Has Jumptheshark.com jumped the shark?

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

>"Jump the Shark" was kinda cool when it was just you and a couple of >friends who knew about it. When it finally got publicity and everyone >started referencing it, it just became annoying. It hasn't quite >reached "Worst. Episode. Ever." level of annoyance, but it's getting >close.

 

Okay, maybe this belongs in the computer/internet folder but since its a site dedicated to TV shows maybe it belongs here.

 

But I do agree with the JTS phoenommon. Granted it is pretty much a good moniker to give a show (or whatever pop-culture thing) when it starts to decline but it has gotten way out of hand over the years.

 

The majority of the time I swear people who vote on that site fall into several categories:

 

1. Just want to rip a show for any apparant reason because they hate that show. I mean how many times do you see "Day One" as one of the more popular catagories. I mean that can't be right for a JTS moment as that means the show is a "never was" as opposed to a "has been" which is what they are celebrating, the moment that the show became a has been.

 

2. People who rip the show because its apparantly "cool" to do so. Like many "smarks" who rip on Hogan or HHH just because its the "hip" thing to do on the net. Kind of like the first one but they make comments ripping on the actors on the show and other elements that don't have anything to do with actual shark jumping. (i.e. "Show X sucks because they brought in that popular actor that no one likes")

 

3. People who just love causing stirs on message boards/mailing lists, ect and just rip a show just so they can start a flame war.

 

There are some funny stuff there, and some serious discussion of the downfall of many TV programs, but for the most part its mostly junk that falls under those three categories.

 

Steve

[Guest Mole]

I've never heard of the Jump the Shark thing before.

 

What does it exactly mean?

[Guest evenflowDDT]

The term "jump the shark" comes from "Happy Days" where, in a desperate ploy to gain ratings, The Fonz literally jumped several sharks on his motorcycle. I never actually watched "Happy Days", so anyone who knows better can care to elaborate.

 

So, when a show is said to "jump the shark", it's to mean they're doing something for a cheap, quick ratings fix. Oftentimes this involves surprise weddings, babies, etc.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

More accurately, the jumping of the sharks by the Fonz was when Happy Days reached its peak, and the show declined greatly in quality afterward. Jumping the shark really means that it's all downhill for a show from whatever juncture is being referenced.

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

Its a website (www.jumptheshark.com) that basically honors moments that TV shows start their decline in quality.

 

The people who started it named it for the moment they felt Happy Days no longer had its "coolness" factor, basically the episode where Fonzie goes shark jumping and the show pretty much declined from there.

 

Since that point they noticed that there are many shows that seem to have the same kind of moment, i.e. when two characters who's sexual tenison finally is fullfilled (Moonlighting, Cheers, Friends) or when a major character leaves the show (MASH, Cheers, Happy Days) wedding episodes, ect and they set up various different categories (including of course shows that have never "jumped" )for visitors to vote for as to when that show started its decline.

 

So visitors can go on there and pretty much say whatever they want about whatever show.

 

There is also some other stuff on the site, such as a "Stump The Shark" which is basically a TV version of "ask whomever" (i.e. ask411 at 411mania.com or Ask The Rick at wrestleline.com) which you can even help answer if you actually know the answer.

 

Rollingstone.com and them also started a JTS for music artists and I think they also have a book out as well, so obviously it has grown to be part of pop-culture.

 

Great site, but like I said, alot of the posts that people put up for various shows (mostly the curent more mass-pop-culturely significant ones like Friends) seem like people who don't like the show in the first place which defeats the spirt of shark jumping in the first place (i.e. in your opinion the show was never good in the first place, so there was no way it could have come down in quality)

 

Steve

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

So, when a show is said to "jump the shark", it's to mean they're doing something for a cheap, quick ratings fix. Oftentimes this involves surprise weddings, babies, etc.

That can be a reason for the JTS moment, but time has to tell if the show does JTS afterwards.

 

Thats somethingelse annoying about it. Seems like alot of posters will "predict" that something will cause the show to JTS. Often they are correct but there are times where the shows do survive "rating stunts" depending on obvious factors (writing, acting, directing, ect)

[Guest evenflowDDT]

I wasn't aware "jump the shark" was such a popular term. I understand what you mean about it being annoying because if people assume a show will suck because of a certain action, and stop watching it because of that, they're only going to get more desperate or just cancel the show. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

BTW, just to show how sometimes people will post whatever on the pages, just looking up WWF Raw and Smackdown's pages and on both alot of the messages were saying that the Fed jumped the shark, not the program itself. One thing intresting is that they both mention the death of Owen Hart as being both show's JTS moment which is pointless because A) Owen died on a Sunday PPV, not on a Monday or Thursday TV taping so his death shouldn't be a JTS moment and B) Owen only made one apperance on Smackdown, and that wasn't even as "Owen Hart" it was The Blue Blazer on that piolt episode done shortly before Over The Edge.

