Typically speaking, most sitcoms require a certain degree of suspension of disbelief, say a group of six friends that, despite having jobs, meet regularly at a coffee shop throughout the day, or how an aspiring actress can afford a large apartment next door to nerds, in Pasadena on a minimum-wage server job. And some shows, like Gilligan’s Island, require the audience to accept much more, like coconuts and bamboo being able to make functional machinery, coconut cream pies where the only ingredient that’s readily available to make a pie is the coconut itself, or not killing the one guy that screws up each and every hope of rescue and feasting on his bones. One element, though, is so ridiculous that it’s difficult to suspend any sort of disbelief: Why, for a three-hour tour, are there so many clothes and personal items available for the castaways to use?
It Was a Three-Hour Tour, Not a Three-Year Cruise, on ‘Gilligan’s Island’
Gilligan’s Island is about seven castaways stranded on an “uncharted desert isle” after a storm knocks their boat, the S.S. Minnow, onto its shores and their misadventures. The seven include the Minnow‘s captain, “The Skipper” (Alan Hale Jr.); millionaire Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus) and his wife Lovey (Natalie Schafer); movie star Ginger Grant (Tina Louise); “The Professor” Roy Hinkley (Russell Johnson), farm girl Mary Ann Summers (Dawn Wells); and the bumbling first mate, Gilligan (Bob Denver). As explained in the show’s iconic theme song, the crew and its five passengers were on a “three-hour tour” when the storm hit. Not months, not years, just three gosh-darn hours.
But every week, for three years (plus three made-for-TV specials), the characters are seen wearing different clothes. The only two never seen in different clothes are the Skipper and Gilligan, and they, in theory, would be the only ones that would have had spare clothes. This means that despite the fact it was going to be a short jaunt, not one but all five passengers brought extra clothing. It would be the equivalent of having a carry-on filled with different dresses that you put on every 5 minutes in the airplane bathroom for a flight from L.A. to Seattle. Boy, I’m not going to do that again any time soon…but I digress. Did they have a premonition of sorts? And if they did, why didn’t they do a Final Destination last-minute back-out instead of packing more?
There Are Theories About the Clothing Situation on ‘Gilligan’s Island’, but Are They Valid?
So why all the clothes? Now, the most logical assumption is that there is a Walmart on the other side of the island, but let’s presume that’s not the case. If we start with the theme song – not the one we all know and love, but the original for the pilot written by one John Williams – it wasn’t a three-hour tour, but a “six-hour ride.” Still, though, that’s not enough to warrant that much clothing. A post on Reddit posits that the passengers were all in the same hotel, which had to be fumigated due to a pest problem, so they were comped a lovely three-hour tour but took their belongings for safety. What are the odds of a millionaire, his wife, and a movie star being in the same motel as a brainiac and a farm girl? That’s right, nil.
Another suggestion is that the three-hour tour wasn’t a round trip but rather a three-hour tour that takes them to a “Club Med” type resort, where they stay for an extended period. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t a “three-hour shuttle” be more apropos? Harder to rhyme, I suppose. Scuttle? Subtle? There are options. But maybe it would make more sense if the clothes didn’t come with the castaways. In the Season 1 episode “It’s Magic,” Gilligan believes he’s caught a fish in the lagoon, only it’s not a fish, but a magician’s prop crate. In “Pass the Vegetables, Please,” Gilligan reels in a crate of vegetable seeds. Radioactive, mind you, but seeds nonetheless. So it’s plausible that other crates have washed ashore that had clothes, but that’s a lot of crates.
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The most likely answer comes from creator Sherwood Schwarz in his book “Inside Gilligan’s Island: A Three-Hour Tour Through The Making Of A Television Classic.” He says the Howells were originally the only characters intended to have extensive changes of costume. Then he gets all philosophical, saying, “The endless wardrobe was [a] symbolic comment. It was my way of saying rich people manage somehow to have the best of everything, no matter what the circumstances.” So there you have it, Gilligan’s Island is right up there with Aristotle and René Descartes, “a drunken fart / ‘I drink, therefore I am.'” What Schwarz doesn’t consider is that if the bulk of the clothing belongs to the Howells, then, at one point, Lovey Howell wore Ginger’s slinky dresses and Mary Ann’s short shorts. That’s an image I want to be stranded on a desert island.
Seven men and women are stranded on an uncharted island following a torrential storm.
- Release Date
- September 26, 1964
- Cast
- Bob Denver , Alan Hale Jr. , Jim Backus , Natalie Schafer , Tina Louise , Russell Johnson , Dawn Wells , Charles Maxwell
- Seasons
- 3
Gilligan’s Island is available to stream on Tubi TV in the U.S.
WATCH ON TUBI TV
