5 Worst Episodes Of Gilligan's Island, According To IMDb

"Gilligan's Island" may not have been one of the best shows of the 1970s, but the sitcom is certainly one of the most beloved despite not having been on for as long as you might assume. CBS only aired three seasons before unexpectedly canceling "Gilligan's Island" in 1967. Even with that sudden ending, a run of 98 episodes was enough to ensure that the sitcom had an enduring place in television history ... even if some of those episodes weren't very good.

Taste is subjective, of course, but thanks to IMDb's user ratings, we can get a pretty good idea about which episodes of "Gilligan's Island" fans liked and which ones they didn't. The most poorly rated episodes include a guest appearance by a glamorous actress, a talking parrot played by an iconic voice actor, and not one but two episodes featuring gorillas. Despite these gimmicks (or, perhaps, because of them) the following five episodes of "Gilligan's Island" are considered the worst the show had to offer, as decided by viewers. (The bottom five are accurate at the time of writing; it's possible that the order might change if more IMDb users rate the series.) The "Gilligan's Island" TV movies are not included on this list, though they'd probably belong here given their low ratings on IMDb.

Originally airing on May 22, 1965, "Goodbye Old Paint" was the 34th episode of "Gilligan's Island" Season 1. The half-hour revealed that the castaways were not alone on the island. After Gilligan (Bob Denver) walks by a painting he's never seen before, the castaways discover that Alexandri Gregor Dubov, a Soviet abstract painter, is also stranded on the tropical island, having disappeared a decade earlier. Dubov, played by character actor Harold J. Stone, starts making demands of the castaways and claiming he has a transmitter that could get them all rescued. The castaways try to take advantage of Dubov's sizable ego by praising and then belittling his art, but Dubov ultimately decides to sail off on a raft made of paintings. He leaves the transmitter behind, but it's too rusted to be useful.

As a character, Dubov is deliberately unpleasant. The castaways may have wished his transmitter wasn't broken, but they were glad to be rid of him, and the "Gilligan's Island" audience might have been, too. A user review on IMDb called him "the most obnoxious guest star of the first season," writing that unlike other temporary visitors to the island, "he isn't a charismatic or quirky scene stealer and doesn't elevate the acting of the other cast members." That might account for why "Goodbye Old Paint" is near the bottom of the rankings, with 6.7 stars overall.

Gorillas are native to Africa, which is thousands of miles away from the Pacific Ocean where the titular island on "Gilligan's Island" is located. Nevertheless, the great ape appears multiple times on the sitcom. Hungarian stuntman and actor Janos Prohaska wore the costume and played the gorilla on all these occasions, and the "Gilligan's Island" ape performer later appeared in a few episodes of "Star Trek."

The gorilla's first appearance was "Diamonds Are an Ape's Best Friend," which aired on February 27, 1965, as the 22nd episode of the show, receiving a 6.7 star rating on IMDb. The plot kicks off when Mrs. Howell (Natalie Schafer) discovers that a piece of her jewelry has been stolen. Eventually, they learn that a gorilla that lives on the island stole the brooch because it was enamored with her perfume, and the ape goes King Kong on Mrs. Howell and abducts her. Gilligan and the other castaways try to rescue her, only for Gilligan to accidentally cover himself in the perfume and get abducted himself. He escapes when the gorilla runs off with a lady-ape.

"If you can get past the goofiness of the castaways being menaced by a gorilla with an appreciation for jewelry, this isn't a half-bad episode," one user review on IMDb reads, damning "Diamonds Are an Ape's Best Friend" with faint praise.

Every once in a while, "Gilligan's Island" does acknowledge how horrifyingly sad the premise of the show is, like in the 11th episode of Season 1. Originally airing on December 12, 1964, "Angel on the Island" has Ginger (Tina Louise, the only surviving member of the main "Gilligan's Island" cast) heartbroken because she's missing her debut on Broadway. To cheer her up, Gilligan suggests they stage a production of the play, "A Pyramid Built for Two," on the island and encourages Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus) to fund a production of the play upon their rescue. However, Mrs. Howell inserts herself as the new lead actress, hurting Ginger's feelings in the process.

Mrs. Howell comes to her senses by the end of the episode, which earned 6.7 stars on average from IMDb users. She does the right thing and makes up with Ginger, but a user review on IMDb noted that it was "a little uncomfortable" to see Mrs. Howell coming across as "selfish, mean spirited and out of character."

Notably, "Angel on the Island" is one of a few episodes of "Gilligan's Island" to feature the voice of Mel Blanc. The iconic voice actor behind many of the Looney Tunes characters played a parrot who called the Skipper's acting "terrible."

The gorilla, once more played by Janos Prohaska in his ape suit, returns to "Gilligan's Island" and once more the results are underwhelming. "Foward March," which aired on February 17, 1966 as Episode 22 of Season 2, opens with the castaways under attack. Somebody is throwing grenades at them, which prompts Mr. Howell to declare himself General and launch a counterattack. It turns out their enemy is a gorilla that stumbled upon an old World War II weapons stash and is imitating the soldiers he saw during the war. (Once again, it remains unclear why a gorilla would be within thousands of miles of the Pacific Theater.) Gilligan saves the day by befriending the ape and teaching him to chuck the grenades across the lagoon rather than at them.

"Its main problem is that the plot and most of the situations are lifted from earlier, much better episodes, giving the whole exercise a recycled feel," an IMDb user review says. "Most of the gags don't land or barely qualify as gags; even the laugh track struggles to make it through this one."

However, not all IMDb users hate "Forward March," even if it received the relatively low rating of 6.6 stars. In a dissenting opinion, another reviewer called it "a Top 15 episode wrongly maligned on this site." Their positive review wasn't enough to raise the average rating of "Forward March" and keep it out of the bottom five, however.

Plenty of famous people appeared on "Gilligan's Island" but none were more glamorous than Zsa Zsa Gabor. The socialite and actress, who was arguably as famous for her public image and many marriages than her acting (if not more so), played the title character in "Erika Tiffany-Smith to the Rescue." Originally airing on December 30, 1965 as the 15th episode of Season 2, the half-hour begins when Erika, a rich socialite not unlike Gabor herself, arrives on the island while looking for a place to build a tropical resort. She quickly causes drama among the castaways; Mrs. Howell is mad because she has a higher social status, Mr. Howell wants to make a business deal, and the Professor has no idea that this gorgeous rich woman is attracted to him. The episode ends with Erika sailing off while promising to come back for them, but she never does. It turns out she didn't write down the coordinates of the castaways' island and neither she nor the Navy can find them again. Oops.

Despite being the lowest-rated episode of "Gilligan's Island" on IMDb (as of this publishing), IMDb users didn't seem to go to the trouble of writing a negative review. Indeed, there are some positive reviews of "Erika Tiffany-Smith to the Rescue." However, in the aforementioned positive review of the ape-centric episode "Forward March," the IMDb user takes umbrage that the widely maligned half-hour is compared with "Erika Tiffany-Smith to the Rescue," which they call "a complete dog."