It's generally believed that Gilligan 'messed up every rescue attempt'.

But actually, he didn't.

In 'You've Been Disconnected', he covered the exposed telephone wires with rubber to prevent them from getting wet in the rain. This was in actual fact a GOOD IDEA, and it wasn't his fault the storm swept the cable back out to sea, where the corroded wires would have alerted the phone company and made them come out to do repairs.

Guaranteed if anyone else had insulated the wires, the cable would not have been swept out to sea and they would have been applauded.

Which means that the evil scriptwriters turned it about so that Gilligan could never win, however hard he tried to do things right.

I actually read something not too long ago that gave the statistics. Number of episodes, number of episodes involving a rescue attempt, the number that G Man messed up and the number that he didn't mess up and there were quite a few in that last category. Poor guy will always be the scapegoat.

In Goodbye Island it's actually Skipper's fault the boat falls apart b/c he says he coated the entire thing with the glue. So there.

In Goodbye Island it's actually Skipper's fault the boat falls apart b/c he says he coated the entire thing with the glue. So there.

And it's Gilligan who discovers that the glue is only temporary and rushes to tell them, and predictably gets shouted at.

In President Gilligan they didn't even want to help Gilligan build a lookout tower, the one thing that probably WOULD get them rescued if a plane flew overhead. Nah, they were 'too busy'. Even the Professor.

In Splashdown, it's the Professor who kicks the burning log back the other way so that it reads SOL instead of SOS.

And in Ship Ahoax, Skipper pulls Gilligan away just as he's about to light the signal fire. And then the big ol' cruise ship floats by.