Is Widow's Bay more cursed than Gilligan's Island?

Summary

TV Is Good — Episode Summary Is Widow's Bay more cursed than Gilligan's Island?
June 15, 2026
Hosts: Alan Sepinwall & Kathryn Van Arendonk

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Overview

This episode of TV Is Good dives into the unlikely thematic kinship between Apple TV+’s horror-comedy hit Widow’s Bay and the 1960s sitcom mainstay Gilligan’s Island. Alan and Kathryn use their incisive TV criticism and personal banter to break down what makes cursed islands tick on television, examining both series through lenses of genre, character, humor, and existential futility.

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Main Discussion Points

1. TV Recent Events & Banter (02:17–15:11)

• The show opens with TV news banter: Alan’s Knicks euphoria after a historic NBA Finals comeback (03:00), Kathryn’s logistic woes balancing Knicks, her children’s recital, and Vulture Fest at Tribeca (03:45), and reflections on TV’s place in contemporary life.
• Brief, heartfelt tribute to Anthony Stewart Head following his death—discussing his legacy as Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (05:17). Kathryn recounts one of his most-shared scenes for its emotional nuance and why Giles resonated as a character.

  "He is never gonna go to her and say, this is something that you have to... It is this exquisite performance by Anthony Stewart Head because it is so—without being overly maudlin...so soft and so direct." (06:01 - Kathryn)

• Quick detour into 90s coffee commercials featuring Head and the nature of “non-scripted TV that feels thrilling” (07:08).
• Fresh reporting on Russell T. Davies’ abrupt exit as Doctor Who showrunner, dissecting recent struggles of the British franchise—effects of Disney partnership, Chuti Gatwa’s shortened tenure, and call for new creative blood (08:18–13:45). Kathryn discusses her complicated history with Who and key writers:

  “Steven Moffat—a writer who has had some of the most brilliant ideas in TV history and then is just going to keep giving you those ideas over and over and over again…” (10:49 - Alan) "And also some of his portrayal of women and heterosexual relationships..." (11:00 - Kathryn)

• Bluey is name-checked, with Kathryn announcing her forthcoming book and Alan joking about Bandit as the next Doctor (14:02).

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2. Deep Dive: Widow’s Bay (15:11–44:01)

The Concept (15:11–18:20)

• Widow’s Bay is a horror-comedy series set on a cursed Massachusetts island. Matthew Rhys stars as Mayor Tom, whose gentrification aspirations awaken periodic supernatural disasters. Steven Root co-stars as Wick, the doom-proclaiming old-timer.

  “As Wick…keeps trying to explain to him: the island is cursed, and when you start bringing people to it, they’re gonna die...the island has these periods every 20, 30 years… It wakes up. Exactly. And then suddenly, it’s basically the Hellmouth from Buffy.” (17:56 - Alan)

Why It’s a Phenomenon (19:01–21:57)

• Kathryn, self-described “horror weenie,” finds it “doable”—not too graphic, balancing scares with humor (19:01).

  "There is an element where, like, you kind of... you're interested in horror, you like a lot of the ideas and themes... but you can't actually handle the somatic response. Widow's Bay—completely possible." (19:56 - Kathryn)

• The show’s self-awareness is praised—it’s meta, but not coy, poking fun at the absurdity of horror premises without cynicism. It elicits genuine fear and laughter.

Performances & Tone (22:02–26:25)

• Matthew Rhys earns love for playing against his genial real-life persona—balancing deep sadness and impeccable deadpan comedy.
• Steven Root’s straight-faced performance gets special mention: “He brings this incredible gravity to it because he’s also a tremendous dramatic actor as well. And it’s this unexpected choice…works perfectly.” (25:58 - Alan)
• Kate O’Flynn as Patricia is declared “TV breakout star of the year.”
• Supporting cast features skilled comedians (Chris Fleming, Jeff Hiller, Dale Dickey) who nail subtle shifts between humor and horror.

Standout Episodes & Spoilers (26:54–34:38)

• The episode “Sunset Cocktails” (Ep. 4) gets repeated praise for combining farce, creepiness, and visual gags (mirror reflections). Hiro Murai’s direction is credited for perfect tone management.

  “It is so good at activating a very human humor response to these extreme circumstances.” (21:19 - Kathryn)

• Patricia’s “boogeyman” showdown in Ep. 8 is called “the funniest scene of 2026 television”—montaged to Enya, with Patricia clutching a shotgun all the way to the crematorium.

  “Patricia triumphantly kills the boogeyman...and then we get Enya playing over a montage...holding the shotgun the entire time because she's not going to take a goddamn chance.” (31:32 - Alan)

• Kathryn fantasizes about Patricia action figures.
• The show’s “drug trip” episode is discussed as an inventive play on an overdone trope (33:20).

Inside Baseball & Origins (34:38–36:10)

• The viral “Katie Dippold as the Babadook at a normal party” tweet is invoked, likened to the show’s entire sensibility.
• Chris Fleming’s reveal that he’d never realized Dippold was the “Babadook tweet” person until told.

Chris Fleming & Episode Gags (36:11–39:23)

• Fleming’s shaman character’s highlight: getting sucked up by a tornado while Mayor Tom can’t even process it—“You see the tornado...and as soon as Chris Fleming gets out of that vehicle, I was like, he's going up.” (37:51 - Kathryn)
• Lighthouse guy and recurring gag about the omnipresent, rude waitress Kathy get chuckles as examples of the show’s absurd humor.

Structure, Season Two Prospects, and Episodic TV (39:56–43:03)

• Widow’s Bay is praised for its largely episodic structure—“Monster of the Week” á la Buffy/X-Files—and how that supports both immediate fun and long-form storytelling.
• Discussion of whether the show could/should continue, and celebration of its newly-announced season two. (Insert following news from wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey update at 43:15)

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3. Cursed Island Showdown: Gilligan’s Island (45:40–74:10)

Set-Up (45:40–47:04)

• The question: “Is Gilligan’s Island an even more existentially terrifying, cursed island show than Widow’s Bay?”

  “I think Gilligan’s Island is a more frightening show than Widow’s Bay. And we’re gonna get into it.” (46:51 - Kathryn)

Explaining the Premise (47:04–48:59)

• Alan runs down Gilligan’s Island: a three-hour cruise gone wrong, seven castaways marooned endlessly, changes of clothing never run out, the Professor can build anything but a rescue boat, every episode resets, and escape is repeatedly thwarted by absurd circumstance.

The Sisyphean Loop & Narrative Insanity (49:00–54:32)

• Old-school TV’s avoidance of finality meant Gilligan’s Island could never end—the show is presented as one of the purest examples of “eternal futility as entertainment.”

Discussions of Two Key Episodes

A. “The Friendly Physician” (54:02–56:43)

• Mad scientist with a gothic castle on a nearby island, mind swaps between castaways (including dog-meows and men inhabiting women’s bodies) in pure 60s TV logic. Igor (the assistant) finding happiness as Ginger provides a hilariously anachronistic moment of “trans rights!” before the body swap solution.
• Alan gets into plot details: the “body swap” conceit and its narrative convenience, ending with the villain being swapped into a cat or dog.

B. “The Producer” (57:06–61:12)

• Hollywood mogul Harold Hecuba lands on island; castaways mount a musical Hamlet (set to Bizet’s Carmen) to impress him; he steals their show idea and leaves, stranding them again.

  “They...build a stage, they make costumes...They turn on the radio and they're like, good news. Harold Hecuba has been found with his greatest idea ever, a musical Hamlet.” (61:17 - Alan)

Existential Analysis (61:37–63:41)

• Kathryn: “There’s something about Matthew Rhys in Widow’s Bay…the Sisyphean, but it’s also the sort of Charlie Brown and the football problem—he just wants to keep over and over again. And he is aware, he is conscious of how sad it is.” (61:37)
• Alan: “The great majority of [Gilligan’s Island episodes] is: we try to get off the island, we fail, and we wake up the next day and act like everything is fine.” (63:24)

The Absurd Science of Gilligan’s (64:03–66:20)

• Kathryn pokes holes in “body swap” logic—swapped minds don’t explain swapped voices or animal noises. Alan shrugs: “Everyone's got to draw a line. You've drawn your line here. I respect that. I'm sort of a sucker for like, body swaps.”

The “Ginger or Marianne” Debate (67:40–69:10)

• Alan explains the Gen-X tradition of choosing between the two main female castaways for crush objects.
• Kathryn is nonplussed: “It’s absolutely insane that you would look at this show, all of the things about this show, and your response would be, which one do I want to make it with that girl or that girl? ...It was really, I probably watched 8 to 12 episodes just scattered around syndication.”

