Friday, June 13, 2008

Help! Hamlet is stranded on Gilligan's Island

“The Producer.” By Dee Caruso and Gerald Gardner. Perf. Bob Denver, Alan Hale, Jr., and Phil Silvers. Dir. George Cahan and Ida Lupino. Gilligan’s Island. Season 3, episode 4. CBS. 3 October 1966. DVD. Turner Home Entertainment, 2005.

You all know that the current expression to use when describing the specific episode of a television series that indicates that it will never get any better—never rise to its past glory—is "to play the Dane" (q.v.).

Gilligan's Island played the Dane on 3 October 1966. Despite some attempts at original musical (or, at least, lyrical) prestidigitation, and despite the claims of many that this is the best episode ever, the laugh track sounds hollow.

Besides, the phrase "best Gilligan's Island episode ever" seems a little . . . faintly praised, perhaps?

In any case, you can find a seven-minute distillation of the episode below! Enjoy (if you can)!


Links: The episode at IMDB. The episode at Wikipedia.

Click below to purchase all the Gilligan's Island antics from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

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