16. ‘Gilligan’s Island’

What should have been a three-hour tour turned into a castaway situation when, as the song says, Gilligan, the Skipper, Mary-Ann, the Professor, and Ginger (the movie star, obviously) encountered a tropical storm aboard the SS Minnow and shipwrecked on an uncharted island off the coast of Hawaii. Show creator Sherwood Schwartz hated exposition, so instead of setting up the series in the pilot, he used the theme song, "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" to tell the story of how the gang got stuck on the island.