Anguished TV History and the Globetrotters (69:26–73:46)

• Alan recounts the three Gilligan’s Island reunion movies. In one, rescued castaways immediately get lost again on the same island; in another, the Harlem Globetrotters visit and defeat robots with the power of trick basketball and “Sweet Georgia Brown,” in a storyline that circles back to both Doctor Who and Widow's Bay.
• The hosts reflect on what’s been lost in the move toward prestige “better” TV versus the commercial, logic-defying madness of 60s/70s sitcoms.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the crossover between horror and comedy:
  “Widow's Bay is so good at activating a very human humor response to these extreme circumstances. And at the same time, I have my face half under a blanket.” (21:19 - Kathryn)
• On Patricia and her endless struggle:
  “Patricia triumphantly kills the boogeyman with the shotgun. And then we get Enya playing over a montage...just holding the shotgun the entire time because she's not going to take a goddamn chance.” (31:32 - Alan)
• On Gilligan’s Island and futility:
  “You have a lot of shows like this where...you can never resolve the premise, because then the show is over. And so this is maybe the most striking example of that...It's Sisyphus rolling that rock up and down the hill.” (49:15 - Alan)
• On 60s sitcom science:
  “There is a lot. When he swaps them...the dog goes, meow. And this doesn't make any sense...So swapping, their bodies shouldn't change.” (64:03 - Kathryn)
• Kathryn on the 'Ginger or Marianne' debate:
  “It’s absolutely insane that you would look at this show, all of the things about this show, and your response would be, which one do I want to make it with that girl or that girl? ...the premise of the question being there is that being the thing that you want to ask about—what's happening is so far down my list.” (67:58)
• On TV’s lost weirdness:
  “Objectively, television is, is quote unquote better now. Yeah, but is it?” (73:00 - Alan)

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Timestamps Reference

• 02:17: Start of main episode content / TV banter
• 15:11: Start of Widow’s Bay deep-dive
• 26:54: Spoilers for Widow’s Bay (Patricia’s boogeyman episode, drug trip)
• 36:11: Chris Fleming, viral tweet, show’s comedic tone
• 41:14: Discussion of the show's episodic structure
• 45:40: Begin Gilligan’s Island discussion
• 54:02: “The Friendly Physician” episode breakdown
• 57:06: “The Producer” episode breakdown
• 61:37: Existential takeaway
• 67:40: Ginger vs. Marianne
• 69:26: Gilligan’s Island reunion movies
• 73:00: Reflections on TV “quality” then vs. now
• 74:10: Closing / next week’s preview

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Next Week

• House of the Dragon S3
• Paired with: the infamously harrowing finale of Dinosaurs

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Summary

This episode is a rollicking twofer: an argument for the unique pleasures of a modern horror-comedy that lets its audience laugh, shudder, and adore the actors (Widow’s Bay); and a celebration of the blissed-out, existential absurdity of classic TV’s neverending purgatories (Gilligan’s Island). Whether it’s Enya-backed action heroines or robots losing to the Globetrotters, Kathryn and Alan delight in how both shows use supernatural stakes and endless hope to reveal something weird and true about life—and TV itself.

Transcript

[Alan Sepinwall]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy)]

That's right.

[James Richardson]

Hey. Hey.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. So, spoiler alert, he'll be wrong. News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Acast Announcer]

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[James Richardson]

Hello there. I'm James Richardson and I host the Tony Football Show. Now, this summer, the the biggest sporting event in the world, the Football Men's World cup, is heading to Canada, Mexico, and especially the United States. We're going to be there too. We are packing up and heading to Los Angeles for the duration. Which means that every day straight after the last match has concluded, you can catch some hot takes, instant reaction, and insightful analysis from ourselves sat around the pool in la. Sounds like we're going to have a lot of fun doing it.

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

We?

[James Richardson]

I hope you're going to be joining us too. It's from June 10th all the way up to July 19th, the day of the final. Just search for the Totally Football show wherever you get your podcasts.

[Acast Announcer]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I'm Alan Sepinwall. I'm a TV critic.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I'm Kathryn Van Arendonk. I am also a TV critic.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We are friends and neighbors and we love to talk about TV with each other.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And now we are going to talk about it with you.

[Alan Sepinwall]

That's right, this is the TV Is Good podcast. And every week we're going to look at one current show and one classic show as we try to answer an important question. Is the TV good?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

This week we are going to be talking about a surprise breakout TV hit this spring, Widow's Bay. It's a show where Matthew Rhys confronts some serious resistance to the process of gentrification.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, that is exactly how I would describe the show to a stranger. And that would absolutely draw them in. Yep, then we will be Traveling way back in TV history to another cursed island where Gilligan and six other stranded castaways could never seem to find a way to escape.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes, that's right. But first, Alan, do you need to talk about anything else? Is there anything else going on in tv?

[Alan Sepinwall]

Oh, God, I'm so afraid to do this. We're recording this on Thursday, June 11th.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Thursday morning.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Thursday morning. Last night, my beloved New York Knickerbockers pulled off the single greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. They were down by 29. They won by one. I'm irrational. I may just start screaming the name OG Anunoby in the middle of our discussion of Gilligan or whatever. Like, if OG Anunoby was on Gilligan's island, they would have been able to get the fuck off of Gilligan's island, is what I would say.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

That's true.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But yeah, no, this is. And obviously people are going to hear this on Monday, and the Knicks might have lost the Saturday night game in San Antonio, and then I'm just going to feel really bad. But right now, this is some of the greatest TV I have ever seen and I'm really enjoying it.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

There's a lot of. It's gonna be fun for you listeners on Monday because you will already know what has happened. Part of that will be the Knicks game. I have also just in the last several hours realized that I will. Then I will on Monday already know what happened on Saturday, because I have to. I realized I have to get to. I have to get to Manhattan from New Jersey because I am doing a panel for the Testaments at tribec. It's a Vulture Fest Tribeca panel, and it has Elisabeth Moss and Chase Infinity and Lucy Halliday, and I'm very much looking forward to it. But I also have to be in New Jersey for my children's violin and viola recital on Saturday afternoon. So I have to get from New Jersey to the great, great city of New York, even though it is also Knicks games five, Knicks game five, and the first New Jersey World cup game at the same time.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, I would never get in a car ever for the next month in the state of New Jersey.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Jersey. But also there are train, too. Yes, but.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But if you're taking a train to the World Trade center, since you're going to Tribeca, I think you would avoid most of the worst of that. And we'll find out what subway you take from there.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

We'll find out. Or. Yeah, just be Elizabeth Moss and Chase Infinity sitting on a stage just waiting for me.

[Alan Sepinwall]

They may Have. They may have the Knicks game on. I mean, if Taylor Swift can be in the front row with her friends just freaking out.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

You know, maybe they will all join Ben Stiller and be filming the game with them.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Who knows? Who knows what will happen? But yes, that's Saturday. We're not there yet. It's Thursday.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, yes, we're unstuck in time, as always. Another part of being unstuck in time is we recorded last week's episode before the very sad news that Anthony Stewart had died. So we had a whole Buffy discussion where we even talked about Giles. And that's the reason that that wasn't in there. He was wonderful. He was such like an important presence on that show. And we talked briefly about the movie. And if you watch the movie, Donald Sutherland is basically playing the same thing, but he is not really connected to Kristy Swanson in the same way. That Head was very emotionally bonded with Sarah Michelle Gellar. And we saw tributes from her and James Marsters and some of the other surviving actors from the show on social media. And it's a big loss.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It is. I mean, a couple things. One is that there was a scene from the two part episod that we watched that was one of the ones that made a. Made the rounds in a lot of the tributes. Because it is this moment where Buffy acknowledges finally sort of what has happened and that she had sex with him, with angel, and that this is this enormous point of shame. And Giles says, you know, gives her this whole converse speech about how she's never going to shame is never gonna be coming from him. Like he is never gonna go to her and say, this is something that you have to. And it is this exquisite performance by Anthony Storthead because it is so. Without being overly maudlin, without being overly sentimental, it is so soft and so direct. And he's so great at those scenes with her. It's one of the central reasons the show works as well as it does. And so that was. It was really, really, really sad to see that.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Now, here's an interesting thing about him. And I wonder, because you're younger than me, if you even remember these. Before he was Giles, the thing he was known for here in the States was this series of coffee commercials, I think for Taster's Choice, where it's like this serialized romance where Anthony Stewart head and this woman, I think, who's his neighbor, they start bonding over their shared love of the coffee. And I can tell from your reaction, this is the first you've Ever heard of it?

[James Richardson]

No.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

My, obviously my primary association with coffee commercials from the 90s is the incest Folgers commercial.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, this was great. And it was sort of. It gets back to what we're talking about before with the Knicks. Sometimes like you and I, we focus a lot on either scripted TV or sometimes reality tv, but there's so much other TV that can give you that same feeling. And sometimes people will stretch the boundaries even within like an ad campaign of I'm going to give you that same excited feeling you're going to get like from Sam and Diane or Jim and Pam, like is this going to work out? We really want it to. And they're doing it within the span of 30 seconds at a time.

