Jumping the shark

"Jump the shark" redirects here. For the The X-Files episode, see Jump the Shark (The X-Files).

"Jump the shark" redirects here. For the Supernatural episode, see Supernatural (season 4).

Fonzie in a scene from the Happy Days episode "Hollywood, Part Three of Three," preparing to jump over a shark on water skis.

Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program's history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations. These changes were often the result of efforts to revive interest in a show whose viewership has begun to decline, usually through the employment of different actors, writers or producers.

History

The phrase jump the shark refers to the climactic scene in "Hollywood," a three-part episode opening the fifth season of the American TV series Happy Days in September 1977. In this story, the series' central characters visit Los Angeles, where Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, jumps over a confined shark on water skis, answering a challenge to demonstrate his bravery. The series continued for nearly seven years after that, with a number of changes in cast and situations.

The expression was coined in 1985 by Jon Hein, who would later create the web site jumptheshark.com. Hein explained the concept as follows: "It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it 'Jumping the Shark.' From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same." Hein created the web site in 1997 inviting visitors to give their opinions of when various TV series (and other things) "jumped the shark." Hein sold the web site and the domain name to Gemstar (publishers of TV Guide) in 2006, and in early 2009 the domain was redirected to the main TV Guide web site as part of the dissolution of various TV Guide properties (TV Guide magazine is now owned by a private equity group, while the associated cable network and websites went to Lionsgate). This move was considered by fans as the website jumping the shark due to severely altering content-- it is now a celebrity gossip messageboard.

Common methods

The "Jump the Shark" web site listed 18 categories fans used to tag shows, signifying the point at which the show "jumped". The categories include:

• Same Character, Different Actor, replacing a cast member with another actor to play the same role, in an attempt to retain the given character. This is generally the result of the departure of a cast member, most often (but not always) due to dissatisfaction with the show or role, the actor becoming pregnant(and needing a break) or conflicts with members of the show's cast or production team.
• Death, when a cast member dies (in real life), particularly if the individual was a popular or important part of the show, such as Phil Hartman's death and its effect on NewsRadio, John Ritter's death and its effect on 8 Simple Rules, and the death of Diana Hyland, who only appeared in the first four episodes of Eight is Enough, as Joan Bradford.
• They did it, in which two main characters have sex, particularly if their sexual tension was deemed part of the show's appeal, such as Who's The Boss?, I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, Moonlighting, The Nanny, Friends, Frasier, and The Office.
• Wedding, similar to the former, when two main characters tie the knot, when their difficult relationship and sexual tension is deemed part of the show's appeal. This phenomena occured on the series Lois and Clark, Alias and The Nanny.
• Moving the main characters from their familiar surroundings to a new setting, such as a new home or even a new town, such as I Love Lucy moving from New York City to the suburbs of Connecticut, and One on One moving from Baltimore to college life in Los Angeles.
• Special guest star (or "stunt casting"), where guest stars (sometimes, personalities not generally involved with television) are used as an attempt to attract viewers, such as Nancy Reagan's appearance on Diff'rent Strokes to promote her "Just Say No" anti-drug agenda.
• A very special...: the very special episode, describing a situation comedy episode that either deals with a serious or controversial social issue or is unusually dramatic in some way (a notorious attempt to boost failing ratings with cheap appeals to emotion, but which ultimately destroys the levity of the series). Examples include The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Saved by the Bell , Family Ties, and Blossom. Blossom used this device so often that the phrase "A very special episode of Blossom" has lived on in pop-culture infamy.
• New kid in town, or Cousin Oliver Syndrome (in reference to the character on The Brady Bunch), when a new character (often, a young child) is added to the cast in response to former child actors who have entered adolescence or adulthood, or to revive falling ratings, such as Kaley Cuoco joining Charmed as Billie Jenkins. The Simpsons satirized this phenomenon when they temporarily added the characters Roy and Poochie for their 167th episode, "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show".
• Birth, when a new baby is added to a show's cast (and often unnaturally aged to a preschooler the season following the birth), sometimes to accommodate an actress's real-life pregnancy (Ex: Alias), but usually for the same reasons a New kid in town might otherwise be brought in. Another common manifestation in this category is the birth of twins, such as Full House with the aging of the twins Alex and Nicholas from infant in season 5 to pre-schooler in season 6, and the addition of Jamie Wilkerson, in Malcolm in the Middle .
• Another category, entitled simply Ted McGinley, usually includes any show that has featured McGinley in the cast. He has joined the casts of several popular shows after their zenith (The Love Boat, Happy Days, and Dynasty), earning him the titles of the "Patron Saint of Shark Jumping" and the "Grim Reaper of Television". Shows on which McGinley appeared from the start have, in most instances, been critically panned or canceled quickly. However, when he joined Married... with Children in 1991, the show stayed on for another six years.

Nuking the Fridge

Nuking the fridge or nuked the fridge is a film-related neologism with a similar meaning to the television-related colloquialism jumping the shark. It denotes an absurd plot point in film that challenges the viewer's suspension of disbelief. Saying that a movie series "nukes the fridge" is to say that it has fundamentally and permanently strayed from its original premise in an attempt by the writer or director to keep the story fresh, with a noticeable decline in quality.

History

The term is an allusion to a scene early in the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In the scene, the title character is hit by the blast of a nuclear weapon while hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator in a desperate attempt at survival. The refrigerator is hurled a great distance through the sky and tumbles hard to the ground, while the structures surrounding it are utterly obliterated. A relatively-uninjured Jones emerges to witness the mushroom cloud miles away. Some film critics and fans of the series found the absurdity of this event disappointing and reflective of the decreased quality of the series. They then coined the term "nuking the fridge."

Media notice of the phrase includes articles in Newsweek Magazine, the Toronto Sun, the New York Times, a tongue in cheek reference in Entertainment Weekly, and an on-the-air discussion between television anchor Staci Spanos of WJXT-TV and radio personality Mark Kaye of WAPE-FM and MSN's A-List Searches' Hot Topic of the Day on July 6, 2008. On Monday, July 7, 2008, CNBC ran a story entitled "Have Media Stocks Nuked the Fridge?". Nuke the fridge was also ranked fifth in Time Magazine's "Top Ten Buzzwords of 2008" and nominated for "Word of the Year" by the American Dialect Society. Yahoo! Movies also included the phrase in their most ridiculous movie moments of 2008.

South Park mentioned the scene in the episode "The China Probrem", as it addressed disappointment in the movie, some five months after the film's release.

Criticism

Some criticize the use of the term in being equivalent to "jumping the shark", since it was coined only days after its namesake, whereas "jumping the shark" was coined years later.

The ridicule expressed in the term "nuking the fridge" has also elicited defensive responses from at least one of the movie's stars, Shia LaBeouf, and from its screenwriter, David Koepp, months after the movie opened.

External links

• Bone the Fish, a successor to JumpTheShark.com