A Japanese sailor arrives on the island thinking it's still WWII and holds the castaways captive on their own island.A Japanese sailor arrives on the island thinking it's still WWII and holds the castaways captive on their own island.A Japanese sailor arrives on the island thinking it's still WWII and holds the castaways captive on their own island.
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaMarks the first appearance of character actor Vito Scotti who would go on to play Dr. Boris Balinkoff in two later episodes.
- GoofsThe captured castaways are held in bamboo cages, supposedly booby trapped with grenades that would explode if the bars where pried apart. However, the grenades are clearly just hanging from wires like Christmas tree ornaments. Also the grenades are within easy reach, and potentially could have been taken by the prisoners to use against their captor. Furthermore, Japanese WW II grenades did not function as portrayed. Simply pulling the pin would not arm the grenade.
- ConnectionsEdited into Gilligan's Island: Diogenes, Won't You Please Go Home? (1965)
- SoundtracksThe Ballad of Gilligan's Isle
Words and Music by George Wyle and Sherwood Schwartz
Featured review
The first season's funniest episode
"So Sorry, My Island Now" ranks as perhaps the funniest black and white episode (which is really saying something), thanks to the superb comic performance of the masterful Vito Scotti as the Japanese sailor who doesn't know that WW2 has ended (after a second appearance in this role, he would portray Dr. Boris Balinkoff in two color entries). With his thick coke bottle glasses and perfect accent, Scotti is able to garner laughs with each encounter with the castaways, capturing them one by one until only the Skipper and Gilligan are left. Gilligan thinks that the sailor's tiny sub is a sea monster but cannot convince anyone, and after Mr. Howell is the first to disappear his wife has perhaps her best ever line in reaction to his being devoured by a sea serpent: "that's silly, Thurston wasn't even dressed for dinner!" The Skipper recognizes the newcomer's sub from his wartime experiences, but any attempt to use it to leave for Hawaii is foiled by the Japanese instructions. Meanwhile, the sailor interrogates each of his prisoners, Mary Ann warning Ginger that he doesn't seem to have had shore leave for quite a while ("oh please, you steam glasses!"). He certainly knows who Mrs. Howell is: "you are married to big mouth, huh?" For once, the well meaning Gilligan bests his Skipper in stripping the sleeping sailor of his weapons and the key to their prisons, all while the Skipper maintains his digging. The final gag is the perfect topper, with Gilligan adopting a Japanese accent in demonstrating that the sailor's poor driving was the result of wearing no glasses. Today's ridiculous 'political correctness' usually bites liberals in the tush, as they uniformly refuse to acknowledge America's rich history, displaying a decidedly humorless attitude to those carefree days of yesteryear when people were able to laugh at stereotypes rather than get into a snit over ethnicity. Believe me, my father was Polish and there was nothing he enjoyed more than Polish jokes! Remember, when the US was making cartoons lampooning the Moto stereotype while the nations were at war, the Japanese were showing their fighters films of Abbott and Costello in "Buck Privates" as genuine American soldiers incapable of anything but bumbling their way through every situation. Were it not for Vito Scotti's hilarious parody it could have descended into something objectionable, but fun is always a welcome antidote to despair (he would return as the Japanese sailor in flashback remembrances from "Diogenes, Won't You Please Go Home?").
- kevinolzak
- Jun 10, 2016
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Details
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
- 4:3
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