Tension mounts as the castaways learn they are all suspects in the murder of Randolph Blake. To deal with the problem, they create a makeshift court to figure out who was responsible.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Accident, Not Murder: The authorities and the castaways assume at first that one of them murdered Randolph Blake, given that he was speared with a fishing gun right before the Minnow left. However, it turns out the fishing gun went off by accident when the door slammed.
- The Butler Did It: Gilligan suggests that the butler is the killer, because the butler has been the killer in every murder show he ever saw. The Skipper tries for several minutes to point out they don't have a butler.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Ginger and Mary Ann start cooking up rat poison and the Professor creates a coconut cutter that looks remarkably like a guillotine just after the radio report comes through that all of them are murder suspects.
- Five of the castaways turn out to have had a bone to pick with the same man.
- Description Cut: When Gilligan suspects that the Professor could be the killer, the Skipper insists on their going over to his laboratory together to disprove it. The Professor isn't a killer, but the scene cuts to him testing out a guillotine for cutting coconuts and saying a lot of things that could be Trouble Entendres.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Gilligan, after hearing the radio report that one of the Minnow's passengers might be a murderer, gets paranoid and starts barricading himself in the hut. The Skipper tries to calm him down by pointing out the others are their friends, but Gilligan points out they didn't even know any of the others before they were shipwrecked, and only know what the others told them about themselves. The Skipper thinks about this for a second before helping Gilligan put up the barricade.
- Not So Stoic: The normally phlegmatic Professor becomes audibly angry as he recounts his own quarrel with Randolph Blake: the man claimed a paper the Professor had spent years composing as his own work.
- Paranoia Fuel: In-Universe. The Skipper scolds Gilligan for his nervousness about the radio report. Then the first mate points out that they didn't know any of their passengers beforehand. The paranoia gets to them even more badly after nightfall; they even wonder whether the other could be a killer.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: The Professor had a grudge against Blake for stealing a paper he'd worked on for years.
- Stealing from the Till: Mr. and Mrs. Howell's tiff with Randolph Blake centered around the money he'd been embezzling. However, they presumably intended to take legal action against him rather than kill him, given Mr. Howell's decision to make a call directly after confronting him.
- Trouble Entendre: Two unintentional "threatening" statements happen right after Gilligan and the Skipper find out about the murder investigation, just to ramp up the paranoia.
- When they go to the Professor's workshop, the Professor shows off his latest invention, a coconut-chopper that works on the same principle as a guillotine. He cheerfully announces that it'll do away with a lot of manpower...and is confused when the Skipper and Gilligan suddenly disappear while his back is turned.
- Soon afterwards, the two find the girls cooking oleander flowers to make rat poison. Mary Ann comments that if it successfully kills off the rats, they plan to use it for other objectionable creatures in the area.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Randolph Blake embezzled from the Howells, plagiarized research papers the Professor had written, ruined Mary Ann's father, and cheated on Ginger.
- Woman Scorned: Ginger and Mr. Blake had been romantically involved and he had a date right before her cruise on the Minnow. However, Ginger had learned in the meantime that he was getting married to another woman. This put her under suspicion in his death. When reenacting the scene with Gilligan as Mr. Blake, Ginger even namedrops the trope...right before promising she'll never date him again.
