CBS
December 26, 1964
Sitcom
DVD
B-
This takes awhile to get going-- too much time for the set-up that Mr. Howell has been teaching Gilligan to play golf and then Gilligan suddenly becomes a golfing genius who can sink putt after putt for hours-- but when it finally gets there, with Gilligan winning the amount in the title, it's worth the wait. Greed again strikes most of the island except for Gilligan, whose new wealth makes him generous. Mr. H swindles him out of the money for an oil well that seems worthless, and then worth quite a bit, and then worthless again. Both girls flirt simultaneously with Gilligan, although Ginger of course also vamps him in relative privacy. (The "You'd have a wife if you looked like Rock Hudson" line is retroactively the funniest in the episode.) This time he falls into a trough full of water. Note, even though Ginger had worn the dress made out of Gilligan's duffel bag in other episodes, he reacts as if he's never seen it before. ("My duffel never looked so good.") So this may be set earlier than it airs, which makes a bit of a sense out of Mrs. Howell's line that this is not a month with an R in it. (Placing this in May through August.) Also, the Skipper says he thinks of Gilligan as a son, which surprises Gilligan, even though he earlier said he thinks of the Skipper as a father.
The best scene is probably the one where Mr. H explains taxes to Gilligan, the first moment in the series where you can believe that both Backus and Schwartz got their starts in radio. As it happens, this episode has a story thought of by Joel Rapp and Sam Locke, but written by Bill Davenport and Charles Tannen. Tom Montgomery again directs.
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| Jim Backus would also play a pool shark on The Brady Bunch almost a decade later. |
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| In case you ever wondered if the "Ginger or Mary Ann" debate was just fan-driven. |
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