Are There Hidden Words in Theme Tunes?

 Are there hidden words in theme tunes?

I am on the fence, I naturally lean toward explaining it as coincidence in most cases. But when you have actual composers explaining that they started with the title, there's obviously something to it.

Also, trees don't need love most of all, it's really just water and light.

The Paper Chase Guy

 Re-watching the MST3K episode "Warrior of the Lost World" recently and who should I (re)discover is the lead actor in that film? Robert Ginty!

One of the running jokes of the episode, ironically, is that they never refer to Robert Ginty by his name, no one knows his name, he is only referred to as "The Paper Chase Guy."

Just as with this episode of MST3K, I had a fondness for "The Paper Chase," the 1973 film about the pressure to make the grade for first year students at Harvard Law School, but had no recollection of Robert Ginty being involved. It was the perfect movie night suggestion.

Re-watching "The Paper Chase" I found it really holds up well. It really brings back all the memories of staying up for an exam and the stress of learning. The opening scene where it starts with an empty auditorium and progresses until the room is full is so simple but so evocative of that feeling. And I think I could watch John Houseman in anything.

The only problem with the movie is that Robert Ginty is nowhere to be seen. How is The Paper Chase guy not actually in "The Paper Chase." It turns out that Robert Ginty played a supporting role in the television series that was based on the movie. So now I'm watching the television series.

I'm generally enjoying the series, so far, it is a test of the hypothesis that I could watch John Houseman in anything - in the show he reprises the role he played in the movie. I have yet to resolve how they'll make a multi-year series about a guy/professor/class relationship. Will they do the Simpsons thing where time runs in the real world but is suspended in the show? Or will they do the Boy Meets World/Saved By the Bell thing where the teacher follows the students through the years? I wouldn't expect them to do that but what I would expect the least is that they'll be true to life and have John Houseman disappear after the first year, to be replaced by other professors.

The main conclusion and the main thing worth noting so far is that I've discovered "The Paper Chase" has the most 70s, wussiest, lamest theme song possibly in the history of television. People say that the "Family Ties" theme is lame, but that has the redeeming quality of being pretty. This theme is just... it's like a parody of bad folk songs. It's like an Adult Swim simulation of a sitcom that never existed.

Gilligan's Island - Continuity

The phrase "I've found an error in 'Gilligan's Island'" is a difficult idea to parse. The show lives in a world where logic, reason and science break free from objective bonds and become loose, relative concepts. So for the purposes of this article, I could say that I've found a continuity error in "Gilligan's Island". Even though that would make more sense, it's still not exactly something to add to the old resume. So what about this: I've found a continuity error in every single episode of "Gilligan's Island". Still not good enough? Too bad, that's what I got.

The opening theme plays, of course, before every episode. If you're making a TV show, it's easy to see why it would be important to be meticulous with the opening theme - it's the one sequence that's going to be repeated every time an episode is on the air (which is hopefully quite a lot). You make a mistake here and the error gets compounded and multiplied. "Gilligan's Island" has just such an error and, as you're about to see, it's an obvious, glaring mistake and it's been right there all the time, right under your nose.

Everyone knows how the opening them goes, "Just sit right there and you'll hear a tale...". It's probably one of the most recognized themes of all-time. We're introduced to the character and the situation and the entire set up to the show in a short song. Within this sequence, the first time we see the boat, the S.S. Minnow, we see this:

Ah. The S.S. Minnow has "S.S. Minnow" written on the side. Clever. Note: it's on the front half, on the right (the starboard side of the bow). For confirmation, we next see this longer shot:

Bam. There it is. So far, so good. Next, they set sail for what we all hope will be a three hour tour. I hope they make it this time. Here's what it looks like:

Note that the boat has (for lack of a technical term) an "upper deck". There are people "below" and people "above". In "inaccurate" terms, it's got two stories. I'd guess (based on what we see later) that  the upper deck is where Gilligan and the Skipper control the ship, but, for our purposes, it doesn't really matter. Now, here's where things get a touch untidy. Look at what's shown literally two seconds after that shot:

That's a totally different boat. It's not even close. It's wide, it's got no upper deck, it's got several windshield "sections". It's totally different. And in order to not notice that it's totally different, we'd have to have forgotten all of our memories from about two seconds ago.

Next is the "... the Minnow would be lost." bit. I kinda think the Minnow was lost at this point (nn-hoy-hoy), but regardless, take a look at what's shown literally 7 seconds after the previous depiction:

OK, so the "upper deck" is back so we're obviously back to the same boat we had at the beginning, right? But the boat in the beginning had "S.S. Minnow" on the side and this one doesn't. Another boat? We went through three different boats in the span of just a few seconds. We're just expected to accept it and it's this way for every episode - these details of the opening sequence never changed in the entire run of the show.

So there you have it. Two continuity errors in every single episode of "Gilligan's Island". Granted, this is hardly world-breaking stuff. But the point isn't that I've found this and I'm so impressive (but thanks very much, by the way) but kind of the opposite: how has everyone missed it? The point is, how can you see a thing a million times (as I have with "Gilligan's Island") and still never truly see it? Here, your brain is presented with two very different visual inputs and told that they are the same object and it doesn't raise a flag that something's wrong with that. And it can't be a weird quirk that only you possess because it's the same with everyone else. Multiply the millions of reruns by the millions of people who've watched the show - from the people who made it in the 60s, to the kid who watched it for the first time recently - it's overlooked by just about everyone every time.

What else are we missing?