Cool - I found some of my very old archives from 2001 stored on my computer; most of them seem to have disappeared when I switched from Blogger to MT back in 2002. I’ll repost some of them occasionally, starting with this one!

Sunday, October 14, 2001
“Surviving Gilligan’s Island” aired on CBS and I was quite surprised. This was not a standard “behind the scenes” or docu-drama re-telling of the making of a pop show. It was hosted by the three remaining cast members (Bob Denver, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells), as themselves, and flashed back to interesting slices of the show’s history, from Sherwood Shwartz’s concept to filming to series end to TV-movies (3 of ‘em!). The flashbacks were handled by using actors who looked somewhat like the stars they were portraying, but more convincingly *sounded* like them. The three hosts filmed their portions on a set (original?) that looked very much like the Island itself, and Mary Ann baked some coconut-cream pie for the guys, and they pretended to be using some of the same contraptions that they used on the series, such as a bamboo-style movie projector. The movie accurately pointed out the many, many references still in vogue in American and even international pop culture to “Gilligan’s Island,” such as the Jeopardy game show with categories named after characters, remote Pacific islands where even the natives can identify “Mary Ann,” and such.