During "The Second Ginger Grant," immediately after Mary Ann faints upon seeing Ginger at the laundry line. I'm trying to explore other characters, especially Ginger, who I've grown to really like after spending my childhood not understanding her.
I'm Not That Girl
"I told you! I told you!" Gilligan was on his knees in the sand, gently brushing the hair away from the unconscious Mary Ann's face.
The unconscious Ginger's face?
Gilligan was getting confused. When Ginger had her wig on and there were two brunettes and no redheads, but technically two Gingers and no Mary Anns, his head spun. But he followed Mary Ann – the real one, the little one – around all day, hovering behind her, almost stalking her, which she seemed to enjoy, only leaving her side once when he ran away from her insistent and rather desperate attempts at rehearsing a love scene with him and was sent straight back by the Skipper and his own conscience, which kept whispering to him that she wasn't acting quite as much like Ginger as Ginger would. He needed to make sure that she was okay, that she didn't do anything that her real self wouldn't approve of when she came back.
If she came back.
He hoped she'd come back.
He really wanted her to come back.
Two Gingers were sometimes two Gingers too many. Like right now.
The real Ginger was kneeling across from him, her eyes wide with horror. Her red hair glinted in the sunlight, clashing horribly with the red gingham dress she wore. "Gilligan, I'm sorry!" she blurted. "I didn't think she'd be up yet!"
Ginger reached out gently to stroke Mary Ann's hair, but Gilligan pushed her hands away. "Never mind," he snapped and Ginger sat back in alarm.
"Gilligan, I told you she was still asleep when I left the hut! She was up all night cutting my dresses in half!"
Gilligan paused from where he was gathering Mary Ann into his arms. "No one cares about your dresses. Mary Ann has a psychial ... a psycho ... I don't remember what it's called, but it's bad! The Professor told you to wear your wig!"
Ginger watched as Gilligan stood, effortlessly lifting the unconscious Mary Ann off the ground. Ginger got to her feet and stood in his path. "I didn't do it on purpose!"
"It doesn't matter. He told you if she saw another Ginger that she'd probably have a shock and you didn't listen." Gilligan shifted Mary Ann in his arms and Ginger instinctively reached out to help. Gilligan took a step back and fixed Ginger with a pointed stare, the likes of which she'd never seen from him, and it stopped her in her tracks. "I can carry her. I've done it before."
Gilligan turned and strode down the path toward camp. "You think this is my fault, don't you?" Ginger called, grabbing her brunette wig from the laundry line and storming after him.
"Who else's fault could it be?" he replied evenly.
"It's not anyone's fault! She tripped!"
Gilligan stopped abruptly and Ginger backed quickly out of the way to avoid being hit with one of Mary Ann's heels as he spun to face the redhead. "She tripped because she was too busy clapping for you to look where she was going. You sing that same song every week. I don't see what the big deal is."
Ginger planted her hands on her hips and glared down at him. "She tripped because she was being rushed by a certain sailor who couldn't wait another five minutes for his dinner."
Gilligan looked struck for a moment, then just shook his head and started down the path again. Ginger watched him as she followed him along the trail. He was hurrying, but being uncharacteristically careful and attentive. He avoided ditches, low-hanging branches, and other natural obstacles that always made him trip. He glanced down at Mary Ann every few seconds. Ginger had never seen him be so gentle with anything. It was almost as if he thought that jostling her body would jostle her already fragile mental state even more.
"You don't seem the least bit worried about her," he said after a moment, his voice low.
Ginger sputtered, offended. "Of course I'm worried about her! She's my friend. But what can I do to help her?"
Gilligan stopped and spun around again, so fast that Mary Ann slipped from where she was propped against his chest. Her shoulders slumped back over his arm and her head flopped back, her hair tumbling toward the ground. Her right arm slid from her lap and swung in the air below her. "You can wear your wig! You're an actress! Act like Mary Ann!"
Ginger watched Gilligan try to shift Mary Ann back into place using just the arm that was under her back. She reached forward to help and Gilligan stepped back again, glaring at her. Ginger froze, hands out before her, brunette pigtailed wig hanging from one fist.
"That's all you have to do," he finished quietly. Gilligan looked away and sat down on a fallen log. He rested Mary Ann's unconscious form on his lap and took his arm from beneath her knees. He carefully raised her head upright again, tucking it safely back against his chest.
"Gilligan?"
Gilligan pulled Mary Ann's arm back into her lap and slid his arm higher up her back to keep her from falling a second time. He hooked his other arm beneath her knees again.
