The Professor was the ''sanity'' of Gilligan's Island

He was the world's most lovable dork!

Warner Brothers

Gilligan's Island was never meant to be a realistic show. Think about it: How come Ginger had so many outfits packed for what was originally supposed to be an incredibly short trip? It's almost as though she packed her entire closet!

Still, it's always good to surrender to the chaos every once in a while and give in to the larger-than-life adventures that the characters of Gilligan's Island get up to.

Even in the face of insanity, the series had an incredibly grounding force that was present in every episode: The Professor.

According to an interview with The North Adams Transcript, Russell Johnson described his character as the one responsible for bringing the rest of the Gilligan's Island characters back down to earth.

"I'm the guy in the show who brings the characters back to sanity," Johnson said. "I'm the link between the audience and reality."

But while Roy Hinkley served as a sort of palette cleanser in the series, it also doesn't mean that he should be considered a wet blanket.

"I'm not locked in as being just a square," he said. "I have a chance now and then to join in the fun." In fact, some of the silliest moments of the series come from the effects of The Professor's inventions, proving that Hinkley is just as harebrained as anyone else on that island.

In the same way that The Professor had one hand on reality, Johnson himself seemed to not only be aware of the silliness of the series but also the public's perception of the show. 

In an interview with the Kenosha News, Johnson was frank. "All I can say is that the critics hated us," he said. "and the public loved us."

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1 Comments

Fred_Clampett 4 months ago
I'd never looked at it this way, but it was the professor who kept the show grounded enough to make it believable in spite of the unbelievable situations.
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