motivations.

In favor of Gilligan’s Island:

  1. Characters, who while plastic, resemble people we’ve actually met somewhere.
  2. Lack of strident, artless 20 somethings unbelievably replaying their “lost” years as uneducated, inarticulate adolescents.
  3. Romantic ideals, for example from Ginger, that aren’t prompted by a sudden desire to bonk somebody because they’re cute, young, available and have just (seize the moment! woah!) said something clever, even though they’re utterly evil. Ginger’s always on the make, but with normal, boring people. That’s believable. Not admirable, but believable.

Gilligan’s Island, hands down.

2

Oh, yeah? Did Gilligan’s Island ever generate a defence policy?

And the Reagan administration doesn’t count.

3

Interior. Well-furnished hut. Night.

“Hiya, Skipper!”

“Hey, little buddy! I was just about to go bring these coconuts to the Professor, he said something about needing them for a radio. Sure is dark out there tonight, though.”

“Sure is. Hey, there’s Mary Ann and Ginger!”

“Hey, you’re right! Evening, ladies!”

Ginger and Mary Ann enter the hut. Ginger is looking her seductive, sultry best, and oddly, so is Mary Ann. Her gingham dress is open down to her waist, and she’s obviously wearing nothing underneath it.

“Evening boys.”

“Hi, Ginger! Hi, Mary Ann! Hey, you lost a button or something. Not that I was looking. But there used to be a button there, I think…”

“Oh, Gilligan, you’re right! Come over here and help me look for it. Right over… here…”

“Uh, I was just going to take these coconuts to the Professor…”

“The Professor won’t be needing his coconuts anymore, Skipper.”

Cut to Exterior. Grass hut. Night.

Loud sounds of chomping are heard, followed by Gilligan and the Skipper screaming.

Fade.

4

Now THAT’S a show I would watch!

5

Why has there not been a porno version of GI? The set-up is soooooo perfect! :smiley:

6

Gilligan (dreaming): “Skipper, you’re expanding…at this pace you’re going to bloat out…and up…”

Skipper (awake): “Gilligan…you need…to stop…”

Gilligan (still dreaming): “Skipper, it doesn’t have to be this way. You… you can…stop…”

Skipper (holding his head in his hands): “Ok, Gilligan. I can make it all go away.”

Ginger (entering hut from stage right): “You poor bastard, your suffering has to end…”

She overturns Gilligan’s hammock, dumping him on the ground, then vanishes through the door, leaving only her bra as a subtle clue as to her identity…

7

So which show, in your estimation, evidenced the greatest disrespect for the laws of physics?

Radios from coconuts or vampires from thin air?

8

A fascinating question to which scientists have devoted pain-staking and soul-searching research.

Coconuts themselves are among the least-reputable of tree seeds. Their sinister cultist use in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is but the tip of the tropical iceberg. Few people outside the F.B.I. knew that the Marx brothers were avid communists, but reflexively naming a movie Coconuts left them exposed. The perfidy of the coconut bearers knows no limitations.

Early radios in the South Pacific were made from coconuts, but there’s some dispute whether Munda Ibuwoo living on the “Island Like a Hat” 20 miles NNW of Guanangapi predated Marconi’s invention by 150 years. Unfortunately, no one on that island writes, so the discovery went unnoticed.

Yet modern day attempts to receive Prarie Home Companion on coconuts, even with their husks, has, even advocates admit, dismally failed. So The Professor’s use of them on Gilligan’s Island indicates a serious lapse in judgment, or schizophrenia. As the Marx brothers might have noted in Duck Soup, the man’s a quack.

Vampires, so often pains-taking themselves, are another case, because they don’t actually exist, but people want them to, sort of. There’s enormous social pressure on the hypothetical undead to appear in gloomy, dark settings; what popular fiction doesn’t represent, is that their favorite ambush is setting on couples in midst of sex. This isn’t disrespectful of physics so much as physical laws. Vampires are generally thin, so it stands to reason they would appear from thin air.

There’s enough disrespect to be distributed equally.