[James Richardson]

Wow.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Well, I gotta, I gotta look up some Taster's Choice commercials, I guess.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, yes indeed. The last thing we gotta talk about before we move on again, we're recording this on Thursday. Yesterday news broke. Russell T. Davies, the longtime the showrunner who revived Doctor who in the mid 2000s and then came back to run the show again the last few years with Chudi gatwa as the 15th doctor, is out and there's just a big mess. This is one of the longest running like shows in the TV history, off and on going back to the 1960s British institution, you know, a big phenomenon, cult phenomenon here in the States. And they're really in a mess right now. The showrunner before Russell T. Davies was Chris Chibnall, who had written for the series previously under, under Davies and Steven Moffat I believe. And his run was just a mess. They wasted the first female Doctor, Jod Whitaker, who was really, really good in that role. And then Chuti Gatwa, the first non white Doctor, the first queer actor to play the Doctor, at least openly queer, all of these things. He was wonderful too. And he. The episodes that Russell T. Davies and most of the other people wrote for him were really bad. Like it was the first proper episode of this run on Disney was called Space Babies. And Catherine the monster in this episode on a space station run by babies. Yeah, they call him the Boogeyman. And eventually the Doctor figures out that the reason they call him the Boogeyman is because he's made of boogies. He is a snot monster.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Wow. I don't know how to feel right now. I was so with you on Space Babies. Like I was ready to go. Space Babies, you know.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Sure. But

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

huh. I've seen a fair amount of modern who like I went back and started with the original revival and then Made it through all of the, you know, contemporary all the way through. I'm trying to remember. I think I stopped right around Jodie Whitaker.

[Alan Sepinwall]

All right, so you got your Peter Capaldo.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

There's a multiple era that I feel mixed about, but I think he was good in that role. I have a lot of frustration with Steven Moffat. Who. Plotting. And so that's kind of how I got off of the. One of these days we're going to do a whole Steven Moffat thing and everyone's going to have to be like, oh, Catherine went off the deep end on this one. Because my feelings about Steven Moffat are not.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Steven Moffat, a writer who has had some of the most brilliant ideas in TV history and then is just going to keep giving you those ideas over and over and over again. Mm.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And. And also some of his portrayal of women and heterosexual relationships.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Steven Moffat has a problem writing women. What.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Anyway, there's a tangent, but. But yes, I. Which is to say I am curious about what is happening with contemporary.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Who.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

But I don't have a. I'm not completely up to date and I'm really curious. I feel bad about, like, what's happened, particularly with this most recent Doctor.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So Gatwa quit kind of abruptly. He did two, which were basically filmed as one season and aired over a couple of years. Various speculation about why he did that. Then Disney, which had partnered with the BBC to do this, pumped a whole ton of money into what was often one of the cheapest shows made on television. And especially if you go back and you watch the 1960s episodes, it's like paper mache in somebody's basement.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Aluminum cans for sure.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. So suddenly they had money.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And that's aluminium.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Aluminium, yes. Suddenly they had money. And this actually turned out to be maybe a bad thing because you could tell that Davies and the other people were writing much more for. Oh, we can show this now. Versus. This is a good story. So got was out that Disney plus dropped out because the ratings were not to their satisfaction. It was not driving subscriptions. So then the BBC is like, well, we'll keep it going anyway. Now Davies is out. They were supposed to do a Christmas special, which they always do this year. It would introduce the new Doctor. The other thing is the last episode Davies wrote and probably will ever write for, the show ends with gotwa's. The Doctor keeps regenerating. For those of you who don't know, that's why they're able to have all these different actors playing that character as the Doctor will die and regenerate into A new form. So Gottwa's Doctor is dying, regenerates, and suddenly the Doctor appears to be Billy Piper, the actress who played the very first companion in the revival back in 05. And everyone's like, well, how does this work? What's happening? Is Billy Piper playing the Doctor. Will there be a different Doctor? And now who knows if the new showrunner, whenever they turn up, will even bother with that or if that will just be a dangling cliffhanger.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I feel like they've been going through the same handful of writers for 20 years now. Moffat wrote some great episodes under Davies, so he got the job. Chibnall wrote some notable episodes under Moffat. He got the job. The Chibnall era did not end well. People didn't like it. So sort of in a panic, it seems like the BBC says, okay, let's. Let's bring Russell Davies back.

[Acast Announcer]

He.

[Alan Sepinwall]

He's our North Star. That really didn't work. I think you kind of need to bring in somebody new, somebody who loves the show but has never written for the show.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah. And like. Or, you know, there's Doctor who novelizations and comics. Like, there are also guys, radio plays.

[Alan Sepinwall]

My son loves, like the. The audio adventures.

[James Richardson]

Yeah.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Like, there are people who are in essentially Doctor who minor leagues. Like, it might be time to do some. Some searching.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. And maybe take a little time off is the other thing. And obviously that's hard because this is a huge cash cow for the BBC.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I mean, it's no Bluey, but.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Well, no, nothing. Nothing is Bluey. Catherine, what is your connection with Bluey that you might want to.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Oh, I. I'm writing a book. I have written, mostly written a book about Bluey. It's going to be coming out in spring of 2027. And there's, you know, I. Whenever. Whenever Bluey comes up in the world, as it so, so, so, so often does, it feels like the project that I have been working on is just haunting me around every Target aisle and grocery store.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, I have a thought. The next Doctor, Bandit, Healer.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

No, leave this man be. He's overexposed already.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay. Just as over the course of this summer and fall, we'll be talking a lot about Rod. The Twilight Zone, from my book. Next year, we will be talking a whole lot about Bluey and we're gonna get into the whole, like, our disparate feelings about Bandit, because to me, he's the greatest character in TV history, and to you he's a monster.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

He's not a monster. That would be ridiculous. He's A complex. A complex dog person.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay, so that is that. Let's get into it. We're gonna talk about Widow's Bay.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes, let's go.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Which has become the water cooler hit of late spring tv. Do we need a new word? Like, I mean people still go to the office sometimes, but like, do they gather around the water cooler? Like, what is the phrase we should be using?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I go to the office occasionally. There is not a water cooler. There is a sort of lounge space that we use as a kind of all purpose meeting, large meeting area. But I don't, I don't know. What are offices these days?

[Alan Sepinwall]

I don't know. I haven't had one since, since the fall. And I also didn't go into the Rolling Stone offices that much to begin with. But like, do we call this a text chain hit? Do we call it a Reddit hit?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Like, what's trending topic? I don't know. Because also all of everything is so niche ified. Like everyone's in their own little. It's, it's suddenly started showing up on all of our feeds.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, like I reviewed it, I really liked it and but I didn't think I was going to recap it for what's now and watching. And then all of a sudden, like everyone was going nuts about it. And so I said, all right, fine, I will do Widow's Bay. And I've been doing that since I think the third episode. All right, the show's finale will drop on Tuesday night, even though it's official premieres Wednesday. Because Apple TV is weird about time and space, much like we are talking about the Knicks and the Tesla and the Doctor. Yes, and the Doctor. The Doctor is. It's wibbly wobbly timey wimey. We are not going to talk. We've seen the finale. We are not going to talk about it at all. You don't have to worry. Okay? Not even allude to it. We will eventually be spoiling things from the first nine episodes, but we're going to talk more generally about what's working about the show first. So if you aren't caught up, we will warn you before you get there and then you can jump ahead to what I'm sure is going to be an absolute banger of a Gilligan's island conversation. All right, so Widow's Bay, created by Katie Dippold, who was a writer for a number of years on Parks and Rec, wrote some great episodes of that show, then went into the movies, wrote a number of notable movies. The Heat, the Ghostbusters, I'm trying to remember some of the others, but she's finally come back to television with the show. It is set on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. New England. Yeah, Massachusetts. It's like 60 nautical miles or something. And Matthew Rees plays the mayor, Mayor Tom, who is desperate to turn the island into a tourist spot. But that's a really bad idea because as Wick, sort of the town old coot played by the great Steven Root, keeps trying to explain to him the island is cursed, and when you start bringing people to it, they're gonna die. And it turns out the island has these periods every 20, 30 years, sometimes without rhyme or reason, where it just. It wakes up. Exactly. And then suddenly it's basically the Hellmouth from Buffy. It's not one kind of monster. It's everything. There's a clown serial killer. There's a Michael Myers style slasher, the boogeyman, there's the Sea hag. You know, all sorts of things.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And Mayor Tom has rituals, like, dark rituals that lead people to, like, walk out into the ocean.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's a bad scene.

