Is “Lost” today’s answer to “Gilligan’s Island”? I don’t know — it’s about a motley crew of characters stranded on an island with no way to get home, who have no choice but to cope with their differences to get along. Instead of “the Others,” Gilligan’s Island had the natives (vaguely Polynesian). And instead of desperate drive to get off, the cast of Gilligan’s Island kind of made the best of things, creating homes with a strong Tikki aesthetic. I don’t know if it’s as strongly correlated as “Sex and the City” and the “Golden Girls,” but it was something I was thinking. (And yeah, the whole native thing being quasi Asian would probably give me the willies today. I’m not as innocent as my friend’s two girls, with whom I watched “Peter Pan” recently, as they blissfully watched Peter’s adventures with the “how”-speaking, red Indians.)
I just remembered this a.m. the episode where Ginger and Mary-Ann try to make over a native, heavy set woman with makeup, and the native ends up eating the lipstick. It was such a striking, odd thing to do, I think about it years later. See, TV writers? You can make a difference!