Gilligan's Island: The Complete First Season

"No phones, no lights, no motorcar/Not a single luxury/Like Robinson Crusoe/As primitive as can be." Well, not exactly. The "seven stranded castaways" aboard the S.S. Minnow (slyly named for former Federal Communications Committee head Newton "vast wasteland" Minow) were nothing if not resourceful (who brings luggage on a three-hour tour?). Despite critical barbs as sharp as a Maroobi spear, Gilligan's Island has proven to be as unsinkable as Molly Brown: the debut season was 1964's top-rated show, the expository theme song is one of television's most quoted, and the characters--the Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.), first mate Gilligan (Bob Denver), the millionaire (Jim Backus) and his wife (Natalie Schaefer), a movie star (Tina Louise) "and the rest" (Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells, as the Professor and Mary Ann)--are pop culture icons. Revisiting the first season is a not-guilty-at-all pleasure, as some sure and surprising hands piloted these inaugural episodes, including Ida Lupino, Jack Arnold (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), Christian Nyby (The Thing), and Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon). Nor were the castaways entirely alone, receiving memorable visits from the likes of Hans Conried as errant pilot Wrong Way Feldman, a young Kurt Russell as Jungle Boy, and Larry Storch as a Cagney-esque bank robber. But at the heart of the series was the no-man-is-an-island social microcosm that creator Sherwood Schwartz conceived as an antiwar parable (this courtesy of his optional commentary during the fabled unaired series pilot). In the Christmas episode "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk," Santa Claus himself drops in to lift the disheartened castaways' spirits. "You could have been enemies," he tells them, "instead of a family group who all learned to get along." This is the key to this series' enduring popularity. That, and the unending debate, of course: Ginger or Mary Ann? Recommended. (D. Liebenson)