[Alan Sepinwall]

It's a bad scene. Mayor Tom has just gotten a rave review of the island of the New York Times. And so suddenly, all these tourists are coming and bad things are happening. You know, it starts. Rhys. We mentioned Steven Root, we mentioned Kate o', Flynn, who we're going to talk a lot about as. As Mayor Tom's like, number two, Patricia. Extraordinary. Maybe the TV breakout star of the year. I mean, not maybe. Definitely.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay. Why, Catherine, has this become the trending topic of spring tv?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, it's really interesting. I am a bit of a. I'm a horror weenie. I do not like scary, scary things. If you ask my husband, he can text you the picture that he took of me while I watched. I think it was the penultimate episode of this show or the. Or maybe it was episode eight, where I was like. I had, like, a blanket half over my face as I was watching, because I didn't. I don't like it when it gets. When there's jump scares. And I know they're coming, but I will say so for horror people who are not into horror, this show is doable. Like, it's not just doable. It's super enjoyable. And so I do think there is an element where, like, you kind of. You're interested in horror, you like a lot of the ideas and themes that it often horror can play with, but you can't actually handle the somatic response of a horror thing. Widow's Bay. Completely. Completely possible.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I often use this phrase and it came up when Sinners came out last year. There's sort of again, to go back to last week. It's the Buffy the Vampire Slayer line.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show with horror horror in it, but it's not so graphic that you can't watch it. There are jump scares and there's bad stuff that happens, but it's not. It's not super gory. This show is not super gory. Although there are creepy characters that happen in it. So, yeah, like I'm. I'm a horror wimp, 100%. And I love this.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But also, I can't believe I mentioned the Boogeyman. And I just have to say, again, no spoilers, but the Widow's Bay boogeyman is not made of snot.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

No, he's. He's a. He's a. Not a. Not boogie boogeyman. Yes, the. I think that one of the other things about this show, that it's conscious of itself, but not in a way that feels snide and cynical so often. Like, I have a pretty high tolerance for shows that are very aware of themselves as shows. A lot of this is a really polarizing kind of tonal thing for people. The fleabag situation earlier this year, Vladimir was this kind of a show. And Widow's Bay is not doing full on direct to camera, like, hello, we're telling you a story right now. I am the narrator of the story. Am I being honest or am I not being honest? Like, that's not what this show is. But it is hyper conscious of horror as a genre and the parts of it that are ridiculous and the parts of this entire premise that any human person, were they experiencing it would have to at some point be like, this is absurd. This is so stupid. This is ridiculous. And so it, it is so good at activating just a very human humor response to these extreme circumstances. And at the same time, you are. I have my face half under a blanket because I am afraid because I do know that bad things are going to happen.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah.

[Acast Announcer]

And we'll.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We'll talk about some of those bad things in a couple minutes. But I want to talk first before we get into spoilers about the performances.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, well, they're casting like they're together, right?

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. Matthew Rhys, if you have ever had a chance, you know, as. As I've been lucky enough to meet him in person a number of times. But also just if you've seen him in interviews, if you've Seen him on the Wine show. The thing he does with Matthew Goode in real life, he is one of the most just ebullient, delightful, outgoing, happy people you will ever see.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And on television, he is the saddest of the sad sacks, you know. You know Philip Jennings on the Americans, he looks haunted in pretty much every frame. Unless he's. He's going line dancing. Incredible Perry Mason, sad sack in a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Like, he's the broken man who Mr. Rogers has to fix. It's just Hollywood has decided, like, no, you're sad, be sad, feel sad. That's it. And he certainly, like, there's some of that here because he's messing things up. He also has a teenage son, Evan, and we'll talk about Evan, who. Because the island is cursed, and the curse says, like, if you're born on the island, you can never leave. Tom is never gonna let Evan leave the island, and Evan is really chafing against that. And Tom's struggling with that. But he's so fucking funny on this show.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

So funny, so funny, so funny. While also keeping enough of that seriousness, that sort of haunted quality to his face that when he is deep in the shit, you're like, oh, Tom. Oh, buddy. Oh, man. This is. Don't do a. Please don't do it. One of the things that I have seen start to go viral about this show are his reactions to it. There is an episode later in the season where they're in a boat, and the boat sort of rocks suddenly, and his body does this, like, Gumby curve thing. He's such a good and understated physical performer that, yeah, oh, my God, he's incredible. One of the other. There's a couple other things about just performances and casting. One is that they. The cast and the performance, a lot of them are people who have comedy experience. A lot of the kind of minor characters are like, Chris Fleming is in it. Steven Root, obviously, is very good at being funny. There's, like, a moment briefly where Connor Ratliff shows up just, like, for two seconds, and it feels. Jeff Hiller, incredible. Dale Dickey. All of these people are really, really great at comedy timing and the ability to do comedy in this horror space. Not. Not like you're deliberately trying to be funny, but just understanding the way. Leaving space in between certain thoughts and the way deadpan expressions. All of these things, like, the. The context for the horror is being played by people who are so good at just dialing in tiny tonal differences in these performances. I think that's Cato Flynn. I. The only role that I know her in previously is My Lady Jane, a super, super, super bonkers prime TV show about Anne Boleyn and Henry viii, except also set in a world where people turn into animals. And she plays the villain in that show. She is screaming. She just is. She's so great as the Nightmare. I think she plays Catherine of Aragon. I can't remember exactly what role she's in in that show, but she is perpetually trying to poison and behead people and fantastic in it in a very over the top funny way. And so all of that is kind of in the soup of why this show works so well.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And it's weird because Steven Rood, as you say, one of our funniest.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

He is not given any comedy here. And it's like he is playing it entirely straight. Like Wick could very easily be like the weird, eccentric old man. But no, it's just he's mad. He is terrified. He knows what's happening. He brings this incredible gravity to it because he's also a tremendous dramatic actor as well. And it's this unexpected choice that I think works perfectly. And yet at the same time, there are times when he's expressing his sheer contempt for Mayor Tom.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's so funny. It's so funny. I think there's also something very smart about the fact that E. Even. And especially when he is playing it completely straight, you know that when you have Steven Root show up in like a Gordon's Fisherman coat and just open up a door and be like, island's cursed. Like, you are going to laugh. You're gonna do it.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, it's great. All right. To talk about Kato Flynn properly, I think we're. We're. Let's do some spoilers now.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's.

[Alan Sepinwall]

It's unavoidable. Well, if you haven't seen the show, it's really wonderful and well worth your time. All right, so there's an episode. It's two episodes ago. I think the Boogeyman comes after Patricia. We've established earlier in the season, Patricia is shunned by everybody else on the island because the last time the boogeyman was coming around and killing all of her high school classmates, Patricia claimed that the boogeyman came for her and she somehow escaped him.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And nobody believes that and everybody hates her.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

This all plays out in episode four, which I think is my favorite episode. Having seen the whole season, I think episode four is my favorite one.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And we. Patricia has to throw the sunset cocktails Party for the opening. For the inaugural opening of the beach. Yes. And I have tried to explain. Just sit down and explain the premise of this episode to a couple people who I know are probably never going to watch this show because they're just not tv. Not either. They're. They're. They are very selective TV viewers or they're not going to do horror things or whatever. And I just knew that they would enjoy the premise of that episode. I have sat down and tried to explain it to them. Every single time I get to the end, they go, oh, my God, that's terrible. And I'm like, no, no. But it's. But it's so funny. And, like, I can't from the outside. It's so hard to explain. Explain.

[Alan Sepinwall]

She's throw. She's throwing a party with the advice of a cursed spellbook that she doesn't realize is a cursed spell book. And there. And you're seeing this party and everyone's sort of getting drunk on the punch and having a great time. And then every now and then, the camera will pan past a mirror and you will see a reflection of what's actually happening, which is everyone standing stock still. Yeah. With their jaws open.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah.

[Acast Announcer]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. It's so creepy. It's so, like, the choice.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy)]

Creepy.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We have not mentioned the name Hiromurai.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Oh, my God.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I guess best known as, like, the lead director on Atlanta.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Hiromurai is, like, in terms of balancing tone, in terms of balancing, like, is this funny? Is this scary? Is this sad? Is this really happening? Is it a fantasy? And Hiro Mirai's answer to those questions is, yes, it's all of those things. And he is able to sort of hold those together. And he has not directed every episode. I think he did the first two and the last two. But he very clearly sets a template that the other directors on the show have been able to follow, which is why you're able to have this farce at the Sunset Cocktails and then have those horrifying, you know, glimpses in the mirror.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah. Hiro Mariah, also responsible for why Station 11 is one of the best shows of the last decade.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Hiramurai out there just. Just absolutely crushing it. One of the most important.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Can we do a Patreon on. On station 11?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes, please. Oh, God, yes. Oh, my God. But here Mariah is, I think, one of the most important TV directors sort of happening right now. No question.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We established in this Sunset Cocktails episode that nobody believes Patricia was attacked by the boogeyman all these years ago. Which is why nobody wants anything to do with her. She runs the Island Bookmobile, which has the greatest name, the Paddy Wagon. And nobody ever takes books because they hate her so much so. And she's just exasperated with everything. Her impatience with Tom is so delightful. Every time. There's a running gag in the first few episodes about, like, Tom, Tom, like most middle aged men, being more interested in younger women. And he keeps using the word age appropriate and she hates it. And finally he runs across the Sea Hag and he says, I saw this old woman out on the road. And Patricia and Cato Flynn delivers this perfectly. Just goes, was she 40? So she's really just frustrated with her life and she knows she can't leave the island and she's trying to make the best of it and she's really thirsty for companionship. And in the eighth episode, the boogeyman comes back and comes for her and it is the most like blatant Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees kind of thing ever. He's just in a mask, shuffling after her, unstoppable, immobile. It should be so, like, dumb, trite and predictable. And the way Cato Flynn plays her absolute exasperation at having to deal with this and how no one's letting her into their home and no one will listen to her and she keeps.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

She keeps doing things that are clearly going to kill him. And then somebody will run over and stop her somehow, because they're like, oh my God, Patricia, like, obviously you've just screwed up somehow again, or you're not serious or worth considering. And by the end, and her just like, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

[Alan Sepinwall]

It's so funny. And then it leads to maybe the Funniest scene of 2026 television of all time. Patricia triumphantly kills the boogeyman with the shotgun. And then we get Enya playing over a montage of Patricia in like a police, like in an ambulance, just holding the shotgun on the boogeyman the entire time. Like in the morgue and all the way to the boogeyman being burned up in a crematorium, holding the shotgun the entire time because she's not going to take a goddamn chance. No, on him getting up again where

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

it's like she's holding the shotgun into the incinerator. They close the door. You then get the shot of them opening the door and there she is, still holding the shotgun.

