The Fate of "Gilligan's Island": The castaways are rescued, mentor a child star, play basketball with robots, and blast into space

What Boomer kid doesn't get all wispy and nostalgic upon hearing "Just sit right back, and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip..."

Gilligan's Island (1964-67) was an iconic Boomer tv series, part of the "lost far from home" genre, about seven people who set out from Hawaii on a "three hour tour" and ended up shipwrecked on a desert island.  We didn't care that their escape attempts were ludicrous, or that visitors managed to make it off the island with no trouble.  

What counted was the adventure: they fought pirates, headhunters, mad scientists, Russian spies.  They found a Jungle Boy, a buffed surfer, and a Tarzan clone.

It was a "boys only" paradise, with no girls or grownups around to spoil the fun.

Ok, the Howells were grownups.  Sort of.

Ok, there were two girls, Ginger and Mary Anne, but no one acted all goofy around them.  They were like big sisters.

Although they paid lip service to the goal of getting off the island, it was obvious that no one really wanted to leave.  Back home they were failures, parodies of themselves.  Ginger was an actress relegated to horrid B-movies, but on the Island, she was a star.  The Professor was a polymath teaching high school science, but on the Island he was a genius.  On the Island they all could shine.

There was no ongoing plot arc, as is common in tv series today, nor was there a conclusion.  The last episode of the series leaves them still stranded on the island.

But iconic Boomer tv series don't stay dead for long.  There were endless reruns, and ten years later, the sequels and adaptions started pouring out of the nostalgia factory:

1. The New Adventures of Gilligan (1974-77) appeared as a Saturday morning cartoon opposite other sitcom retreads, The Partridge Family 2200 AD and The Pebbles and Bam-Bam Show.  Tina Louise and Dawn Wells weren't interested, but everyone else in the live-action cast returned to voice their characters.

Most episodes involved inter-group squabbles, with an 1970s "the more you know" moral:

They elect Gilligan as President of the island.

They squabble over pirate gold.

The Skipper and Mr. Howell argue.

The Skipper tries to turn Gilligan into "a real man."

The characters look considerably younger than the actors they depict.  Gilligan and Mary Anne could be in their teens, and Skipper and the Howells look barely 30.  And why is Ginger platinum blonde instead of "ginger"?

2. Rescue from Gilligan's Island (1978) was a tv movie that every grown-up Boomer kid watched.  Except instead of having them shipwrecked for a reasonable amount of time, the premise is that they've been on the island for 14 years, since 1964.  They're obviously older, well into middle age or old age, which makes their stuntwork cringeworthy.

They arrive in Hawaii to a huge crowd of well-wishers and fans (except none of their family or friends).  The moment Gilligan leaves the coast guard ship, a soldier hands him an ice cream cone.

Giving a middle-aged man an ice cream cone rather than a hefty check from the insurance company? Bogus!

Besides, they had ice cream on the island.  Crates full of anything they needed kept washing up in the lagoon.

 They try to go back to their old lives: the Professor to his research university, the Howells to their snooty friends, Ginger to the movies, Mary Anne to her farm in Kansas.  But it's the midst of the s*x-and-sleaze disco era, everything has changed, and they're miserable. Fortunately, they end up being shipwrecked on the same island again.  There's no place like home?

There's also something about spies.

3. The Castaways on Gilligan's Island (1979).  This time they return to convert the island into a resort, where they proceed to solve guests' soap opera problems.  Apparently this was the pilot to a proposed tv series, with different problems every week, sort of like Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

First up, to appeal to the oldsters, a workaholic husband whose wife wants him to relax (played by Happy Days' Tom Bosley and The Bob Newhart Show's Marcia Wallace)

And to appeal to the kids, an unaccompanied minor (popular child star Ronny Scribner) turns out to be runaway: he's an Olympic hopeful, and the training schedule was too intense.

More after the break

Wrecked is a Wreck

Lost (2004-2010), about plane crash survivors facing paranormal peril on a desert island, was great.  Well, it started out great, and went downhill with the secrets-with-a-secret, most of which would be easily answered in the course of ordinary conversation.

"I thought there were five other survivors in your group."
"There were."
"....well, so tell me what happened to them?"

Instead of saying "Locke has risen from the dead," they make some cryptic reference to shadows.

My favorite is are the twin demigods or whatever, Jacob and ___. Everyone takes great pains to not say ___'s name, even though it's obviously Esau.

And the writers wrote themselves into so many inescapable corners that they had to fall back on a cop-out "They were all in Purgatory" ending.  I think...

Sorry, lost my train of thought.

Anyway, it's been 8 years, so a Lost parody hardly seems relevant.  I went in to Wrecked with low expectations, thinking maybe I would get a little beefcake and maybe some bonding.  I didn't.  Not much, anyway.

A disparate group of people are stranded on a desert island in a plane crash.  Danny (Brian Sacca, left), the slacker son of a rich businessman, and shy flight attendant Owen (Zach Kregger, top photo), see their chance to shine, and take charge.

They also develop a lovey-dovey gay-subtext bromance, in spite of their pursuit of ladies.

There are many other gay subtexts on the island.

Florence and Emma have a gal-pal romance.

Everyone, male and female, is in love with the British special agent who is squashed by the airplane fuselage during the first episode.

Todd (Will Greenberg, left) is mourning the loss of his golf clubs, but fey New Zealander Steve (Rhys Darby) thinks he's lost a child.  He tries to be supportive, offering hands-on-shoulders and gifts, which Todd interprets as sexual come-ons.

Sports agent Pack (Asif Ali) doesn't display any heterosexual interest or pursue any heterosexual relationships.

Unfortunately, no actual, honest-to-goodness, canonical gay characters, just subtexts.

There is some beefcake, but not as much as on Lost, where every male castaway was a fitness model.

Is there any other reason to watch Wrecked?

There is no paranormal peril on the island; minor mysteries turn out to be just that: minor.  Most plots involve struggling to survive: food shortages, tainted water, medical emergencies.  A very gross episode about not being able to poop in the jungle.  Some people die.  That just isn't funny.

Other than a few brief call-outs, like the episode title "All is Not Lost," Wrecked  doesn't try to parody Lost.  And it's not funny enough to make it alone.

I suggest holding out for a program with real gay characters.  Or fitness models.