JUMP THE SHARK: WHEN DID THEY LOSE THEIR TOUCH

14 thoughts on “JUMP THE SHARK: WHEN DID THEY LOSE THEIR TOUCH”

1. If I may…

   In the famous “Jumping the Shark” episode of Happy Days, Fonzie was actually on water skis. It was lovely.. The Fonze in short shorts, a leather jacket, and a life vest. Gay. And not good gay, prison gay. Also, it was not the penultimate episode. Unfortunatly, it went on long after that… I would offer as my contribution to the list: Moonlighting – when they finally “did it”

   1. Penultimate

      Oh dear.. a perfectionist..

      Well, I suppose I should say penultimate good episode.. the word is being used loosely to describe the end of the show as it was known (i.e. good) and the begining of the show as it became (bad).

      Right about the water skis though.. The motorcycle was through a ring of fire wasn’t it?

      Yes about moonlighting.. and jumtheshark.com actually has “they did it” as a category.. (As well as Ted McGinley as a category).

      Cheers!

2. lest we forget…

   The marriage of Niles and Daphne on Frasier

3. My submission…

   It’s pretty easy to spot on sitcoms, at least. It’s generally the first time they do a really “serious” episode with few laughs. It’s the beginning of the end for the show, because some writer decided s/he wanted to be taken “seriously”. Whatever 🙂

   • The day Tom Hanks played the drunken uncle on “Family Ties”.
   • Cosby show, after Theodore grew up.
   • Diff’rent Strokes, when they replaced what’s-her-name (the daughter) because she got pregnant.
   • Sanford & Son, first episode.
   • The Dr. Laura show, first episode.
   • The band “Rush”, a few days ago, when their lead guitarist got arrested with a maximum sentence of 30 years in the pen.

   Unfortunately, I haven’t really watched any television to speak of, except perhaps “Buffy”, “Friends”, and “Angel” maybe once a year each, for the last five or six years, so I’m totally out of it show-wise. I’ve thought of getting cable, but only so I could watch “Junkyard Wars” and the Discovery Channel. I’m such a nerd.

   —
   Matthew P. Barnson

4. Friends

   The “shark porn” epsiode. Is monica retarded? She thought her husband was aroused by sharks? not believable.

   1. Just saw that one

      We’ve been collecting Friends on DVD over the past year, and just watched the “Shark Porn” episode a few nights ago.

      I don’t know, though, I think Friends jumped the shark several times. They’d get better for a few episodes, and then kind of tank again. There always seems to be about one episode per season that’s totally brilliant and incredibly funny. Our all-time favorite episode is probably the one where Rachel teaches Ben about practical jokes. The punch line near the end where Ross gets her back is just priceless…

      The episodes that are my least-favorite are the once-per-season “flashback” episodes that just recap a bunch of themes from earlier shows. It’s as if they only had about 5 minutes of content, so they have to show old jokes to make up the remainder of the show. The moment they started doing that in season 3 was a signal of things to come.

      For most sitcoms, it seems as if their “jump the shark” moment occurs when they decide to do a serious episode.

      I found Jump The Shark this morning. What a great reference to remember those old shows by! It was really interesting checking out their “never jumped the shark” category, which requires an overwhelming majority of “never” votes to qualify:

      The Simpsons Police Squad! Newhart WKRP in Cincinnati The Prisoner Magnum, P.I. The Tick Barney Miller The Rockford Files Homefront The Larry Sanders Show Freaks and Geeks The Dick Van Dyke Show The Odd Couple Fawlty Towers The Critic The Young Ones St. Elsewhere

      And curiously, “Shark Porn” is pretty low on the list for Friends “Jump the Shark” moments: Never Jumped 382 Day One 199 They Did It (Ross and Rachel) 193 They Did It (Chandler and Monica) 176 I Do (Chandler and Monica) 159 Joey has a crush on Rachel 128 Rachel is pregnant 84 Ross says “Rachel” at the altar 52 Ross and Rachel broke up 48 Birth (Emma) 44 Everyone loses weight (except Chandler) 38 Shark porn 33

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

5. family guy

   when they stopped making it

6. Reason For The Hits

   The reason for the spike in reads is because “Jumping The Shark” was featured on Studio 360 last week.

   1. Pro-active

      Nice to have someone pro-active figuring this stuff out. I’m just mystified 🙂

      Maybe I should put the Google ads up again and cash in! Thirty cents a day, here I come!

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

7. Star Wars jumps the shark

   Hmmmmmmm… i disagree with the moment you picked considering that Star Wars lifted itself up after that point. Things that jump the shark never recover from that moment, but the space battle and Vader, Luke, Emperor threesome at the end of the movie were amazing!

   I’d like to say that once that Anakin kid showed up in Episode I it jumped the shark too… but Clone Wars was also damn cool, and Episode III, though it didn’t compare to IV,V, or VI (which is impossible for anything to do) was a damn fun movie (Anakin and Padme aside).