 

Now, a better "JTS" moment because of the death of Owen Hart would be saying the whole "Owen Hart Tribute Raw" was a JTS moment for Monday Night Raw (or Raw Is War as it was known as at the time, hell the show itself was unofficially christiened "Raw Is Owen" for that night) for whatever your reason would be.

 

Steve

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Someone called Lance Storm the Ted McGinley who's the patron saint of Shark Jumping of the WWE. He worked for ECW, WCW, and the WWE has jumped the shark since he's gotten their.

[Guest red_file]

I still stand by my opinion that it was cooler when less people knew about it, but for something to have "jumped the shark" implies some degree of quality, and I'm not entirely sure that either the website or the term really had any. I mean, the quality of the series has declined as more people have become aware of it, but there's not specific event that signals the point at which the term/website becomes meaningless or devalued (the article in Rolling Stone might be a possible event, but I'm not entirely sold).

 

The term is applicable to a series that had a good run but one could pinpoint a specific event for the time period in which the quality declined. If you bisect Happy Days into pre-shark and post-shark you get a pretty good division of quality to crap. Now, there were other things that factored in to the lower quality on Happy Days. Richie left, Fonzie was slowly moving from an extremely amusing secondary character into the star and losing some of his more appealing traits in the process, the "message" tone of the show went steadily up as they ran out of good stories to tell, and with the changing dynamics of the show it essentially became a completely different show. The "Jump the Shark" guys understood all this and pointed to the jumping of the shark as the point at which the show changed and didn't necessarily mean that that particular event caused the changes. I think a lot of the people who post on that website don't understand that.

 

I agree that there are a lot of pot-stirrers and people who just never liked a show and wanted to bash it that post at that website, but I think there are also a lot of people who don't understand the concept fully and many who just didn't like a choice that was made on a particular show and want to voice their discontent. Because of this the term and website are essentially meaningless. It's entered the internet lexicon and will be around for a long time, but, again, so has "Wost. Episode. Ever." I rate them about the same.

[Guest Crux]

Jump the Shark has become victim to it's own catchphrase, its way over-used and in many instances, not used in the right context. Therefore it has become an eye-roll inducing thing to refer to.

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

molestomp, do you live in a cave? The term is used all the time now for everything and I'd say that is the certain sign of the whole concept jumping the shark. To clarify, Fonzie jumped a group of sharks on water skis, not his motorcycle.

 

I used to go to the JtS message board, but fell out of habit doing it. I agree with Rogers' assessment of posters. Thing is, it take forever for a post of yours to make it on the site, or at least it used to. I'm talking months at a time, the traffic got unbelievable and they never did much about it. It's a fun site to browse, but the original idea has got so lost and watered down.

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

The term is applicable to a series that had a good run but one could pinpoint a specific event for the time period in which the quality declined.  If you bisect Happy Days into pre-shark and post-shark you get a pretty good division of quality to crap.  Now, there were other things that factored in to the lower quality on Happy Days.  Richie left, Fonzie was slowly moving from an extremely amusing secondary character into the star and losing some of his more appealing traits in the process, the "message" tone of the show went steadily up as they ran out of good stories to tell, and with the changing dynamics of the show it essentially became a completely different show.  The "Jump the Shark" guys understood all this and pointed to the jumping of the shark as the point at which the show changed and didn't necessarily mean that that particular event caused the changes. I think a lot of the people who post on that website don't understand that.

 

Now that I agree with. Usually it really isn't one moment in particular that befalls a TV show, its a ton of factors, and like I said above, usually its a process that only shows up over a length of time (I'd say usually a full season after a moment is pretty much a good length) but as I said usually you'll see posts go up the week an episode airs that "fits" into one of the categories (or when news breaks about an actor leaving or rumors start swirling about stunt casting, new characters, ect) and hysteria will break out

 

I agree that there are a lot of pot-stirrers and people who just never liked a show and wanted to bash it that post at that website, but I think there are also a lot of people who don't understand the concept fully and many who just didn't like a choice that was made on a particular show and want to voice their discontent. 

 

Thats also echos my point. Had the sites curators more defined the meaning of JTS and had more reigns over what got posted then maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation!

 

I.e. it'd be say a more thoughtfull discussion of the decline of many great TV shows, and even shows that had Jumped only to keep coming back for more (perfect example, Saturday Night Live, Friends, ect)

 

Steve

[Guest areacode212]

Rollingstone.com and them also started a JTS for music artists and I think they also have a book out as well, so obviously it has grown to be part of pop-culture.

The Rolling Stone version seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I spent the better part of an hour looking for it a few months ago, and couldn't find it.

 

I still enjoy combing through the regular jumptheshark.com site. There aren't any other websites (that I know of) that have sections for such a wide variety of TV shows, so I'm willing to forgive some of its faults.

 

But yeah, it's annoying when you have idiots logging on right in the middle of an episode and announcing that the show has officially jumped, when they haven't even finished watching the episode yet. Or when the show is about three weeks old, and people already vote for "Never Jumped" or "Day One". The site has really become more of a collection of general message boards, but as I said, it's still fun to peruse, even though lots of posters miss the whole point.