Yrs. truly,
partly

9

Exterior. Sea shore. Night.

The breaking waves are barely visible as we FADE IN. Somewhere behind the camera, a weak moon is shining on the shore, and gradually we are able to make out a large shape just off the beach. There are dark shambling figures, coming towards the shore from what appears to be a small ship, wrecked on the rocks. Just as we’re about to be able to make out the features of the small group of figures, we…

FADE OUT

Interior. The Magic Box. Night.

Xander: Evil. Coming to Sunnydale. Tonight. Didn’t we just have evil last night?

Willow: No, that was painful awkwardness, with a hint of angst.

Xander: Ah. Buffy, why can’t you ever have dreams about fluffy clouds, and unicorns, and kitties and bunnies…

Anya: Hey! That was just mean!

Buffy: Well, do you want to get attacked by fluffy clouds and unicorns?

Giles: If there is evil coming, I suppose we must do something about it. Can you be any more specific about the evil? Is it in corporeal form, or just a vague haze of evil?

Willow: Like pollution! …well, pollution is evil.

Xander: And we’re back to being attacked by fluffy clouds.

The DOOR BELL chimes. The Scooby gang turns to look at the dark figures entering the shop.

They are a strange, motley bunch, ranging from rangy and geeky to portly and geeky. Their faces are all distorted into the vampire “game face”. They are, however, oddly attractive, in a repulsive way. They move with deliberation, grace, and menace.

Skipper: We were wondering if you folks could spare a few pints of blood.

Buffy: Looks like you’ve had plenty already, chubbo. What are you supposed to be, the Damnation Army?

Gilligan: Ha ha ha, hey Skipper, that was a good one.

Skipper: Ha ha ha. Very funny, little buddy. So are you going to stand there, or are you going to kill somebody?

Gilligan: Oh, yeah. One massacre, coming right up!

Buffy: You got that right.

The group of castaways approaches the gang menacingly. The gang quickly prepares themselves with whatever weapons, books and fierce poses come to hand.

Lovie: Thurston, they don’t look scared. Why aren’t they frightened?

Thurston: They’re just not very bright, Lovie. Killing will be good for them.

Buffy: You have no idea…

The groups meet, and melee ensues. Flashing fists, headbutts, and kicks dominate the screen for a while.
The Professor and Giles square off, in classic boxing poses.

Professor: I know fifteen ways to extract one of your major organs in less than two seconds. You may as well give up now.

Giles blocks a roundhouse punch, and slams the Professor into a bookcase face-first. Books scatter about them.

Giles: I’d prefer my organs where they are, thank you.
Willow, vailantly refraining from using magic, gets into a frenetic slapfight with Mary Ann, valiantly refusing to use her sex appeal.
Anya is valiantly defending herself and her cash register against Thurston and Lovie Howell.

Anya: What do you people want from me?

Thurston: Money and blood, my dear. Or blood and money. What do you think, Lovie?

Lovie: I want to know who does her hair first.

Anya: Xander!
Xander is locked in a vicious fight to the death with Gilligan.

Gilligan: Skipper! He’s trying to hit me!

Xander: And succeeding, if I may say so…

Skipper: I’m coming little buddy!

Skipper barrels into Xander, knocking him through the table.

Gilligan: Oh, boy, skipper! Can I have him when you’re done?
The action seems to freeze in the melee surrounding them as Buffy and Ginger face each other. They circle each other warily.

Buffy: That’s a nice look for you. Retro-ho.

Ginger: It worked for me in Hollywood.

Buffy: You’re through in the business, vampy. All they have to say is Exterior, Day, and you’re dust.

Ginger: I’ll still look better than you.

Buffy: Yeah, men love dust.

Back at the cash register, Anya has just smacked Lovie across the face with the cash register. Thurston kneels by her prone form.

Thurston: Lovie? Speak to me, Lovie. No time to be lying down, we have people to eat.

Thurston freezes as a stake emerges from his chest, then, with a look of surprise, disintegrates. Anya is standing behind him, jagged table leg in hand.

Anya: I love it when they do that.