[Alan Sepinwall]

It's perfect.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's so good.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I want Kato Flynn to be in everything now. Like, there's sometimes you see this actor and it's like, yes, you. I'm all in forever.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I also want several. I want a full suite of Patricia action figures. I want Party Patricia, where she's in the cocktail dress and the antler, the Terry scary antler. I want Final Girl Patricia, where she has like the big pink T shirt and the bike shorts and the shotgun. I think we also need, like, end of season Patricia. Like, I. I want action figures of the whole.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I still think back to the fact that when they. They made pop figures for the leftovers. They did, they did Kevin, they did Christopher Eccleston's character, the preacher, and they did Patty from the. The Guilty Remnant. They never made a Nora Durst pop figure or action figure or anything.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Cowards.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And I'm like, what are we even doing?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Cowards.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Like, no, total cowards. And you're right. We need. We need Patricia Merch. Yes, asap. Please get on this.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

People who make merch, please help me out. So, yes, that these are all incredible. So my. I think four is still my favorite episode. Which is your favorite episode so far?

[Alan Sepinwall]

I think it's either four or it's eight. I think. I mean, I think Rhys is delightful. They did this whole drug trip episode,

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

which is so good. I hate drug trip episodes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We're so over them too. And this was perfect because the structure was he's constantly blacking out and you're only seeing him when he briefly has control of his faculties again. And clearly every time he has been doing some crazy ass shit that we're not seeing. And we just have to fill in the gaps. At one point, Patricia has him on a leash and is talking to him like a dog.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes. And there's also a part where he's like. He wakes up and he's in a meeting and he tries to say something and Patricia just looks at him. She's like, use your crayons, Tom.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, it's just. It's so great.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Chris Fleming is in that episode. Comedian Chris Fleming, who I profiled earlier this year, I am actually really happy with and proud of that profile. So if you have any interest in Chris Fleming after this, please go back and read that. I will say, at the time, I was hanging out with Chris Fleming in his cabin that's up on Lake Arrowhead. And I was like, what projects do you have coming up? And he's like, I don't think you can say this, but I'm in this show called Widow's Bay. And I was like, oh, Katie Dippold made that. And he was like, yeah, what has she ever done before? And I was like, well, she's the Babadook. She's the Babadook.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Oh yes. We haven't even mentioned that.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And he had not heard that before.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Well, explain this for people who are not as terminally online as you or I, but.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Well, Chris Fleming had heard of this before and being able to watch it wash over him that they were one and the same person and that he had made this show for this person was incredible. So there's this tweet, I think it's 13 years old now. I'm not going to be able to quote it exactly, but it is. The text of the tweet is something like when you thought you were going to a Halloween party, but it turns out it's more of an adult wine and cheese vibe. And then it is a photo of a. The most normal ass looking living room, just like a sofa and lamps and like just people all around in completely normal clothes. And then a person sitting kind of behind the couch in full Babadook costume. Black Babadook is a horror movie and the villain is the Babadook. And it's like black coat and a black top hat, like the whitest white makeup and then dark, dark eyes and a freaky wig. And this is Katie Dipple dressed as the b. Babadook.

[Alan Sepinwall]

The Babadook.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And that tweet also is basically Widows Bay as like condensed, the tone of Widow's Bay condensed into one image, which is so like as a document to have and just being able to like trace a sensibility from. From Genesis into fruition. Incredible. Incredible.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah.

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

And.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And to get back to Chris Fleming, in the most recent episode, the penultimate one of the season, there's this astonishing moment like a storm is coming. Mayor Tom has very reluctantly ordered everyone in town into the shelters, even though he knows it's going to kill the tourist trade. And he's trying to get into the city hall to get to the shelters himself. Chris Fleming walks up as the shaman.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Shaman whose name is Todd.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, Shaman Todd. Shaman Todd is being real casual about the storm, just chatting up Mayor Tom. And then all of a sudden he just gets sucked up into a cyclone or whatever, goes straight up into the air. And Mayor Tom, like can't even deal with this. He has too many other problems. He just heads on into the building and moves on. And it's.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

You see that, you see the tornado in the background. And then you see, as soon as Chris Fleming gets out of that vehicle, I was like, he's going up. And if you Go to. If you go to Chris's socials, he has posted video of or, like, video of him practicing, like, up on the wires, like, what it will be like to get sucked up into the air. So that's. That's a fun thing you can look for. And I. And I just being able to see his face and know immediately what was going to happen. Oh, my God, it's so good. There's also such a stupid gag with the lighthouse guy in that.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Oh, my God, Yes. There's a lot of that. There's all these sort of. Tom, like, hates half the people on the island. There's a running gag about a waitress named Kathy, I think.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Who just somehow works at every restaurant on the island and is always awful to him. Literally. The only complaint I have about this season is they waste Toby Huss, who's in a couple of episodes briefly as the town pastor and gets nothing to do, and then he hangs himself. There better be A, there better be a second season. But B, if there is a second season, there had better be, like, a flashback episode where you make use of

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

the great Toby Huss, have him show up as an Obi Wan ghost. That's fine. Oh, the other thing we should mention is that there is a flashback episode where Betty Gilpin plays the wife of the cursed founder of the island.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, I had mixed feelings about that one. What about you?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I really. I enjoyed it. I think. I think Betty Gilpin is fantastic. I also found Hamish Linklater's performance as the founder to be. I mean, I was. I was a little uncertain about it in that. In that flashback episode. And then he returns in the next episode, and it is. Rules it.

[Acast Announcer]

It's.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So, yes, the idea, like, here's this 300-year-old man that they've dug up, you know, who's been buried alive for centuries, and everyone's just sort of acting casually like, okay, I guess this is happening now. And the tone of the show is perfect. The other thing I forgot to mention is because Rhys and Root and o' Flynn are so good, you understand completely why everyone's writing to them primarily. But you've got Jeff Hiller, an incredible actor, so fantastic on somebody somewhere, so fantastic, has. Has very little to do on the show.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Dale Dickey finale. The finale. The last.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We're not talking about the finale. Yes, there's.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I know.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, there's more Jeff Heller there, but still see him. Dale Dickey had spent most of the season just kind of hanging around. Occasionally, she gets off something funny and sarcastic.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

But crucial. Like, if Dale Dickey's not saying, I have qualms in episode four, like, this show's not coming together.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But then you get the climactic scene of the penultimate episode where she is doing a genealogy study on the founder on Hamish Linklater's character, and she's just deadpan, running through this, like, list of tragedies to explain why different branches of the family tree never went anywhere. She's like, dead baby, dead baby lesbian. It's just incredible. Like, I want. I want a second season, period, but I also want a second season to somehow make more use of this incredible treasure trove of actors that they have assembled while still not giving us plenty of reason. O' Flynn and Root.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah. Do we want to talk about, like, we're not going to talk about the finale, obviously, because you guys have not seen it yet. But I do think one of my questions about a show like this, anytime you see a premise where your characters are working towards some kind of goal that's probably going to happen at the end of the season is like, okay, are they gonna. How much are they gonna set up a second season? Are they not gonna set up a second season? If they're going to tie it all up, are they going to leave an annoying cliffhanger? And so going into the finale, that was my big question. I don't think we want to answer what they do, but, yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

No, we don't. It's kind of the challenge of modern TV is you have these shows with these super high concept premises that feel like, okay, there's a season in this, and then we move on. But nobody wants to only make one season because there's not enough money in that. Yeah. I will say again, without talking about what happens. The hellmouth of it all. The fact that there are so many different problems on the island would seem to lend itself to at least two or three seasons, maybe more. I think they've been really inventive about it. I think they've been really smart. One of the best things about this show is because Katie Dippold started out writing for Parks and Rec, writing for episodic tv. This is an episodic goddamn show.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It is. It.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Sure.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Sure, it is.

[Alan Sepinwall]

There is the larger problem of the island, but until this, this ninth episode from last week, it is Monster of the week. Every episode, there is a different problem, a different monster. You deal with that while things are playing out in the background. It is the Buffy model. It's the X Files model. It's a model that Most of television has forgotten how to do or no longer cares to do. And I would really hope that people look at this and say, oh, you can do that. You can give people a satisfying experience within the episode while also moving the story forward so you never get anyone complaining. Oh, it's a filler episode. I don't like that.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Which I did see. I did see complaints about that for the Betty Gilpin episode.