[Guest JMA]

I'd have to say no. Neither the site or the phrase has JTS... yet.

[Guest phoenixrising]

It seems to me that the jumptheshark people should really think about not putting up threads for the shows unless the show is coming to an end. It's easy to look back once a show has finished it's run and pinpoint at exactly what point the show jumped. It's difficult to see when shows jump the shark unless they've been on a while. I remember for Alias they must have had about four posters already declaring it had jumped the shark in the first two episodes. Come on people, I don't mind cynicism, but at least give it a shot first.

 

With that said, the site is still amusing and a good place to go when there's nothing to do on the Net.

[Guest red_file]

Had the sites curators more defined the meaning of JTS and had more reigns over what got posted then maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation!

 

I'd go a step further and say that their biggest mistake was letting the site's content be provided by their readers. In some cases a posting board works fine for content; on a site where the idea is to judge when a show started to decline, it's probably best to take the content out of the hands of the unwashed masses. Had they gotten a decent staff together they could've created quite a resource. As it is, the site is little more than an amusement, which might really be all it was designed for.

[Guest converge241]

yeah i got tired of it a little less than a year ago

 

the one thing that i really liked about the site was all the obscure tv shows

[Guest Youth N Asia]

I hate that site and I hate hearing the term...people nitpick stuff worse then we do, and I know that's hard to believe.

 

I was looking at the Buffy page there, and most people's top reason why it "jumped" is because Tara died, which I can understand in a way. But the #12 reason is cause Buffy cut her hair...CUT HER FIRGGIN HAIR! How that hurts the show or makes it any less enjoyable in any way I'll never know. And a little further down the road some of the votes are for "Sarah Michelle Gellar"...now how can people say "that show was great till she came on..."

 

The site sucks.

[Guest teke184]

I hate that site and I hate hearing the term...people nitpick stuff worse then we do, and I know that's hard to believe.

 

I was looking at the Buffy page there, and most people's top reason why it "jumped" is because Tara died, which I can understand in a way. But the #12 reason is cause Buffy cut her hair...CUT HER FIRGGIN HAIR! How that hurts the show or makes it any less enjoyable in any way I'll never know. And a little further down the road some of the votes are for "Sarah Michelle Gellar"...now how can people say "that show was great till she came on..."

 

The site sucks.

I don't think that's a legitimate reason for Buffy jumping the shark.

 

Felicity, however...

[Guest T®ITEC]

I hate that site and I hate hearing the term...people nitpick stuff worse then we do, and I know that's hard to believe.

 

I was looking at the Buffy page there, and most people's top reason why it "jumped" is because Tara died, which I can understand in a way. But the #12 reason is cause Buffy cut her hair...CUT HER FIRGGIN HAIR! How that hurts the show or makes it any less enjoyable in any way I'll never know. And a little further down the road some of the votes are for "Sarah Michelle Gellar"...now how can people say "that show was great till she came on..."

 

The site sucks.

On the M*A*S*H page, most people say it never jumped. However, good ol' number #7 is this...

 

Hair Care (BJ grows a mustache) (38 votes)

 

Which is just like the example you gave, but maybe a little worse... It had sixteen more votes. PEOPLE ARE SO GHEY.

[Guest The Hamburglar]

In a TV show, a jump the shark moment doesn't necessarily have to be bad, just an event that no matter how well executed has sent the show into a spiral of decay. Buffy is a prime example. The Body was a good, in many fans' eyes great episode, but the death of Buffy's mother simply fucked the show's dynamic to no end. Has any show ever recovered from a shark-jumping moment? Managed to claw back its former greatness?

[Guest J*ingus]

Married With Children comes to mind, actually. In some of its later seasons, the show was getting pretty tired, as it focused way too much on the shenanigans of the NO MA'AM guys and ignored the other longterm characters. But in the last year it was on, the show suddenly did an abrupt 180 and went back to the dysfunctional family dynamic that made it such a smash.

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

Jump the shark has nothing to do with why a particular show declined in quality, although sometimes they are one and the same.

 

A jump the shark moment is a symbol to which you can point to and say it was all downhill from there. Usually the reason behind it is bad writing.

 

EDIT: I forgot to mention. A show does not necessarily jump the shark at its highest peak, but its last one.

[Guest teke184]

I agree with previous posters who say that Jump The Shark should only look at shows that have ended their run.

 

With the exception of The Simpsons, which has undoubtably been on a downhill slide since Who Shot Mr. Burns due to bad writing, I can't think of an active show that deserves to be debated this much. (Most of these shows that get commented on ARE only about 2-3 seasons old, at that, in addition to still being active)

[Guest Retro Rob]

I don't see how a show that is still on the air could have one point where it JTS. You can't really tell once a show begins it's FINAL downward trend until it is over. IMO, JTS is something you can only see after a show is over.