Lovie: Thurston? Where are you? Why am I all dusty?

Anya stakes her next.

Xander, dazed, looks up from the wreckage of the table to see the Skipper and Gilligan looming over him.

Skipper: Okay, little buddy, when I say go, grab him!

Gilligan: Okay, when you say go.

Skipper: All right, now!

Gilligan doesn’t move. Halfway to Xander, the Skipper hesitates.

Skipper: I said go.

Gilligan: No you didn’t. I would have noticed.

Skipper: Oh, all right. Go!

Gilligan and the Skipper go to dive on Xander, who is no longer there. They look at each other, look around, and then spot Xander standing by a wall, large sword in hand.

Xander: Go.
Willow and Mary Ann have gotten into the hair-pulling stage.

Mary Ann: Ow! That smarts!

Willow: Yeah, I know. Ow!

Mary Ann: Well, let’s stop doing it!

Willow: Oh. Okay.

They let go of each other’s hair, pause a moment, and start beating the crap out of each other.
The Professor is lying face down, and Giles is on his back. Giles has a wire wrapped around the Professor’s neck, and is hanging on as the Professor tries to get free.

Professor: I don’t understand. By any analysis, my superhuman speed and strenght should make me nearly invincible.

Giles: And my charming manner should make me irresistible. Ah, well.

Giles give the wire he’s holding a mighty pull, and decapitates the Professor, who explodes into dust beneath him.

We cut back to the Buffy/Ginger fight, and the whole scene goes into slow motion. The camera spins slowly about the two fighting beauties, doing their best to kill each other and look sexy while doing it. In the background, we can see Xander behead the undead Skipper suddenly, and the look of shocked grief on Gilligan’s face. Willow finds another convenient shard of table, grabs Mary Ann by the arm, spins Mary Ann around to face her, and stakes her. Giles goes to Anya, and then both of them run to help Xander against a newly-enraged Gilligan.

Still in slow motion, Buffy unleashes a flurry of moves which leave her with a stake in hand, poised above Ginger. Ginger is lying amid the rubble on the floor of the magic shop, in a classic “fear” pose, hands held out, mouth open. In an instant, she seems to reconsider, and her pose becomes a casual lounge, her face looks human again, and she flashes a full power movie-star smile.

Buffy stakes her.
The scene returns to normal time, as the whole gang surrounds Gilligan, who gradually stops fighting. He looks around at them.

Gilligan: What’d we ever do to you? Besides trying to eat you, I mean.

Xander: Well, for starters, you offended even my fashion sense.

Willow: And pulled my hair. I hate that.

Gilligan leaps awkwardly for the door, forces his way past Anya, and pauses in the doorway.

Gilligan: You haven’t heard the last of me!

He vanishes into the night, to the tinkling of the doorbell.

Giles: Actually, I’m pretty sure we have, for some reason.

Buffy: So, who’s hungry?

Willow: Oh, I am!

The gang starts heading for the door, away from the camera, their voices fading as we hear:

Buffy: Has anybody been down to that tiki room restaurant near the school?

Willow: Oh, the one with the drinks with the little umbrellas? I love those. They’re very handy, if it’s raining and you’re really small.

Xander: Maybe something with pineapple…

Roll credits.

10

Cool post, MrVisible.

But … why is this thread in the Pit, and not Cafe Society?

11

I will never be able to look at Mary Ann the same way again…:eek: :eek: :eek:

12

Is anyone else seeing a contradiction here?

13

I’m thuroughly confused. Here I was thinking this would be some rant at least, but it’s just something that lost it’s way to Cafe.

And while Gilligan’s Island was mildly amusing when I was 10, I fail to see how can in any way compare - or contrast - to Buffy.

As an afterthought, I’m giddy with hilarity as the idea comes to me - Gilligan’s Island is the place Spike had to go at the end of last season. Good lord, the idea of him trying to deal with those people is hysterical.

14

MrVisible, you need to post that bit to a Buffy fanfic page. It is a riot.

