This might come as a shock, but “Gilligan’s Island” was not well liked by critics during its three-season run on CBS in the 1960s. The sitcom about seven castaways stranded on an uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean was hardly the silliest show on television at the time (the sitcom “My Mother, the Car” owned that distinction), but its unabashedly broad gags and repetitive formula — how will Gilligan and the gang fail to get off the island this week? — were a far cry from the wit and relative sophistication of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
Artists have a tendency to be desperate for approval, so you might think all of the critical opprobrium dumped on “Gilligan’s Island” would upset the show’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz. It was, after all, the first series created by the veteran comedy creative, who’d broken into the business 26 years prior as a writer for Bob Hope’s radio show. If it failed to catch on with viewers, he might never get another shot — because, at this point in time, the three major networks were essentially the only game in town when it came to getting a television show on the air.
If Schwartz was sweating the reviews, he certainly didn’t share his distress in interviews. In fact, he was completely nonchalant about the terrible notices.
Executives once worried Gilligan’s Island was too lofty for a network sitcom
In an interview with the Portland Press Herald during the series’ initial CBS run, Schwartz acknowledged that the critics weren’t fans of “Gilligan’s Island” before observing, “[T]here are more public than there are critics.” The show’s creator then proceeded to joke, “Next year, the intellectual critics will probably take another look at ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ Then they’ll write treatises on our ‘social satire on many levels’ … Maybe the professors will look for deeper satire.”
“Gilligan’s Island” has actually spawned critical analyses over the years. Who can forget Christine Harnos breaking down the series’ troubling portrayal of women over bathroom cigs in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused?” Closer to home, /Film’s own Witney Seibold has written about how “Gilligan’s Island” uses the Commedia dell-arte archetypes. There’s heady stuff going on in “Gilligan’s Island” if you choose to look beyond the characters’ clownish hijinks.
Even Schwartz boasted about the show’s unheralded high-mindedness. As he told the Portland Press Herald:
“The first time I explained my idea of the island and the people to a bunch of agency executives, I happened — just happened, mind you — to use the word ‘microcosm,’ a world in miniature, which is what ‘Gilligan’s Island’ is. There was a hasty shuffling of seats and a tentative clearing of executive throats. A MICROCOSM? ‘Mmmmm,’ said one. ‘Isn’t that too lofty?’ To think that somebody once considered ‘Gilligan’s Island’ too lofty!”
So, the next time you find yourself killing time with a “Gilligan’s Island” marathon, remember the sage words of Harnos, Seibold, and Schwartz, and realize that you have been presented with true, piercing art.
