User Reviews

Gilligan and the Skipper spot a guy on a surfboard zipping into the lagoon and landing on the beach. Having ridden a tsunami for five days (yes, five days), Duke Williams (played with gusto by Denny Scott Miller) discovers Ginger and Mary Ann and decides not to ride back when a "reverse tsunami" is coming the island's way.

Will Duke make it back onto his surfboard? Of course. Will the castaways be rescued? Well, let's just say that Gilligan doesn't screw this one up.

Thanks to the performance by Denny Scott Miller, this episode is above average and we get to see the girls actually swoon for a while until the Duke gets a little too fresh.

Highlights include Duke's impressive entrance riding the surfboard onto the beach, Gilligan's attempts at exercise, Mr. Howell's comment on Duke's clothes ("pizza sharkskin"), Ginger's timing as she fixes her hair before letting a running Mary Ann back into the hut, and the Professor's ill-at-ease "romancing" with Ginger along with Gilligan's less than romantic session with Mary Ann.

Of course, the very idea that someone could ride a surfboard for five straight days is rather out there, but in some ways it is easier to accept that many of the other outlandish ideas that Gilligan's Island has had. So with that in mind, this episode is pretty funny and well worth viewing.

• The large rock that Gilligan sits on next to the lagoon at the beginning of the episode is new. Perhaps it was used to cover how the Duke's surfboard was pulled towards the beach?

• Seems Duke gets cleaned up pretty well, even shaving after leaving the beach and getting a new set of tight-fitting pants.

• You know, the Professor could have had the Duke carry a note with him...assuming it could fit somewhere in his tight pants.

• The stock footage used of the surfer that Gilligan does bear a good resemblance to Duke, but he's not wearing the provisions that the Professor gave him.

One of the more ludicrous offerings in this first year, Big Man on Little Stick is also lively, tightly paced, very funny, and has an iconic moment or two. It's another case where the guest star helps to energize the performances of the regular cast and pushes the episode a notch above average.

Champion surfer Duke Williams crash lands in the lagoon in the cold open. In one of his best scenes in the episode, he explains to the befuddled trio of Gilligan, the Skipper, and the Professor that a giant wave swept him up during a surfing competition. Somehow he got on top of it and rode it out for five straight days until it beached him on the island. The Professor identifies the wave as a powerful tsunami.

The Skipper breaks the news to Duke in unusually chipper fashion that he is stranded along with them on the island. According to the Professor, there is little chance another tsunami will return him to the mainland. Duke wants no part of being the eight castaway-at least not until he spies the two single ladies of the island and has immediate second thoughts. He loses all interest in a rescue; his body is too out of shape to surf and it will take months for him to regain strength enough to get back on his board.

The last castaways to get into the episode are the Howells, who, in a brief and mildly funny introduction, are disappointed that the Duke isn't royalty.

Much of the first act has Duke showing off his 'out of shape' physique to the girls, who fawn and squeal over him like he is the second coming of Frankie Avalon. Their fascination with him sparks actual jealousy in Gilligan, apparently just now discovering that the girls are, well, girls. He believes that the best way to attract the attention that he has never sought is to become a body builder just like Duke. His workout regimen offers some good physical gags, but is predictably too ineffective to woo away the girls.

The Professor's initial pessimism about another wave doesn't stop him from continuing to crunch the numbers. To add drama to the episode, his latest calculation has a reverse tsunami striking the island in exactly forty-eight hours. But Duke still can't be cajoled to leave what he thinks of as paradise.

However, he makes his own miscalculation with the girls and how far their admiration goes. They soon discover that he is a wolf in sharkskin clothing and race to Mrs. Howell for help.

Her plan is to show Duke he has no future with the girls so that he'll leave the island. In the best part of the episode, we see them wooed by the Professor and our scrawny lead. Ginger is now only interested in picking the Professor's brain, and Gilligan's romantic style creates quite a buzz in Mary Ann. (It sounds better than it is). The plan works and Duke boards his board for civilization.

The ending tag is predictable but cute, and only our lead can be philosophical about their continued bad fortune.

COCONOTES

Denny Scott Miller makes his first of two appearances on GI. He does a credible job of playing the girl crazy lunkhead. Love his now dated beach slang and how he name drops Gidget.

Minor blooper: The Professor gives incomplete coordinates of the island.

Ginger to Gilligan: "You've got to have a body to do that!" Is it no wonder why she isn't more popular with fans?

The Skipper's enthusiastic singing while cleaning Duke's board is hysterical.

First (and only) on screen kisses of the first season between any of the castaways.

"Lucky Pierre!"

The ogling pig Duke Williams has played by Denny Miller isn't exactly a very likable character, a narcissistic mass of surfing flesh that may have Mary Ann and Ginger swooning at first but soon it is very apparent that he has zero personality in addition to his second grade education. He somehow managed to surf from near Honolulu to the island in a matter of four days, and now he's the only hope the castaways have of getting off the island if he can manage to gain his strength back and find a good way so he can do a reverse surf back to civilization.

While they have not seen a man like Duke in many months, Ginger and Mary Ann are briefly distracted by his braun, but they realize his craft personality is not to their taste, referring the company of the professor and Gilligan respectively. Realizing that he is now being ignored for less brawny men, Duke decides to leave but will he remember to tell them about the group stranded on a deserted island? Does he even care?

A funny episode in the sense that Gilligan is trying to build up some muscle which is obviously impossible, and yet it's Mary Ann who tells him that he's fine as he is. At one point, he's upside down on a surfboard with his legs tied to it, a very dangerous situation in the lagoon. Miller would later return as a fake Tarzan like jungle man, and he's just as unlikable as Duke is here. It becomes tolerable because the women put him in his place in a delightful way, and in retrospect, they are probably better off on an island where there are gentleman, not wolves like him.