It didn’t preach that, though, any more than The Munsters or The Beverly Hillbillies did. These shows all worked off the same ideas:
The main characters genuinely don’t see themselves as different from everybody else.
They inexplicably don’t seem to notice how people react to them or consistently misinterpret it.
The Addamses (and The Munsters and the Clampetts) weren’t choosing to be different. It would never even occur to The Addamses and Munsters that they weren’t typical families (though Granny and Jed did recognize differences between themselves and city folk). They weren’t being themselves in the face of societal criticism: because of script-writer induced clulessness and amnsesia, they never realized there even was any criticism.
Even in the 90’s movies, The Addamses didn’t seem to grok that people like their neighbor the judge openly and actively hated them.
GI was lucky enough to get some of the best music directors working at that time: Gerald Fried, John Williams(the John Williams), Morton Stevens, Herschel Burke Gilbert.
Some who also did the music for other shows such Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, Iron Horse, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Man Who Never Was, Burke’s Law, Perry Mason, The Wild Wild West.
I wanted to mention the music. Besides the iconic theme song, GI made great use of overbearing musical cues to further punctuate the mood. Here’s some examples.
Gilligan’s Island is the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese of TV shows.
It is exactly what it intends to be, and never aspires or pretends to be otherwise. Nobody can argue that it is the highest-quality example of its genre, but it is nonetheless a guilty pleasure for many, and can in fact be quite enjoyable if consumed in moderation and with the proper expectations.
I agree, and I think the reason for this is that they Addamses didn’t hate anyone. They interpreted all animosity as friendship.
It’s telling, by the way, that in the second movie, written by Paul Rudnick, the nerdy Jewish kid is the one who clicks with the Addams kids. An interesting take on it.
I know I wasn’t imaging the Gabor thing; at least she tried to help get them rescued. You’re right about the move think; it wouldn’t been much funnier if it was screened at Cannes and the media was baffled by their appearance.
I just assumed they were using the Minnow as a ferry to another island and didn’t intended to get off at same dock they left at.
Inspired by this thread, I’ve been watching the third season on DVD. And I saw something that really gave me pause. (Yes, I’m serious.)
Background: Bob Denver was drafted when he’d only just started working on Dobie Gillis. He was written out of the show by means of Maynard getting drafted. They filmed the episode, then Denver went off to the real draft board, where they said, “What’s this neck injury? 4F, go home.” And of course, he got written back into the show. That would have been in 1959.
Skip ahead to 1967 and one of the last episodes of Gilligan. The castaways have made plates and other utensils out of plasticine, before finding out that it was plastic explosive. They bury everything, but a monkey digs it all up and goes up to the roof of one of the huts. So he’s hurling explosives into the jungle. Everyone gets out of bed, and sitcom logic prevents them from abandoning the area. They all huddle behind a rock, while the monkey is up on the roof, like a sniper. Then Gilligan says “I’ve got to stop him,” and walks forward into what is effectively mortar fire. In the end, no one is killed or injured, not even the monkey, but the hut is a smoldering wreck in the jungle.
It just clicked with me, as it never would have when I was a kid. If Denver had been 1A, it’s not impossible that he might have been sent to Vietnam when the time came. Even apart from that, though, for one moment Gilligan was representing thousands of guys his age and younger who had to walk into enemy fire. And now I wonder if it may have been deliberate. Maybe someone on the writing staff made a connection between the jungle-island setting of GI and what s/he was seeing on the news every night. I wouldn’t call it making a statement, but it really hit home for me what era this was happening in.
No, it doesn’t end like that. There was an episode where a space capsule blew up in the lagoon, and another where a briefcase blew up in the lagoon. They were pretty big on explosions that season! But the scene I described did not have the explosions as a punchline. And it really did work as an allegory, IMO anyway.
I think the punchline of the plastic explosive ep is that a plate thrown is just a regular old plate and MaryAnn bitches about her plates being broken.
Part of it is… some of the jokes seem really played out, but remember we’re watching them 50 years later.
So “I’m not going to that dance. Nope, no way. You can’t make me go to that dance.” wipe to next scene, sure enough guy is at the dance with a “what can ya do?” smirk on his face is tired and predictable now, but at least some of it was still cute when it first aired.
It’s kind of like watching Die Hard. Action movie cliches abound in that… but there’s a bunch that continued to show up in the following years because they worked in Die Hard.
That being said, there’s SOOO many idiotic things about Gilligan’s Island that every episode seemed to have a dozen “Yeah, buts”. Not the least of which — why the hell did the Howells apparently bring their money with them on what was supposed to be a 3 hour tour?