[Alan Sepinwall]

See, my issue was more just. I didn't. I didn't have the same tonal blend as the rest of it. I appreciate that they were trying to do something different, but I don't know that I want pure, almost like 90 horror and very minimal comedy.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I still found it quite funny.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Actually, most of that episode, partly because Betty Gilpin spends the whole episode being like, what the fuck? What is happening on this crazy island? And I think because Hamish Linklater's performance is so weird, it's so off putting. I was still chuckling quite a bit.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Fair enough, fair enough. But to get back to the point, because they have this bedrock episodic structure where it's, oh, in this episode, Mayor Tom is going to spend the night in the haunted inn and he's going to play a board game called Run where you get cards in a row. It's like, not yet, not yet, not yet, now.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So because you, because you have that, I feel like there's a better foundation structurally where you could make it go for several seasons. And maybe if it does come back, and it better come back, the season two will be like, oh, no, you should have let, you know, quit while you were ahead. But this has been wonderful.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, Just an absolute treasure, even for somebody who has a real resistance to horror as like, the thing that I'm into it is it is 1 million percent worth it.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Hey, sorry to interrupt the regular episode which Catherine and I recorded this morning, but once again, the wibbly, wobbly timey wimey bits of stuff are conspiring against us. Within a few hours after we finished recording, we got an embargoed news release announcing that Apple had in fact ordered a second season of Widow's Bay. We are very excited about that. So please just take everything we said in the previous segment as confirmation that, yeah, we think it's a great idea to do another season of the show. We're excited for that. I still don't know what's happened to the Knicks, but. Go Knicks. And in fact, I've spent most of the time since we recorded this watching clips of the Knicks and Knicks fans and stuff. So Catherine doesn't know how much I'm talking about the Knicks in this pickup. And let's keep it between us, okay?

[Acast Announcer]

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[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

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[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

From Widow's Bay, we were trying to discuss what could, could possibly lead us to the same kinds of terrifying depths of existential horror that Widow's Bay provokes within us. And the only reasonable answer, we think, is Gilligan's Island, a show about the most cursed island that has ever been invented by humanity. A show where people are so trapped together that they. That like, they have lost all sense of who they are and where they are in the world. And like how time and space work, all of society is condensed down into these couple people, these idiots, these, these absolute imbeciles. And I, I mean that with both love and disdain. And the idea, honestly, I think Gilligan's island is a more frightening show than Widow's Bay. And we're gonna get into it.

[Alan Sepinwall]

All right, so let me first explain what Gilligan's island is, and then we can talk more about why this makes thematic sense to us. Even though I think originally I threw it out as a joke and you were like, yes, we absolutely have to do that.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Obviously they are the same.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Gilligan's island was a sitcom that ran from 1964 to 1967. It is among the most liked. Like, if you're from Generation X, you can sing every line of the theme song. You can recite the plot of like half the episodes of the show, at minimum. It's just one of those things that was not a big hit at the time, but lived forever in syndication because it has the most earwormy theme song of all time. That is also. Sherwood Schwartz, who created this and created the Brady Bunch, was a genius in that he made his theme songs 100% expository. So you can watch any episode and you will immediately understand what it's about. Yeah. So the story of Gilligan's island is off of Hawaii. There is a charter boat called the SS Minnow, captained by the Skipper, who in one episode is named Jonas Grumby, but otherwise is only ever referred to as the Skipper.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Oh, fun fact.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And his first mate, who in first episode you find out is Willie Gilligan. And again, he is only ever referred to as Gilligan after that. And they're taking a three hour tour with five passengers. And they are millionaire Thurston Howell III and his wife, Lovey. Movie star Ginger Grant. And Midwestern girl next door, Marianne, I forget her last name. And a high school science teacher who I think, again, in the first episode it's called Roy Hinckley, but after that is only known ever as the Professor. This is a three hour tour. Keep in mind, it's a three hour tour. There's a big storm, the Minnow gets lost, washes up on the shore of an uncharted desert isle, to quote the theme song. And then they're trapped there for years. But conveniently, the Howells and Ginger brought like weeks worth of changes of clothes. The Howls brought like an entire collection of records, even though they don't have a record player. The professor, it turns out, can build anything, anything out of bamboo. So he's made a bamboo record player. In one of the two episodes we're mostly going to talk about, there's a bamboo taxi cab.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Where does the electricity come from?

[Alan Sepinwall]

I think it's more of a Flintstones kind of thing, where you're moving it with your feet. Yeah, but Regardless, like they, they build huts, they build, you know, all sorts of things. He can build anything out of bamboo and coconuts except a new boat to get them off the island.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And so in every episode of the. Not every episode, but in many episodes of the show, they come up with a scheme to get off the island and Gilligan or someone else will mess it up. Or as happens in the episodes we're going to talk about, a visitor comes to the island and for reasons the visitor does not rescue them. And so it's just, it's Sisyphus rolling that rock up and down the hill.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's incredible.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Over and over and over again.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, I should mention on my. A podcast that I did several years ago with friends of mine, Andrew Cunningham and Margaret Willison, we did talk about Gilligan's island. And in some of those episodes I go fully insane. And so if this is a conversation that you need more of, you're welcome to look up me spiraling into some kind of full on ego break. But I did.

[Alan Sepinwall]

What was the other podcast called, Katherine?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Well, that one was. So that one was called Appointment Television. Andrew Cunningham and I then also did the Bones Zone, which was a spin off of Appointment Television.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But Bones Zone, what is that about?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

So it's actually about anatomy. It's a show about anatomy and we talk about the zones, the various zones of your bones.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And anyway, I bring that up because I truly believe that there is no way to talk about Gilligan's island without immediately like experience, like your brain just has to split apart as the cognitive dissonance of the premise of this thing washes over you. I. It's bananas.

[Alan Sepinwall]

No, it is, because it's the thing about like pre, you know, late 90s television, you know, or even pre 80s television, when you get into things like Hill Street Blues or even Cheers, where the idea of television was every episode has to be entirely self contained. We don't even want a real series finale. Because if you're. The goal with every show was to make it to syndication because that's where the money was. And so where your episodes were rerun over and over again on local channel channels. And so as a result, you want every episode to be something that someone can put on without having seen any other episode and be okay. And if they watch one episode on a Monday, they need to be like. And they, and they put on the one on Tuesday, they're fine. So if the finale of the show, which is a definitive ending, airs on Wednesday, you risk the person not tuning in on Thursday. And so here's a show. You have a lot of shows like this where they've got a high concept premise where you can never resolve the premise because then the show is over. Over. And so this is maybe the most sort of striking example of that. Where they're trapped on the island. Over and over. They are given different ways where they should be able to get off, and it never works. There's one where a robot washes up on the island. Yes, a robot washes up on the island and they figure out how to reprogram it so that it can then walk along. They first try to teach it to swim and that doesn't work. And eventually they figure out. But the robot can just walk along the ocean floor back to Hawaii to relay a message to the authorities about exactly where the seven stranded castaways are. But you know what happens, Catherine? Gilligan places his lucky rabbit's foot inside the robot.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Gilligan.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I did not look any of this up. This is just all stored in my noodle forever.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Wow.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Puts his lucky rabbit's foot in the robot. It demagnetizes the stuff that they recorded. And so therefore the robot gets back to civilization and they. And no one has any idea what happened. And they have a radio where they can always hear exactly why their latest plan has failed.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Richardson]

Wow.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Okay, so the episodes that we are talking about, I requested that we look at a couple ones in particular because for me, you have to engage with Gilligan on two different levels to really fully appreciate it. One is the one that you've been talking about, which is the overarching Sisyphusian. Sisyphean futility, I think Sisyphusian.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But maybe. Yes, tell us. Shout out in the comments while you're in the middle of giving us a five star rating and a review. And all of these things that really help make the podcast, you know, grow.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Absolutely. The kind of wide angle lens. It is completely insane that these people have all of these opportunities to leave and then never do element of Gilligan. But then you also have to examine it in the hyper specific ways that this show makes the dumbest possible choices over and over and over again. So the first one that you picked out was one called the Friendly Physician. I don't know if I had ever seen this particular one before.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, this is a famous one. So a scientist shows up on the island in like a motorboat and he says, I live on an island nearby. I have found you.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I'm gonna rest in all of their many Years of being on this island, they have never discovered that there was this other island right next by so close that you could just zip over on a motorboat.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. So he takes. First he takes Gilligan and the skipper back, and then eventually he brings the others. And on this other island is like a Gothic castle.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes. Where did they get the supply in

[Alan Sepinwall]

the middle of the South Pacific?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Where did they get the supplies to build the Gothic castle?

