A Forced Rescue

Can't we help those poor people? There must be something we can do. My daddy has a boat...

--probable excerpt from some little kid's letter to NBC

THEY DIDN'T REALLY have to be rescued. Why would they want to be? Can you imagine being on a lush tropical island with Ginger and Mary Ann? Sunshine and hammocks, golf clubs and coconut cream pie.....Sure, they had to deal with headhunters once in a while, but really, don't we all?

At least they could have come back in style.

We all wanted it to be good. Gilligan's Island was the archetypal stupid situation comedy, but think of all the hours we spent with it. How many of you sharpened your critical faculties arguing about why those rich Howells would take all their money and most of their wardrobes on a three-hour cruise, or what they were even doing on that dinky boat in the first place, if they're so rich and probably have a yacht? And where did that record player come from? Not to mention the records....

Perhaps these questions still plague you.

How many of us went through puberty with Mary Ann on our minds? And how many of us were parked in front of our T.V.s, waiting for that fascist howler CHiPs to end, wondering what our favorite characters would look like after all these years, and hoping that Sherwood Schwartz and company had taken the time and money to do this thing right, to make the ending of Gilligan's Island. Well, you can't go home again, and besides--what kind of first name is Sherwood?

Horrible. You thought the writing on the series was bad.... They all looked pretty much the same, except for (Professor) Russell Johnson, who looked positively ravaged. Mary Ann looks exactly the same, thank God. Ginger didn't look the same, but that might be because she was played by a different actress. (What else has Tina Louise got to do with her time?) It began with Gilligan snoring so loud that the Skipper couldn't sleep. Then this plastic thing dropped a gold disc into the lagoon (it was supposed to be a satellite, but the special effects didn't exactly rival Star Wars). Then there was a tidal wave (I'm leaving things out, but it doesn't really matter). They floated out to sea in their hut and a helicopter spotted them.

THE APPROACH seemed more consciously campy, and the actors really forced it (especially Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, better known as the Howells). There was one good line--Ginger said the tidal wave sounded like a "permanent wave"--but I don't remember the old show having a lot of puns, either. The original was so infantile that at times it seemed to belong to a different universe, like an Ionesco play; on reflection one could almost call some of it "inspired." But Rescue was so forced that it just got boring, which is what the old show never was.

Last Saturday was Part One, and part Two couldn't be worse, no matter how hard they try. It might be nice to see the house of Thurston Howell III ('30), and I'd like to see Gilligan marry Mary Ann. Maybe they'll dump society and go back to the island, but that would be too inspired.

Even if it all turns out brilliantly next week, it won't be the same. They'll still look like actors in funny clothes forcing it, pretending they're Gilligan, the Skipper, and the rest. Gilligan's Island is a legend, and it's so much a part of our collective unconscious that any tinkering makes us wince. Like it or not, Gilligan's Island shaped our lives, and they can't pass off this withered piece of camp as the real thing.

Fools.