15

Honestly, I don’t. Not many real people will suddenly fall for somebody because they make a couple snappy retorts. In real life it’s more likely to draw a smile, disinterest, or even scorn. I was highlighting is that many of Buffy relationships seem to be based on just barely concealed and CONSTANT sexuality. That was nothing like my high school, and believe me, we were not restrained in the 1960s in Berkeley. I understand that there are places that might be different (can you say “L.A.”?) That doesn’t make the behavior any less quasi-psychotic. I think Buffy’s borderline. I would MAKE SURE I didn’t talk with her at a party.

The show comes close to making me physically ill, and I confess I haven’t quite figured out why. Is it teens making flippant, catty, pointless, bathetic, insensitive comments while threatening to kill one another? It is the strobe effect cuts, whose purpose is to thrill by impact, rather than art? Music that sounds like it was created by somebody on speed and downers at once? Is it the prevalence of random dialog? I was hoping someone else had some insights.

As for the thread’s forum placement, I had a nice email today from MrVisible suggesting it should be moved to Cafe Society. I’m game, moderators.

16

Stands up and cheers for MrVisible’s post

17

Quoth MrVisible:

I’m not sure that’s possible… I rather got the impression that it was always on full-tilt.

And just for the record, Professor Hinkley never made a radio out of coconuts. The radio receiver they had was the one from the boat, and it was actually the Skipper who made the radio transmitter, from the receiver (which is perfectly possible, if you know how). Admittedly, coconuts were involved: It was a blow to the head (by a coconut) which caused the Skipper to remember his Navy training on the subject, and a subsequent blow which caused him to forget it again, after Gilligan broke the transmitter.

I don’t think that the Professor ever exactly brokethe laws of physics… Most of the things he did were possible, for someone with the requisite knowledge, from materials which could conceiveably be found on a tropical island. What stretches credibility was that all of the materials were available on the island, and that he had all of the requisite knowledge (although he was a Scoutmaster, which goes a long way).

18

I’d like to thank everyone who heaped praise upon my post above; it was really fun to write. I think. I was in a strange delusional state when it happened, brought on by hundred-degree temps, high humidity, and too many chocolate chip cookies.

I may look around for a fanfic site that might appreciate it. Any suggestions?

Ummm… huh?

I think the Professor and the laws of physics had a nodding acquaintance, but mostly they just couldn’t stand each other, they were just getting along so as not to upset everybody else. Here’s a list of some of the Professor’s inventions; surely some of them venture out of the realm of the improbable, and go gleefully hiking off into the vast and sparkly terrain of the completely im-fricking-possible:
[ul]
[li]A bamboo lie detector [/li][li]Jet-pack fuel[/li][li]Keptibora-berry extract to remedy Gilligan’s double vision[/li][li]Geiger counter[/li][/ul]

This all makes sense, of course, in the context of a show where a lightning strike could turn Gilligan invisible, instead of parbroiled, and where a bamboo car toodles about the island.

And that would be the one element that Buffy and GI have in common, in my opinion: they both exist in a world which doesn’t obey the laws of reality, but has its own internal, consistent logic. Vampires are attracted to a Hellmouth in Sunnydale::Guest stars flock to the South Seas to get to Gilligan’s Island.

Aside from that, the difference in the shows is immense. I happen to think that there’s more good writing in a paragraph of Buffy dialog than in a whole season of Gilligan’s Island, but there is, of course, no accounting for taste.

19

Constant? In the show’s six year run, Buffy has had sex with precisely four people, two of them in the course of a serious relationship. And she’s getting at least twice as much as anybody else on the show: Xander had sex with Faith and Anya, Willow with Oz and Tara, Giles with that black English woman, and she’s not even a regular character. How is this constant? How does this make up the “majority” of the relationships on the show, especially considering that the four main characters (Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles) have never had sex with each other, and have relationships with each other that are entirely non-sexual (a few unconsumated high-school crushes aside, and those all ended back in season three, if not earlier)

Further, I wouldn’t say that the snappy retorts are what makes these character fall for each other, or Xander would be getting more tail than Hugh Hefner and Dr. J combined. As for those sort of remarks being more likely to generate “a smile, disinterest, or even scorn” in real life, that’s pretty much what they generate on the show, too. The other characters rarely react to each other’s jokes, unless it’s to be chastise Xander for a particularly inappropriate remark. They almost never laugh or even crack a smile, which, judging by my own experiences as a RL smart-ass, is pretty accurate. Of course, I’m seldom trying to kill someone while I’m cracking wise, but then, I don’t meet many living dead in my day to day life.