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. All right. And it turns out that this person is a mad scientist with an assistant named Igor, and he has been working on an experiment where he can basically do body swaps. He can swap one person's mind into another. He started out on animals, so he has a dog that meows and a cat that barks. And eventually, because Igor is superhumanly strong, he's able to imprison all of the castaways in his dungeon, and he begins swapping them one at a time. Let me see if I can remember this. Gilligan swaps with Mr. Howell. The professor swaps with Marianne. The skipper swaps with Mrs. Howell. And then as a twist at the end, which is what saves the castaways, Igor decides he would really rather be Ginger. And look, trans representation matters 1 million percent.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

This is a trans rights podcast. And, you know, in this era, frankly, I think Igor should be anyone that Igor wants to be.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. And when Igor is in Ginger's body, Igor says it feels good. And I want Igor to live igor's truth.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Absolutely, 1 million percent. However, I do have other questions.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay, well, I will let you answer those, but just to finish summing up, because as we noted last time, these episodes are not like on a streaming service, but we rented them to watch them. Because Ginger is now in Igor's super strong body, she is able to break the chains and free them. And eventually they are able to force Igor and the mad scientist into one booth and the dog and the cat into the other. And so suddenly, the mad scientist and Igor are a dog and a cat and vice versa. The mad scientist turns up again in season three and has somehow restored himself, and I don't know why that's happened. Do you want to know what that episode's about? Catherine, please. The mad scientist has come up with a mind control device where he can turn the castaways into human robots so that he can use them to rob Fort Knox.

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

What?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Why would. How are they gonna get back to Fort Knox?

[Alan Sepinwall]

I don't know. I don't know. Okay.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Oh, God.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So, all right, so they. They take the boat. They're all restored to their own bodies, much to everyone's relief, especially poor Ginger, who was really understandably upset. They get back to the island in the little motorboat and they're planning, all right, let's gather up all our supplies, get in, go. And the boat sinks immediately. So that's, that's one. Should we talk about the episode?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

The episode's called the Producer, and this one is one that I have seen before. The premise of the Producer is that they are listening to the radio, which they have, and the radio and has perfect signal. And the radio announces that famous film. And like Hollywood producer Harold Hecuba is doing a worldwide tour in search of his next project. And then somehow he ends up like, capsizing or like getting stuck on this island. I can't even.

[Alan Sepinwall]

No, he doesn't even get stuck. He just kind of lands. He lands and he has like this tricked out, pimped out, like inflatable boat that he is able to come in with lots of supplies. And he like takes over. He starts ordering everyone around. The Howls suddenly have to act as his servants. And for whatever reason, they have a butler and a maid uniform handy to wear.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

They brought that.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Ginger tries to to impress him with her acting ability. And this is a scene that my sisters used to quote all the time when we were kids. She's like, I bring you bread, I bring you water. She's like. She's first trying to be like, you know, a Romani, like blue collar waitress. And then she does her full Marilyn Monroe with a platinum blonde wig, which she also conveniently has on the island.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Has on the island. Yes, yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And that doesn't really. And heck, you both think she's a bad actress. And I feel bad because it's one of the funnier things that Tina Louise gets to do on the show when she's moving mostly just asked to be hot. And we'll talk about that too, because it's an important Gilligan's island question.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It is.

[Alan Sepinwall]

But they eventually come up with an idea, and it's a bad idea because there's another episode where a band who are basically the Beatles come to the island and the castaways figure out the way we'll get them to take us away is we will introduce a second band that they will love and the three women on the island become the Honeybees. And instead the Beatlesque band are threatened by how good the Honeybees are and leave without them.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes, yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So they should already know that this particular philosophical approach. Very bad idea. Terrible. Don't do it. But they decide we're gonna stage a musical version of Hamlet, mostly like using the songs from Carmen.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

They also all, by the way, conveniently know all of Hamlet.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. Then no, because they. Among the books that they have brought to them on the island is a copy of Hamlet. And again, the Howls are brought a whole record collection.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

They stage it in the course of like, what, six hours or something. So they use one single copy of Hamlet for all of them to put on a performance, a musical. They build a stage, they make costumes. They. They have Carmen.

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

They.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

They set all of the lyrics to. To Carmen. It's. Is it. There's not really. Is it a musical or is it more of like an operetta? Because it does feel like most of it is musical.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, we really only hear the songs, you know, it's. You know, Gilligan is Hamlet. I asked two people or not to be. And that is the question that I ask of me, you know, and, you know, neither a borrower nor a lender be. Yes, exactly. If you've ever seen that episode even once, you will be able to do that forever. And again, that's the thing about this show is it's. There are a lot of other high concept shows from the 60s that were more popular at the time, but they are not sticky in the way that this is and the way that the Brady Bunch is, because the plots are so simple, but also so weird, so strange.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

And then inevitably, Harold Hecuba manages. They. They literally just wake up one morning. They're like, He's. He loves this so much. He's. And he gets into it. He's like, I'm going to help you put on the better version. And then he starts performing a like, sped up version of the thing because it wants to. He needs to be snappier. And so you have the professor, like, he's turning the crank on the, on the record player faster to make the tempos faster. And Harold Hekuba is just running in and out back behind the stage, like, changing into all of the costumes. And he comes out in the giant Polonius costume and whatever, and they're like, oh, my God, we did it. He loves our Hamlet musical. We are finally going to be rescued. And they wake up the morning and he's just like, hey, I left. And they're like, what? What? Why did. Why didn't they just. Ella, why didn't they just get in the boat? Why didn't they.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes, these are. These are good questions. And instead Hecuba left them behind. So he could steal their idea.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes. They turn on the radio and they're like, good news.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Harold Hecuba has been found with his greatest idea ever, a musical Hamlet.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Only he could come up with it.

[James Richardson]

Yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And it's. By the way, I didn't mention. It's Phil Silver's the great, like, you know, 1950s and 1960s comedy TV star as Harold Hekuba. It's just poor. The poor castaways. It never works out for them.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It is. There's something about Matthew Rhys in Widow's Bay, the kind of Sisyphean, but it's also the sort of Charlie and the football problem where it's like he just wants to keep over and over again. And it's so. And he is aware, he is conscious of how sad it is that he is trying over and over again to make this island into a tourist destination and to fix it. And it's never gonna work. And the way that these people on this island are never able to adequately

[Alan Sepinwall]

grapple with on Gilligan's island now, not Widow's Bay.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

On Gilligan's island, the way that they just wake up every single morning greeted afresh by. By hope. Hope that is dashed over and over and over again. It is. It is truly one of the 20th century's most just. It's like a Camus novel. It is like the depth of their complete, utter existential nightmare. I can't. If I look at it too hard, like, I will just have to go to bed for the rest.

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

Rest of the day.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And in fairness, not every episode is about their inability to get off the island. There's other ones. There's one where Marianne get. Gets hit on the head and wakes up thinking that she is ginger and everyone else has to play along with it. And very briefly, Gilligan is hypnotized into thinking he's Marianne. So we've got that. There's a number of super racist episodes involving like native islanders. The very last episode of the show is all the male castaways get in drag so the. That one like Gilligan can try to seduce the cannibal chief to keep them from eating everybody. Again, trans representation. It's just, it's. It's a weird show. But yeah, the great majority of them is we try to get off the island, we fail and we wake up the next day and we act like everything is fine.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I guess there's something beautiful about it because what other choice do you have if you're Gilligan?

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

Yes, it's.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's a, like, you know, we are the. They didn't know that we were the seeds kind of a thing. Like, they just have to keep trying over and over. It's a lesson, I think.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I think you had some specific questions about the friendly physician, so let's go back to that.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I just want to. Okay. Other than the elements, where it's like a Gothic island. Like, how did the Gothic island get onto this Pacific island? How did all of the supplies get there? How did Igor get there? Where is he getting all of the food that they eat? How are they importing these domesticated animals, which are a crucial part of the thing? There is a lot. When he swaps them. When he does the body swaps, you learn this first because he swaps a cat with a dog, and Gilligan walks up to the dog and the dog goes, meow. And this doesn't make any sense because. Because it would be a cat's brain, like, mind, but it would still have the dog's vocal cords. Like, the dog can't make those sounds physically. Is an entirely different anatomical structure that's happening. The cats purr and dogs bark. And it's not because they woke up one morning and they were like, you know what feels like a way to say how I feel? Woof. It's because inside of their. So swapping, their bodies shouldn't change. And then when it. When it's the people, it's even crazier because you have. You have Igor's voice coming. Like, that's not how. Mind swapping.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah. Igor's voice is coming out of Ginger's body and vice versa.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It. That's not. So what. How does it actually. How does the science work?

[Alan Sepinwall]

I. I mean, look, everyone's got to draw a line. You've drawn your line here. I respect that. I do think that they're like, I. My friends make fun of me online for this. I'm sort of a sucker for, like, body swaps. I just think it's always. Even if it's terrible, it's kind of fun. There is a history of this, and especially when you go back to early stuff like the 60s or the 50s or the 40s, where they will do that just because I guess they didn't trust the audience enough to understand. Like, if the performer is saying, you know, yeah, if Russell Johnson is trying to play Marianne but using his own voice and he's doing the posture and everything, people are not gonna necessarily buy that, you know, or be able to follow it. But, yeah, it's. It's odd.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It is.

