![]() ![]() Gilligan, for instance, was not The Tempest, but it worked with a classic setup later emulated by Survivor and Lost and TV shows that did not take place on desert islands: take a group of very different people, from all classes of society, strand them together and see what happens. But Schwartz had a knack for the kind of premise, simple but flexible, that would provide endless setups and hit a sweet spot of audience identification. It’s not that his shows were secretly more sophisticated than they claimed to be: they were broad comedies with wacky misunderstandings, coconut phones and theme songs (which he wrote himself) that told you exactly who all the characters were and how they got together. Schwartz, we all know, had the last laughs. ![]() (Minow, reportedly, took the dig in good humor.) (Among Schwartz’s pre-Gilligan credits, he was a script consultant for My Favorite Martian.) It also contained one of TV’s best inside jokes, aimed at one of TV sitcoms’ most famous critics, former FCC chair Newton Minow, who decried TV’s “vast wasteland”-and for whom Schwartz named the doomed S. In particular, Gilligan-which stranded seven castaways, and occasionally the Harlem Globetrotters, on an island for three seasons and numerous reunions-was one of the most notorious high-concept sitcoms of a TV decade dominated by genies, witches and Martians. Therefore, naturally, those were also two of the ’60s and ’70s sitcoms most fondly remembered today by the adults who watched them decades ago. Schwartz, who died today at age 94, was the creator of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, two sitcoms that were practically critical shorthand for ridiculous and/or lightweight comedy. Follow the height of his TV-writing career, Sherwood Schwartz probably did not particularly anticipate being eulogized by TV critics. ![]()
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