MISSING LINKS MONDAY - "GILLIGAN'S ISLAND" & "GENERAL HOSPITAL"

'GILLIGAN'S ISLAND'

"THE HUNTER"

in January of 1967, a big-game hunter named Jonathan Kincaid (who may have been the grandson of a Texan named Bill Longley) arrived on the island with the intent to hunt some big game.....

From the IMDb:
Upon learning there is nothing on the island to hunt, he chooses instead to hunt one of the castaways--and he chooses Gilligan.

I've written in the past about the inspiration for the story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell.  And if Kincaid wasn't familiar with the story of that Big Game Hunter in Toronto at the beginning of the 20th Century, then he surely was familiar with the story written by Richard Connell.  (And as Hugh Davis pointed out, so was a man who used Connell's name as an alias when he hired Echo from the 'Dollhouse' to be his companion on a wilderness adventure.....)

Kincaid was unsuccessful in killing Gilligan, yet he reneged on his pledge to get them help for a rescue in order to protect himself from the authorities.  However, the guilt over what he had almost accomplished drove him insane....

Later that year, in the summer of 1967, Kincaid won the National Trap Shooting Competition which was held that year along the St. Lawrence Seaway in Port Charles, NY.  He got a perfect score of one hundred clay pigeons out of one hundred.  However, after the match Kincaid broke down and became so violent that local authorities had to be called.  They were unable to calm him down, so the police had no other choice but to restrain him in a strait jacket. He was taken to the mental ward at Port Charles' General Hospital, where he kept muttering these mysterious words over and over again:

"Gilligan... Gilligan... Gilligan..."

General Hospital, located in Port Charles, is the basis for several TV series: the prime one is the soap opera 'General Hospital', which has been on the air since 1963.  And from that sturdy warhorse has come the spin-off 'Port Charles', another soap opera, and 'General Hospital: Night Shift' which was a prime-time serial that ran for two years for nearly 30 episodes.

But the connection between 'Gilligan's Island' and 'General Hospital' was never explicitly made.  During the radio report heard months later by the castaways about what happened to Kincaid, it was only said that he had been taken to General Hospital.  

So why couldn't it have been the same hospital famous in Toobworld for over half a century?  Wouldn't a sporting event like a trap shooting competition look great with the backdrop of the St. Lawrence Seaway? 

So I'm going to expand that connection a little bit more.  The first Port Charles police officer to arrive on the scene when Jonathan Kincaid began to have his mental breakdown was a patrolman named Ross Janelle, the illegitimate son of Ward Cleaver.  Cleaver had an affair during one of his business trips away from Mayfield (but before he married June Evelyn Bronson.  Ward just wasn't the type of man who would have cheated on his wife, even if he was under the sway of a town which had such an influence on its residents.)  Ward Cleaver left town never knowing that the young woman with whom he had the affair was pregnant with Ross.

Officer Janelle recognized the potential threat posed by Kincaid with a gun and called for backup.  As Detective Burt Ramsey arrived and was able to divert Kincaid's attention, Officer Janelle quickly disarmed the big game hunter.  Janelle and Detective Ramsey, along with other police officers arriving on the scene, were able to wrestle Kincaid to the ground so that the EMS technicians were able to strap him into the strait jacket.  

For their quick actions which resulted in saving countless lives, both Ross Janelle and Burt Ramsey found themselves on the fast track to promotion within the department.  In a few years time Janelle became a detective and in 1974 he investigated what was perhaps the biggest case of his career - the murder of Phil Brewer.  (He also found time to briefly romance a nurse at General Hospital by the name of Beth Maynard.  And as though fated to follow in the footsteps of his "father", Detective Janelle may have sired a daughter with Nurse Maynard.  If so, Beth Maynard may have raised the girl on her own, giving the child her father's last name as her first name - Janelle.)

For Detective Burt Ramsey, however, it wasn't happily ever after for him.  He moved up the ranks, from Lieutenant to Captain and finally to being the Chief of Police in Port Charles.  But he chafed under being the "Co-Chief" with Anna Devane and eventually joined the organized crime syndicate in Port Charles, known as "Mr. Big".  He was found out and confessed, which triggered his falling into a catatonic state.  In 1986, he was relegated to the same state mental facility where Jonathan Kincaid had been taken, but he eventually recovered and served his time in prison.  Afterwards Burt Ramsey sought redemption in the Church and became a priest by the new millennium.  

At the end of June, 2014, Father Burt Ramsey passed away.  Toobworld Central is unable to figure out where Detective Janelle eventually ended up, but he probably found employment in some other city as a detective.

And as for Jonathan Kincaid?  I believe that eventually his treatments at the state mental facility were successful and he was released back to his life, such as it was.  But in 1978, when the Castaways were finally rescued from "Gilligan's Island", Kincaid realized that his secret would soon be revealed.  So he begged his faithful manservant Ramoo to end his life as he was too much of a coward to do it himself.  

Four years later, Ramoo took his own life as well.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Gilligan's Island' - "The Hunter"
• 'General Hospital'
• 'Port Charles'
• 'The Texan'
• 'Leave It To Beaver'
• 'General Hospital: The Night Shift'
• "Rescue From Gilligan's Island"
• 'Dollhouse' - "The Target"
• 'The Murdoch Mysteries' - "Artful Detective"

A lot of that is conjecture, but 'twill serve.....

BCnU!