[Alan Sepinwall]

It's I'll grant you that it's odd.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's. I think it's slightly more than odd, Alan. I think it's like, just. If anyone sat down for two seconds and was like, how was this? Actually.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, okay. The other question again, you're. How much Gilligan's island did you even see, like, when you were younger? Because you. It was not really in syndication by the time you were growing up.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It was a Nick at night kind of a thing.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Oh, yes.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

There's a variety of shows that I experienced primarily through watching them. Either, like, early morning, they would happen to be on, or Nick at night, and then my mother coming in and being like, how can you watch this? This is the lowest form of art humanity has ever deigned to create. Gilligan was on that list. Another big one was the Monkees, which I enjoyed very much, and she found to be abhorrent. And so I was fascinated by it whenever I saw it because of how I was like, they're never gonna cause it. Just out of context as a kid. Because also, the theme song is so catchy. Right. And you're like, yes, it catches you that way. But it was. It was really. I probably watched 8 to 12 episodes just scattered around syndication.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So among the things that pretty much everyone in Generation X talks about all the time, and in hindsight, it's maybe not our finest moment, is the whole Ginger or Marianne question, where it's, you know, do. Are you attracted to the wholesome Midwestern girl or the redheaded bombshell? Do you have thoughts on this?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Well, my thought is that it's absolutely insane that you would look at this show, all of the things about this show, and your response would be, which one do I want to make it with that girl or that girl? Like, it's completely. Like, it would take me months of watch. Like, I can't. And I understand. It's because you guys only had, like, four shows at the time.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes. There's only four shows. And this idea of, like, being stranded on a desert island with these two gorgeous women, you know, men are dogs. And that's just what goes through your head. Even though the actual men on the island, other than Thurston Howell, who is very, very hot for Lovey and vice versa, the other men on the island are just completely sexless.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes.

[Alan Sepinwall]

You know, it's. It's like a Marvel movie movie.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It is. You know, well, Gilligan. It's unclear if Gilligan's even human at some points.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Like, it's hard for me to even enter into the question because it's like the premise of the question being there is that being the thing that you want to ask about. What's happening is so far down my list.

[Alan Sepinwall]

I respect that and I apologize on behalf of my cohort.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Alan, who do you want to make it with, Ginger or Marianne?

[Alan Sepinwall]

I. When I. When I was young, I was a ginger guy because I'm just basic in that way. Now I have no opinion because I love my wife.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

All right. It's a beautiful, beautiful answer. Okay.

[James Richardson]

All right.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So no, no, before we go. Yes, there were three Gilligan's island reunion movies. The last episode of the show, as I said, is the one where Gilligan gets in drag to seduce the cannibal chief.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's beautiful.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay, so there's no, there's no closure within the show. So then in the 70s, or maybe the early 80s, they did three. The first is called Rescue from Gilligan's is Island. They're able to finally, after all these years, build a boat. Maybe like a boat. A boat washes on shore. And they're able to use that, along with the professor's genius with coconuts and the trees, bamboo, to put it all together. And they get off the island, they get back to Hawaii, they're hailed as heroes. Everyone loves them. Ginger's career as a movie actress is bigger than ever because now she's famous for this. And they decide to celebrate their rescue. You know what they do do?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

They get on a boat.

[Alan Sepinwall]

They get on a boat. And do you know what happens after that, Catherine? You want to guess?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Does it get stuck on an island?

[Alan Sepinwall]

Same island. Same island.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Same island.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yes.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's not even a new island.

[Alan Sepinwall]

No, because. Because that way all their stuff is still there. So at least they don't have to start over. Okay.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yep.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Then there is the castaways on Gilligan's island, where again, they finally build a boat. They get off the. They're able to get off the island this time. They are rescued, I think in the middle of the ocean, close enough to the island that they're able to go back to it. So now everybody knows where Gilligan's island is. Thurston Howell, like, somehow, through shenanigans and his millions, buys the island. They turn it into a resort. So, like, at least half of this movie is basically a backdoor pilot for a Love Boat esque spin off where the castaways run a resort on Gilligan's Island. This does not get turned into a series.

[James Richardson]

Why?

[Alan Sepinwall]

Because you. It has to. Instead, we have to get the greatest thing that television has ever given us in our entire lives. The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. Which brings us back to basketball, which was not my intention, but is the famous barn storing basketball team know, famous for their trickeration and playing to Sweet Georgia Brown. They are among the guests at the resort. The last movie is just, you know, different stories about being on the island, different couples, you know, having romantic problems and all of that. But the, the Globetrotters are among the guests. There is also a different mad scientist who has built a different like breed of robots. And he like has. I think he's bent on world domination, but I don't. Don't fact check me on this part. The important part is, is in order to foil the plans of this scientist, the Globetrotters have to challenge the robots to a basketball game.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It's like a Doctor who episode.

[Alan Sepinwall]

It really is. And the professor convinces the Globetrotters this is no time for fooling around. You have to play straight. None of your, like, you know, hiding the ball and you know, dribbling its island.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

You better be serious about this, you

[Alan Sepinwall]

know, spinning it off your finger. None of that. Just play straight. The Globetrotters are playing straight and they're being absolutely destroyed by these robots. And finally they realize midway through, no Globetrotters, just do your thing. And the professor uses the hand cranked record player to play Sweet Georgia Brown. And the Globetrotters beat the robots and humanity is saved. This is a thing that aired on television.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

You know, I feel like we've lost. There are things we've lost.

[Alan Sepinwall]

We really. I was going to say the exact thing, like objectively, television is, is quote unquote better now. Yeah, but is it?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

No, I mean we've. There was a. There was a version of us that was able to do this incredibly racist, sexist, and yet stupid storytelling that I, I think we should. We can't, we can't lose entirely.

[Alan Sepinwall]

No, I. There. There are definitely things that we have abandoned in our pursuit of equality that I think would like to go back to what cost. Not, not so much the racism. I don't want that to come back.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Or the sexism. I think we could leave no sexism.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Absolutely. However, if. If Widow's Bay wanted to do an episode where Mayor Tom and Patricia swapped bodies. Free idea, Katie Dippold. I will not ask for a credit or anything.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah, I was going to say Harlem Globetrotters, but sure, yours could work too.

[Alan Sepinwall]

What if Patricia swaps bodies with one of the Globetrotters?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yep, yep.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And she's like, this is awesome. Nobody thinks I'm Patricia. I can make friends now.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Oh, yeah.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And also, I can reach things on high shelves.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yeah. All right. Call us, Katie Tippold. We don't even need a writer's credit.

[Alan Sepinwall]

No, nothing. We want no money. We just want this to exist.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

We just want it to happen.

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

Yep.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Katherine, was the TV good this week?

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

It was really good. It was. It was really. It was really, really good. Good.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Okay, so as always, you can find my writing at what'sallanwatching.com, you can find katherine'sulture.com, you can pre order my Rod Serling book. That'll be in the show notes as well. Next week, we will be heading back to Westeros for season three of House of the Dragon. Will I finally like it? You have to listen to find out. Catherine, what did you decide? We should pair a House of the Dragon discussion with.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

We are going to be watching the finale of Dinosaurs. This is an episode of television that I have heard about for my entire life, basically my entire conscious life, but I have never actually seen. And now's gonna be the time.

[Alan Sepinwall]

So that's on Disney plus. It's the last episode of, I believe, the fourth season. Regardless, it's the last episode of Dinosaurs. It really is something that if you care enough about TV to be listening to this podcast, you. You should witness at some point in your life. So we are happy to bring that to you.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Yes. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. It is the only way we can defeat the algorithmic robots who keep washing up on our island.

[Alan Sepinwall]

Yeah, because we don't have a record player that can play Sweet Georgia Brown, nor are we good at basketball. I'm good at watching basketball, but not playing it. So you have to help us defeat the algorithm. Because. Because we hate the algorithm. But we love tv.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

We love tv. Thanks to Joe Kennedy for our theme music and Kate Bergener for our artwork. And thank you, of course, to Riley Ralph for editing.

[Alan Sepinwall]

And thank you for listening.

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[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

if you've ever dreamed of quitting your job to take your side hustle full time. Listen up. This is Nikayla Matthews Akom, host of side Hustle Pro, a podcast that helps you build and grow from passion project to profitable business. Every week, you'll hear from guests just like you who wanted to start a business on the side. If you can't run a side hustle, you can't run a business. They share real tips. And so I started connecting with all these people on link and I thought Target supplier diversity was having office hours.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy)]

Real advice Procrastination is the easiest form

[Nikayla Matthews Akome]

of resistance and the actual strategies they use to turn their side Hustle into their main hustle. Getting back in touch with your tangible cash and sitting down and learning to give your money a job like it changes something. Check out Side Hustle Pro every week on your favorite podcast app and YouTube

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Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere acast.com acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

Do you want to know the best part about being married to a woman?

[Stephen (Smash Daddy)]

That there's no man involved.

[Kathryn Van Arendonk]

I mean, true, but I was gonna say that it's a sleepover every single night with your best friend. Oh yeah, that part's cute too. I'm Taryn. She's Cami. We're married. And staying up is our weekly pillow talk out loud with you. We're giggling, we're gossiping, we're arguing. Classic marriage stuff. Just having fun being wives while we navigate growing up and building a family together. Then our sleepover grows. Our listeners call the Pee Pee Hotline with their own gossip, burning questions, late night spirals, all the stuff they'd only tell their best friends. So it's a private sleepover, but you are invited. Staying up with Taryn and Cami. New episodes weekly follow wherever you listen.

[Acast Announcer]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcast everywhere acest. Com.