"Dow Jones is up seven percent…" The radio announcer reported from the communal radio.

"Of course." Mr. Howell sat at the communal table and took in the news from their sole window to the outside world.

"And Acme Industrial has announced it's selling its stocks to Collins Enterprises."

"Oh, goody, goody!!" Howell smiled at the news from his competition. "Did you hear that, Captain? Howell Industries crushed another competitor."

"That's very good, Mr. Howell." The Skipper restarted the campfire.

"And United Steel continues to stay steady at 6.8 percent." The radio revealed.

"Again?" Howell stood surprised and switched off the radio. "Good heavens, it's a rerun!"

"Skipper!" Hinkley came jogging into camp with his box of mushrooms and stopped by the Captain of the Minnow. "There's a bit of a conundrum with Gilligan."

"A conundrum?" The Skipper didn't always get the intellectual speak of the teacher. "How does he find these things?" He pounded an invisible table.

"No, you don't understand." The Professor rephrased. "He took a major concussion to his posterior cranial lobe from a native deciduous specimen of these local Polynesian islands." In his haste, he neglected to speak in terms more familiar to his fellow castaways. The Skipper began wishing he hadn't dropped out of school to join the Navy and Howell wished he hadn't paid his friends to do his lessons.

"I got it." Howell deciphered those words and snapped his fingers. "He hit his head on a palm tree!"

"Oh, he hit his…. He hit his head on a palm tree!!!!" The Skipper reacted slowly to realize what had had happened. "Where is he? Where's my little buddy!"

"You can't see him just yet."

"Look, Professor, " Captain Grumby made his stand. "Gilligan may get under my skin a lot, but he's just like a son to me. I love that little guy, and if he needs me right now…"

"Skipper, you don't understand." The Professor poured some water to a coconut cup on the table from a plastic pitcher from the Minnow. "He hit his head, and like Mary Ann before him, he automatically slipped into the persona he most wants to be, namely you."

"He's got amnesia now?"

"Heavens to murgatroyd!!!" Howell understood the predicament. "I feel as if I'm in a low-rated TV series on my TV network!"

"I've got Mary Anne watching him now," The Professor confessed. "But he's going round looking for another Gilligan."

Thurston Howell made a face and started looking the Captain up and down with an amusing grimace. The Skipper noticed him looking him over.

"Forget it, Howell…" He looked back at him. "I'm not dressing up as my little buddy."

"Gentlemen, please…" The Professor sipped the last of his water and regained his breath. "That sort of façade would never work. To help Gilligan, I'll have to coax him back to his true persona as gently as possibly. We can't afford the mental trauma to his fragile id he could have upon seeing the real Skipper."

"Why don't I go check the lobster traps on the end of the island?" The Skipper found an excuse to vanish. "That ought to buy you enough time to get my Gilligan back."

"Good idea…" The Professor thought it over. "Give me, one to two hours then wait for me near the caves. I'll tell you if I had any luck."

"You got it." The Skipper turned on his heel and started taking the long little used trail around the island's south shore where the Minnow had landed. The Professor turned to the huts with a curious Howell behind him. At the Skipper's hut, Mary Ann was watching the addled first mate in the palm-thatched hut. Once Willie Gilligan, the son of Sherwood Gilligan, a Philadelphia music teacher, the skinny lad had joined the Navy on his father's advice and become friends with the Skipper, his father's old commanding officer. When Grumby left the Navy to retire as a Hawaiian charter boat captain, Gilligan followed as his first mate and found a connection to the jovial giant he never had with his father. It was a powerful emotional bond. In the hut, Gilligan was looking into a photo of the Skipper thinking it was mirror. He twisted his white cap to the same tilt as the Captain's hat in the photo and fixed his hair to match his mentor's image. A jovial laugh on his lips, he placed the picture back and noticed the Professor and Mary Ann watching him from the door of the hut. Concerned but fascinated, the Professor stood with his arms folded. Mary Ann watched a bit distressed with her hands held to her chest.

"Professor," Gilligan turned to him mirroring the posturing of the Skipper. "You got to fix this mirror. Every time I look into it, I see my little buddy." He handed over a mirror left from the wall of the SS Minnow's bathroom.

"I'll get right on it, Gil… I mean, Skipper." His eyes were furled with confused worry trying to find a way to get Gilligan out of this predicament for the Skipper's sake.

"How are you going to fix that?" Mary Ann asked. Watching Gilligan was like watching a person trapped in another world – creepy and disturbing yet they couldn't look away.

"I honestly have no idea." Hinkley voiced the truth. "You know," He even sighed a bit. "Someday I'm going to publish our experiences on the island into a book, but I don't think anyone's ever going to believe it."

"I'm living it and I don't believe it!" Howell responded.

"I just know Gilligan is goofing off somewhere." Gilligan swung the door of the hut wide and swatted the Professor and Mr. Howell with it. "When I get my hands on him…"

"Gil…I mean, Skipper…" The Professor held his arm and Howell checked his nose.

"Heavens, I've been skewered!" Howell screamed.

"You sent Gilligan to get more firewood." The Professor finished his thought. He pushed his fingers into his pockets looking for something.

"I did?" Gilligan wondered about that.

"Yes…" The Professor couldn't find the pendant a student had given him as a gift years before. "I need you to come to the supply hut for a minute. It's about the…"

"Supplies!" Mary Ann called out. "The Professor thinks he found a way to refrigerate them!"

"Yes," Howell continued the fabrication. "And he needs your help to authorize new parts."

Mary Ann and the Professor looked at his attempt at improvisation.

"Do I look like Henny Youngman?" He apologized for the weird comment.

"I don't have time for this chicanery." Gilligan looked at them. "If Gilligan's getting firewood, I need to check the lobster traps."

"Not the lobster traps!" Howell, Mary Ann and the Professor screamed together. The New Skipper was ignoring them and heading off on the regular path for the end of the island.

"Mary Ann, keep an eye on him." Hinkley rubbed his head. "I've got to get my pendant to try hypnotizing him."

"Yes, Professor…" She dashed off to the path to catch up with the skinny first mate. Behind her, Hinkley and Howell went to the supply hut where the Professor slept at night amidst his island experiments for a way to get them rescued. Hurrying to catch up with Gilligan, Mary Ann hastened her short legs for speed. What she lacked in height, she made up in stamina, but she kicked up a stone that landed in her shoe. She stopped to shake it out against a large hydrangea, but by time she had her foot back, Gilligan was out of sight amongst the three different paths.

"Uh-oh…" She looked to an imaginary audience.

"Ah, here it is…" The Professor found his silver pendant. It had been a gift from a young lady who graduated Boston State University where he taught biology and anthropology. "Our only hope is that I can hypnotize Gilligan back to Gilligan."

"Why can't we leave him like he is?" Howell thought it over. "Aren't we better off with two Skippers and no Gilligan?"

"Mr. Howell…"

"I'm just kidding." Howell mugged a bit. "I love the boy like another son, and he was briefly my son for a short time by George. At least things can't get much worse."

"Professor…" Mary Ann raced back up the incline to the huts. "I lost trace of Gilligan."

"It just got worse." Howell mused. "We got a loose Gilligan on the island…"