Gilligan's Living Doll

Gilligan's Living Doll is the twenty-first episode of the second season of Gilligan's Island. It first aired February 10, 1966.

Synopsis
The Skipper gets stuck with the laundry chore and grouses over it even as he's just lying back watching Gilligan run their Pedal-Powered Washing Machine. Gilligan, meanwhile, stops pedaling to go searching for his rabbit's foot in the laundry. As the Skipper scoffs at Gilligan's belief in his rabbit's foot, they notice a parachute over the island. They go searching for it and discover a robot, which was launched from Hickam Field in Hawaii to Vandenburgh Air Force Base in California on a radiation detection flight. The Professor believes they will be rescued when the Air Force come looking for it, but in the meantime, everyone exploits the robot to do all the menial jobs on the island. Mary Ann has it sweep her hut, but it goes through the wall, and Ginger has it do the dishes, but it goes crazy when she tampers with its controls. When the Skipper tries using it to do the laundry, Mr. Howell takes it to caddy in a golf game with Mrs. Howell. When he sends it back, the robot shoves Gilligan into the laundry before pedaling the machine. On the radio, the news reports that the Air Force won't be looking for the Robot as they don't where it was lost. This leaves everyone trying to decide how to use the Robot to get them rescued. They try to have it build a boat, but it actually builds a boat in miniature. When Gilligan suggests sending the Robot to Hawaii to get supplies to get them rescued, the Skipper realizes the Robot could just deliver a message itself. They try teaching it to swim, but all it can do is walk the bottom of the Lagoon. That leaves the Professor with no recourse but to let it walk the ocean floor and deliver their message to the authorities in Hawaii. A few days later, news comes the Robot has been caught in fisherman's nets, and as its memory tapes are played on the radio, they're all mixed up, demagnetized by Gilligan's rabbit's foot stuck inside it, ruining another chance to be rescued. Gilligan hides under the table as the other castaways gang up on him in anger again...

Message

 * "Unfortunately, high technology is at the mercy of low I.Q.s."

Highlights

 * Gilligan becomes friends with the Robot
 * The Robot washing Gilligan in the washer
 * The Robot making a small boat instead of a big boat

Credits
Main Cast
 * Bob Denver as Gilligan
 * Alan Hale Jr. as The Skipper
 * Jim Backus as Mr. Howell
 * Natalie Schafer as Mrs. Howell
 * Tina Louise as Ginger
 * Dawn Wells as Mary Ann
 * Russell Johnson as The Professor

Guest Cast
 * Bob d'Arcy as The Robot (uncredited)
 * Charles Maxwell as the Radio Announcer and the The Robot (voice - uncredited)

Trivia

 * The name of this episode is possibly an homage to the 1964 to 1965 series, "My Living Doll." Airing for one year only, "My Living Doll" was a CBS comedy about an Air Force psychologist played by actor Robert Cummings who is placed in charge of a "living" robot, played by the very attractive Julie Newmar, better known as Catwoman in the 1966 to 1968 series, "Batman."
 * The episode opens on Gilligan doing the laundry with the pedal-powered washing machine. The sloshing in it looks like a crew member out of sight wiping the window with a rag.
 * Despite his rabbit's foot in this episode, Gilligan makes no mention of his metal four-leaf clover lucky charm from Mine Hero.
 * The Robot reportedly weighs over one thousand pounds, and yet, the Professor places him over one of their wood tables to work on him.
 * When Gilligan is drowning in the washing machine, Mr. Howell claims he sounds like a Red Crested Hickenlooper. In a strange coincidence, John Hickenlooper was Mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011. Denver was named for Bob Denver's ancestor, James William Denver.
 * It seems extremely odd that the Robot was programmed to build a small model boat, a minesweeper, a destroyer and an aircraft carrier but nothing in between, such as a raft.
 * No one thinks to check in on the Robot when he is supposed to be building the boat.
 * The robot reports it will take 89 years and 4 months to build a bridge from the island to Hawaii. However, this would have undoubtedly exhausted all of the available building materials on the Island within a few weeks.
 * The Skipper calls the robot "a tin refugee from The Wizard of Oz," which is a reference to the Tin Man in the 1939 classic film, "The Wizard of Oz."
 * When the Robot comes back from the waterproof test in the lagoon, the Professor gets sprayed in the face with water.
 * The Professor never thinks of just dismantling the Robot to use its parts to fix the transmitter.
 * In the syndicated version of this episode, the scenes with the Robot working for Mary Ann and Ginger are not shown.
 * The time the Professor deduces for the Robot to reach Hawaii is seriously off considering he has already deduced how far they are from Hawaii. It takes the Robot about 5 minutes to go 20 yards into the lagoon. Likewise, the estimated time for the Robot to go underwater to Hawaii is 111 hours, which divided by 24 equals 4.625 days. As 60 minutes equals 1 hour, therefore, 24 hours equals 1440 Minutes. Now, with a ratio of 1 Minute = 4 yards and 1440 minutes X 4.625 days = 6660 Minutes x 4 yards=26640 yards, 1 mile equals 1760 yards. 26640 divided by 1760 equals 15.13 miles which is how far the Robot must travel from the island to Hawaii! Now, if the Island was really that close to Hawaii in real life, a plane or ship would have spotted the Castaways signals for help and rescued them.
 * In X Marks the Spot the missile site/the island is estimated to be about 250 miles southeast of Hawaii

Quotes

 * Skipper - "That's just what we needed - a tin fugitive from The Wizard Of Oz."


 * Skipper - "Great, we've got a mechanical Gilligan!"

Gilligan - "Professor, with my mind, I need all the luck I can get."
 * Professor - "Luck Gilligan is all in the mind."


 * Mr. Howell - "He by golly sounds like our answer to Lloyd Bridges!"