   It’s like bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, ya… once Jimmy Chamberlin was fired the band went downhill and never got back up to level it was at during that time, but they still made way better music than 90% of bands out there up till their breakup. Does that mean they jumped the shark?

   1. STAR WARS

      I did like a lot of Episode 3, it is better, Id argue, than Jedi..

      However, Jedi was good Star Wars quality until the Ewoks showed up.. and from then on it is brilliance mixed with horribleness

      And I agree.. like Smashing Pumpkins, Star Wars at its worst is Damned entertaining.. but Even at the end of Ep3, you have Darth Frankenstein yelling Noooo!! and a birthing robot saying oobah..

      So, like the ewoks interspersed with Luke’s Death Star Battle.. from ewoks on, it was this mix of really good with unfortunate.

      Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com

      1. I’ve been trying to work

         I’ve been trying to work out where star wars jumped. It’s a tough one to call. Ever since the Ewoks there have been good moments intermixed with some really terrible ones. There’s one overriding thought that keeps coming to mind though. When GL forgot that there were really landscapes he could have used. Tunisia was one of the things that made the first film great, yet some of the special features and later films already look false and aged, there are some games that look as realistic. Oh yes and Jar Jar!!!! I was so hoping he would be cut in half with a sabre in the last film 😉

         1. Star Wars

            Funny you should mention that. I only just watched Episode 3 last night for the first time. (Dani’s out of town, so I spent the evening doing something unabashedly boy/geek.)

            I agree that it was an infinitely better movie than Episodes 1 and 2. That said, it still wasn’t very good. It was fun, sure, and I was unspeakably moved watching the progression of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader (simply because the original trilogy holds such a hallowed place in my childhood, not because the transition was in any way believable). In the end, it was more or less satisfying, not exactly a vindication of Lucas, but at least a way to avoid complete embarrassment.

            I don’t think that Star Wars jumped the shark so much as slowly creeped over the shark. The progression happened in the intervening two decades between Jedi & Phantom Menace. First off, the Ewoks don’t bother me so much. Yes, they’re cutesy and annoying, but for me they were simply a distraction from the other good stuff that was going on in that movie. That said, I haven’t actually watched Jedi in maybe 15 years — it was the only one I didn’t see in the theatres during the “Special Edition” release in the late 90s, and for whatever reason, I just haven’t watched it. So, maybe if I went back to it now, I wouldn’t like it as much. But whatever.

            Here’s where I thought Star Wars jumped the shark:

            • Lucas’s obsession with CGI over “real” effects: Nothing in the later trilogy looks as real as the plastic models and muppets of the original trilogy. The point of the new trilogy seems to be “look at the fancy effects” rather than “pay attention to the story”, which is why the original trilogy worked so well. This dates back to the Special Editions in 1997 – as soon as I saw the CGI Jabba the Hutt, I knew it was a bad idea.
            • Lucas thinking he’s a writer: Lucas is an idea man, not a writer. He’s pretty good at big concepts and story arcs, but he’s lousy at dialogue. He did ok in the original Star Wars, but the reason why the dialogue is so good and punchy in Empire & Jedi is that the screenplays were written by Lawrence Kasdan, the guy who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Big Chill. Whatever screenwriting talent Lucas showed in Star Wars was clearly completely gone by the time he wrote the screenplays of the new trilogy – the dialogue is wooden and unspeakably bad.
            • Lucas thinking he’s a director: Again, he did an ok job with the original Star Wars, but nothing in all six movies can match the dark moodiness of Irvin Kershner’s direction of Empire Strikes Back.
            • Han Shot First: In a boneheaded move similar to Spielberg’s replacing the gun’s in ET with walkie-talkies, Lucas changed the Han/Greedo scene so that it looked like Greedo shot first and Han was only defending itself. This is a symptom of a larger problem. In the original trilogy, the characters had flaws, making them more realistic and likable. Luke was whiny, Leia was acerbic, Yoda was purposely obscure. In making the new trilogy, Lucas chose instead to make the “good guys” so perfect and devoid of flaws that they are completely uninteresting characters in every way. Padme has so little substance as a character that she can hardly be called one-dimensional. Qui-Gonn and Obi-Wan are nothing but one-sided do-gooders. Even the transformation from Anakin to Darth Vader is flawed — he’s made Anakin such a bland guy that his journey to the dark side makes almost no sense at all. Sometime in the intervening 20 years, Lucas forgot that characters have to be real characters, not just one-dimensional cliches.

            OK, that was longer than expected. Hope someone actually reads this. 🙂

            — Ben

8. Cheers jumping the shark

   I thought Cheers jumped the shark when they started doing episodes about the “feud” with Gary’s Olde Towne Tavern. I was a big Cheers fan but those episodes were so unfunny I was embarrassed for the poor cast.

Comments are closed.