I just learned of the expression "Jumping the Shark" while talking to my brother in law and discussing the demise and slow death of the TV show ER. I used to love the show, but I stopped watching a couple of years ago. I couldn't take any more staff heart attacks, deaths by patients gone postal, severed arms. It seemed like all cast members had slept together--there were no more affairs to be had. Each had at least one freak accident that put him/her back into the ER, usually after a gruelling 48-hr shift. Apparently you can try to leave the Cook County ER, but you'll never really escape. NBC won't let you.
I told my brother in law that I stopped watching the show.
"Yeah," he said. "It really jumped the shark."
"It what?"
He went on to explain what this rather brilliant expression meant: when a program hits a point of dwindling energy, and nothing will revive it. There are no more original plot lines, characters have lost their coolness, or the show starts to rely on gimmicks to keep the audience engaged. Yet the show remains on the air and becomes a pop-cultural joke.
The expression is based on an episode from the TV show Happy Days, when it was nearing the end of its run and things were getting a little, well, kooky. Fonzie is water skiing somewhere (this was a commonly used tactic in the 70s and early 80s when shows were getting over the hill--take everyone to Hawaii and include a near-death experience). And Fonzie, fading stud that he was, jumped over a shark. The motorcycle has become passe, I suppose, so writers moved to subterranean antagonists.
Once the origins of this expression were explained to me I Googled the term, and up popped a Web site dedicated to Jumping the Shark moments.The site offers a list of shows with a number of reputed "Shark" moments--ER is included, of course, as are other long-living TV shows, like The Simpsons, Friends, even The Sopranos.
Apparently Shark moments are quite common: Browsers can search by categories of Shark moments by category:
- Same Character, Different Actor (Bewitched beDamned)
- Birth | Death (There IS no replacing John Ritter, dig?)
- Ted McGinley (I didn't realize that Ted McGinley, the Varsity stud that joined the Happy Days cast in its twilight years, had become an omen of bad TV. But a list of failed programs backs up the site's contention that he is the patron saint of shark jumping. )
- Puberty (In some cases I wish some actors remained in puberty--Anthony Michael Hall made a franchise out of if)
- Singing (Why was last resort in the 70s/80s always to turn things into a Variety Show? The Bradys cut an album, the Flinstone kids cut an album, Charlene and Kimberly on Diffrent Strokes--and to think Kimberly was supposed to be better than Janet Jackson!...)
- Live! (Canned laughter somehow is much more fake when it's live)
- I Do (Nothing is more boring than two people who are happily married)
- They Did It (Some programs lose steam post-orgasm)
- The Movie (Pay $10 for what you would normally see on Thursday nights for free)
- Moving
- Special Guest Star (No more Whoopie!)
- A Very Special... (Three words that say, "Do not watch this!")
- New Kid In Town (and he's got a bowl cut and smokes dope)
- Hair Care (Brady perms; Felicity)
- Exit...Stage Left (Urkel? Bubbye)
- Graduation (I know how to keep 90210 relevant--get all of them accepted into the SAME college!)
- Color (It worked in The Wizard of Oz, but not on TV)
- Never Jumped
It occurred to me that there are lots of things that Jump the Shark, not just TV shows. My list follows.