"Gilligan, you look scared."
He froze, muscles tense from preparing to stand. After a moment, he relaxed back onto the log. He exhaled and looked down at Mary Ann, still avoiding Ginger's gaze. "Do you think she'll stay like this?"
"No," Ginger whispered. It was the truth, too. She believed it. For every ridiculous situation they found themselves in, they always found an equally ridiculous way out. "The Professor will think of something. And if he doesn't, we can always hit her over the head again."
Ginger smiled a little, trying her luck, but it was too soon and Gilligan protectively clutched Mary Ann closer to his chest. He stood, smoothly scooping Mary Ann up, and crashed down the path.
Ginger groaned with frustration. "I was kidding!" She scrambled after him, pushing low-hanging branches and palm fronds out of the way. "At least she's otherwise okay. She's lucky she didn't have a concussion."
Gilligan stomped along the familiar trail quicker than before, blinded with purpose. Get to the Professor's hut. Revive Mary Ann. Make sure she's okay. Hope she wakes up as her old self.
He could hear Ginger hurrying after him and it infuriated him. He wished she'd just go away. Every footstep behind him made him breathe harder. Every word out of her mouth made him pick up his pace. "She really could have hurt herself when she fell," Ginger continued. "Shouldn't we be looking on the bright side?"
"I don't know why she wants to be like you!" Gilligan blurted. The outburst had its desired effect and Ginger went suddenly silent. He heard her slow to a stop and he paused on the trail as well. He wasn't sure why. He should have kept going. He knew she'd be mad and he didn't care.
"Gilligan..." Ginger sounded on the verge of tears and he suddenly felt guilty, but kept his back to her. Ginger took a deep breath and tried to keep her anger in check. She stared at the back of his head, tilted down, whether with guilt or because he was looking down at Mary Ann she didn't know, but she knew he was struggling. "Listen, I don't know why she wants to be like me, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't flattered. Honestly, sometimes I want to be like her."
Gilligan didn't ask her why and Ginger wasn't surprised. There's nothing strange about wanting to be more optimistic, more practical, and more demure.
"Good," Gilligan snapped and started down the path again. "Then why is it so hard to remember to wear your wig?"
Ginger's fists balled up at her sides and her eyes narrowed, but she took a deep breath and followed. "I didn't say I wanted to look like her."
Gilligan was quiet for a long moment. "That's not nice, Ginger."
"That's not what I meant!" Ginger was getting a headache. She usually did at some point in any conversation with Gilligan. He could be infuriatingly stubborn at times and she got the feeling that he was never quite listening to what she was saying. Or maybe he listened too well. He had the annoying habit of countering a statement with an inadvertently profound response.
"You're supposed to look like her until she becomes herself again. All you have to do is put a smile on your face, a ribbon in your hair, and –."
"And what? Prance around camp telling you how wonderful you are? Forget it. It's a lot harder to act like Mary Sunshine than you'd think."
"You spend your whole life pretending to be other people, Ginger."
"I know. It's my job," she snapped sarcastically. Leave it to Gilligan to point out the obvious. Ginger could not, however, quell the nagging feeling that he had done it again, spouted out one of his accidentally philosophical replies.
Ginger Grant didn't even resemble her real self half of the time. Ginger Grant was there to protect her, to promote her, to get her what she wanted. She had almost forgotten who she really was, almost been lost to the illusion, until she was shipwrecked with six people who she eventually realized could care less about what movies she was in or who she dated. Even Mary Ann was immune at first, listening politely to Ginger's story about handing Cary Grant a fork in the studio commissary before brightly telling her about the time Aunt Martha singlehandedly delivered three baby cows in one day. But eventually, just as Ginger was learning to let Ginger Grant go, Mary Ann inexplicably began to hold on to her – asking her questions, adopting some of her tendencies, staring in awe-struck wonder during her performances.
"Then do your job!" Gilligan shouted.
"How would you like it if someone decided they were you? It's unnerving. What if the Skipper was suddenly convinced that he was Gilligan?" Ginger asked, hurrying through the foliage behind him. "Running around, knocking things over, being infuriatingly silly? You'd have to pretend to be him and be in charge and yell at him and lead everyone."
Gilligan slowed to navigate down a steep incline. "I wouldn't mind being like the Skipper. I wanted to be like him when he was a hero. After he saved her." He hitched Mary Ann up higher in his arms, symbolically strengthened his grip. "I jumped in first, but no one listened when I told them."
"I heard you."
