Jump The Shark

KnowingWhenToStop

The JumpTheShark web site <http://www.jumptheshark.com> seeks to identify the moment when TV shows cross from "Great" to "Sucks". The term "JumpTheShark" comes from the episode of Happy Days when Fonzie jumped, on water-skis, over a shark. By many accounts, that was the moment when Happy Days began its downward spiral.

More precisely, it was when the downward spiral was made crystal clear.

Listing and debating additional examples is better left to the JumpTheShark website.

Why? Other pages like TheWorstEnding etc list specific examples. If all pages just say see the relevant website what is the point of Wiki? There were some interesting examples here, not voluminous to have warranted deletion. This page jumped its own shark when they vanished. Granted this is not really OnTopic but still...

Then restore the list. I noticed the list was growing, despite it just being a set of examples pointing to the main site. I followed the grand Wiki tradition of acting unilaterally by removing the temptation to recreate a website before it got out of hand. Anyone else can veto my opinion.

Some WikiPages don't have a more complete external website which is an appropriate substitute. This page, does have such a substitute--one in which you can vote, add commentary, and the like. Sure it's not a Wiki, but that's OK.....

As a concept, JumpTheShark seems to have jumped its own shark at birth. That is, after pointing out the Happy Days example, the concept quickly became a cliche[1].

Perhaps the most telling proof of it's cliche status is that it is starting to spawn variations. "Kissed The Lesbian" directly refers to the shows Ellen and Roseanne which both featured episodes in which a lead female character kissed a female guest character. A lesbian-kissing episode has become a cheap way for writers to make a show appear to be transgressive and sexy, and perhaps get some outraged press or other buzz. Of course, with increasing homosexuality on TV (e.g., Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, Will & Grace), the shock value of this variation probably won't last must longer.

I've never heard the phrase "Kissed the Lesbian".
Jadzia Dax did it in StarTrekDeepSpaceNine in the early '90s. Never mind that the gal she kissed used to be a guy. More correctly, she kissed the symbiant inhabiting a gal. Back when the symbiant inhabited a guy, the symbiant was her lover. That's ScienceFiction for you.
- You mean a bunch of nerd writers using thin plot mechanisms to get girls to kiss?
  - Well, it's progress, I suppose. Back in the early nineties, on TNG, Dr. Crusher fell in love with a guy who had a symbiant inside him (the first episode with the race of symbiants which Dax is a member of). The host died, the Symbiant got stuck temporarily in Riker for much of the episode... (the answer to your question is, yes) ...and then the new permanent host arrived. A woman. Bush I was still in the White House, so that was the end of that relationship (and episode).
I probably got the Dax and Crusher episodes combined in my mind. In any case, I know Dax did it, but I don't know whether there was another symbiant involved.

[1] The accented "e" does not render properly in some browsers.