'Scuse me for the cut ‘n’ post, but it’s the easiest way to deal with this next part:

Not sure what your complaint here is. Is it the violence that offends you, or the poor quality of the dialogue while they try and do it? Or is it the combination of the two that bothers you? How would you rather they handled it?

Patently untrue. Aside from scene changes, the cinematography in Buffy is pretty traditional. They don’t use a lot of jerky jump-cuts or MTV-style shaky-cams. They’re also not afraid of using a long take when the story calls for it, or the occasional lingering close-up. As an aside, I think you’re creating a false dichotomy between “art” and “impact.” Art is all about impact.

Funny, considering that Buffy has been praised as a show case for up and coming new artists. You realize that, apart from the opening credits, no two episodes of Buffy have the same music? (the score is usually by the same guy, the unfortunatly named Thomas Wanker) Either the fifty or so different artists who’s work has been heard on this show all sound like they’re on speed and downers at the same time, or you haven’t really been paying much attention.

I don’t know what you mean by “random dialog.”

Anyway, to sum up, you have an interesting take on Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, and some strong opinions on it. That your opinions do not appear to be based on ever having actually watched an episode of the show in question only slightly detracts from their validity.

20

I was going to say that I’d only managed to watch one show all the way through, but then I realized I’d checked out Buffy on DVD at one point, convinced I couldn’t be giving it a fair viewing. I had been.

My lasting impression of Buffy may be more of the ads, and the titles, than of the show itself. That part is straight MTV.

The issue of sexuality is more an subjective impression, than counting sex acts, times may have changed, but underage sex is still as illegal as it was. The fact that they’re only “leading up to it” in other episodes, is sort of like saying the mafia doesn’t kill all the time. But the issue of “reasonable sexiness” is largely subjective, and I can’t think of a good way to resolve the discussion on this point, so I’ll just drop it.

I picked Gilligan’s Island for a couple reasons: It’s one of the weaker TV shows, but it’s still possible to be slightly amused at various moments. Ginger really believed all that stuff about her being a big star, something that annoyed the rest of the cast, but… she’s believable. Buffy’s a girl with fast reflexes, a good kick, and barely concealed lethal anger. The nearly uncontrollable anger seems real enough. To me, she’s not a believable hero, but a compelling villain.

I’d copy a hunk of Buffy dialog I found on a transcription site, and comment at length, but I don’t want to ruffle feathers, so I’ll just pick a few phrases I found looking over a script for 5 minutes.

“I think it’s pushed her too far into some kind of catatonia.”
“It doesn’t take a diploma to see that.”

Catatonia is a complex problem that has several, very different manifestations. This dialog is dumb, because a typical teenager wouldn’t know catatonia from the man-in-the-moon. Then the next character whips out a cute one-liner to the effect of “Everyone knows that.” Is this supposed to be a joke?

“I am so large with not knowing.”
(Really cool, altering normal word order. How clever you are.)

[/computer program on][ul]
I so am large with not knowing.
I am so not large with knowing.
I am not so large with knowing.
I am so large with knowing not.
I not am so large with knowing.
[/ul]
[/computer program off]

“She just can’t be brain dead.”
(Brain dead people can’t breath without a ventilator.)

“We should move her. Unless we shouldn’t.”
Ok, let me get this straight, you think she should be moved…why? You think you can walk her around until she gets rid of her hangover…I’m sorry…catatonia?

Now, did I reorganize the quoted lines, or not? Where did I leave dialog out?

A computer could produce 10 versions of this scene, mix the same lines, and they’d all play about the same. Now that’s great theater?