This stopped Gilligan in his tracks, halted him like a firm tug on the reins and he turned around at the bottom of the hill. Ginger stopped halfway up and looked down on him. He peered up at her, blue eyes huge, sad, terrified. He looked like a little boy from up here, hair hanging in his face, looking up at her for answers, with his best friend cradled in his arms like a wounded puppy or his ripped teddy bear, frazzled at the seams, her stuffing poking out.
"What if she doesn't come back?" he whispered.
"She'll come back. She isn't really gone. She's just ... trapped. Her Ginger isn't even very much like the real Ginger Grant." Whoever that was.
Gilligan's expression hardened again. "She is too like you!" he yelled, disbelieving, accusatory, almost sickened, and turned around again.
Ginger stomped down the hill after him, waving her wig angrily in the air. "Gee, Gilligan, I never knew it was such a horror to know me! She's wearing my clothes and talking differently, but that's it!"
"You didn't see what she did to me in the jungle yesterday afternoon!" Gilligan pushed his way through the foliage, quicker and noisier than before. Ginger almost expected Mary Ann to regain consciousness to tell them to shut up.
Ginger hadn't been exactly sure why Mary Ann suddenly became so fascinated with her Hollywood persona after years of treating her as just her roommate and friend, but she soon suspected that it had something to do with the man she was watching carry her back to camp as carefully as if she were made of the most delicate crystal on earth. Mary Ann had spent a year trying to get him to pay attention to her as herself and when that didn't work she thought she'd try it as Ginger Grant, the notorious serial dater, beloved of every man in Hollywood – or at least beloved of their latest film's publicity team.
The poor guy had no clue. And the more like Ginger Grant Mary Ann acted, the more clueless he became.
Ginger was going to tell Mary Ann all about this when she came back.
If she came back.
She hoped she'd come back.
She really wanted her to come back.
She'd tell her how Gilligan hovered around her, practically stalked her, reprimanded the redhead for not being as sympathetic and helpful as she should have been – she'd apologize for that as well. She'd tell her how he let her rehearse with him and how he swept her up in his arms and tried to protect her from herself.
"She told me what happened yesterday. You know I never rehearse love scenes!" Ginger reached out to catch the palm fronds that snapped back into place behind him before they smacked her in the face. "And if I did, I wouldn't chase you down. I'd go find the Professor!"
"Good!" he shot back. "Leave me out of it. And if you want me to do a chore for you or tell you something, why don't you just ask like a normal person?"
"When she kissed you yesterday what did she want from you? For you to do the dishes? To tell her about some secret thing that you found in a cave somewhere?"
Gilligan was quiet. He began walking faster. He could see camp through the trees a few hundred yards ahead. "She wanted – she –," he stumbled over his thoughts, flustered, "she wanted me to rehearse the scene with her!"
Ginger rolled her eyes at the back of his head, hurrying to keep up with him. "You weren't listening to her lines very closely, were you?" He didn't reply and Ginger grunted in frustration. "Oh, Scott!" she yelled. "Don't you know?"
Gilligan broke through the trees and marched into the clearing. "Don't you start with that Scott stuff, too, Ginger!"
"She's not gone!" Ginger's voice rose up sharply behind him and Gilligan froze halfway to the supply hut. "She's in there somewhere. You just have to find her."
Gilligan stood there, motionless, his back to her, for an eternity. His arms were beginning to ache, but he tightened his grip on Mary Ann, the beading on her dress digging into his hands. "She wanted to be like you when she was writing those letters, too," he said finally. "Because you had boyfriends." Gilligan shook his head and looked down at the unconscious girl in his arms. "I don't get it. I like her just the way she is."
"You should tell her that some time."
Gilligan's head snapped up and he twisted around to stare at her. He wanted to say, This isn't my fault! He wanted to yell it. He wanted to blame Ginger. He tried, but the words wouldn't come. They stopped on the tip of his tongue, filling his mouth, rendering him speechless.
It was his fault. It was his fault Mary Ann wanted to be more like Ginger. It was his fault she wrote letters to Horace Higgenbotham. It was his fault she hit her head. It was his fault she became Ginger.
Gilligan and Ginger stared at each other across the table for a long moment. "Gilligan, I'm sorry. I barely know who I am half the time and I know I haven't been as helpful or understanding as I could have been," she finally admitted. "I don't know what to do."
"Put your wig on," he ordered, sounding every bit as commanding as the Skipper himself. Gilligan turned and backed into the door of the supply hut, pushing it open and sweeping Mary Ann inside out of sight.