Gilligan's Island - Typical Plots

Typical Plots

The shipwrecked castaways want to leave the remote island, and various opportunities present themselves. They typically fail owing to some bumbling error committed by Gilligan (with the exception of "The Big Gold Strike", where everyone except Gilligan is responsible for their failed escape). Sometimes this would result in his saving the others from some unforeseen flaw in their plan.

Recurring elements center on one of five primary themes. The first deals with life on the island. A running gag is the castaways' ability to fashion a vast array of useful objects from bamboo and other local material. Some are simple everyday things, while others are stretches of the imagination. Russell Johnson noted in his autobiography that the production crew enjoyed the challenge of building these props. Some bamboo items include framed huts with thatched grass sides and roofs, along with bamboo closets strong enough to withstand hurricane-force winds and rain; the communal dining table and chairs, pipes for Gilligan's hot water, a stethoscope, and a pedal-powered car. Naturally, despite their obvious skill and inventiveness, the castaways never quite manage to put together a functional raft out of bamboo (or repair the hole in their original ship), although in the television movie Rescue from Gilligan's Island they do end up tying their 3 huts together and using that as a raft for escape.

The second theme involves visitors to the "uncharted" island. One challenge to a viewer's suspension of disbelief is the frequency with which the castaways are visited by people who do nothing to assist them. Some have hidden motives for not assisting the castaways. Others are simply unable to help, incompetent, or are prevented from sending messages by Gilligan. Bob Denver, Jim Backus, and Tina Louise each had feature episodes in which look-alikes come to the island (who were, of course, played by themselves in dual roles). The island itself is also home to an unusual assortment of animal life, some native, some visiting.

The third recurring theme is the use of dream sequences in which one of the castaways "dreams" he or she is some character related to that week's storyline. All of the castaways would appear as other characters within the dream. In later interviews and memoirs, almost all of the actors stated that the dream episodes were among their personal favorites.

The fourth recurring theme is a piece of news arriving from the outside world that causes discord among the castaways; then a second piece of news arrives that states the first was incorrect. An exception to the latter part of this statement is the episode "The Postman Cometh", where the Gilligan and the Skipper hear over the radio that Mary Ann's boyfriend eloped and the three single men try to cheer her up by wooing her; Mary Ann actually lied about having a boyfriend, and she created a romance with "a real creep" so that the others would think she had someone waiting for her back home.

The fifth is the appearance or arrival of strange objects, like a WWII mine or a "Mars Rover" that the scientists back in the USA think is sending them pictures of Mars, and in one episode a meteorite.