It was an unforgettable day in television history, and Arthur Fonz Fonsarelli in Happy Hour proved himself king of the beach by water skiing on sharks. While the moment may have triumphed, it is also a far cry from the show's traditional model. Millions of viewers are scratching their heads at home, already wondering why the show has become a showcase for all sorts of antics. "Happy Hour" will last more seasons, but with this decisive event taking place, it really jumped on the shark.
From The Wonders of Fonzie, an enduring cultural idiom was born. Past and present, a TV series is seen as "jumping out of the shark" when it reaches a new low in terms of quality or gimmicks. In many cases, this happens with the introduction of a new role or the loss of an old role. It can also take the form of an appalling plot design, such as Fonzie's water skiing on a shark. There are also shows that, over time, degrade in quality and head toward the proverbial death knell or the road of no return, after which they are no longer the same. As long as the audience continues to watch, anything can happen... Until they don't watch it.
Stark surveyed the history of popular TV shows and selected 20 shows that were known for somehow jumping ship.
Andy Griffiths Show
Rating: 8.3
Year of broadcast: 1960-1968
Beloved Deputy Sheriff Barney Farfe (Don Knotts) leaves Andy Griffiths at the end of the fifth season. Without his first episode called Obi and Carnival, it was painful because of his absence. The few alternate characters fail to evoke the eerie energy characteristic of Faf.
Battlestar Galactica
Rating: 8.7
Year of broadcast: 2004-2009
After slowly building a loyal fan base, the sci-fi series went too far in the final episode of the third season. In this episode, the identity of the "last five" Saions is found by fans and critics to be a less satisfying fad. A spooky mystery is now as vulgar as bad New Age music, and in the process disintegrates previous plots.
Beverly Hills
Rating: 7.2
Year of broadcast: 1962-1971
After switching from black and white to color in the third season, some fans felt that the iconic comedy series had lost some of its charm. It wasn't until season eight of "Manhattan Slopes" that it actually jumped over sharks, when Clampetts traveled to New York and viewers found themselves building a log cabin in the middle of Central Park.
Off-line family
Rating: 6.7
Year of broadcast: 1969-1974
To revive audience interest, the comedy series introduced a new character midway through the fifth and final season. His name is Cousin Oliver, and wherever he goes, he causes a cascade of disasters that annoy the Brady family and their fans. The term "Cousin Oliver Syndrome" soon appeared, referring to a TV series that had been reinvented in desperate ratings battles.
Dallas
Rating: 7
Year of broadcast: 1978-1991
The soap opera killed the protagonist Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) in the finale of season eight, and that's probably what viewers thought. It turns out that his death, and the entire ninth season, was just a dream. This shocking shift was revealed at the premiere of the tenth season and became one of the most groundbreaking skydiving moments on television.
Dexter
Rating: 8.6
Broadcast year: 2006-2021
This "showtime feast" keeps viewers glued to the screen for the first four seasons until the quality drops. Most fans will agree, and it didn't jump the shark until Dexter's sister discovered his shocking secret at the end of season six. Just when things looked bad, the original episode ended with a statement: "Don't touch my beer."
Different strokes
Rating: 6.6
Broadcast year: 1978-1986
In the sixth season of the duo's "Long Live Hollywood", Mr. Drummond takes his family to Los Angeles, hoping to win back a woman named Maggie. They discover that she has a young son named Sam, whom the audience has never had. Still, he became a regular in a series and an irreparable agent
Downton Abbey
Broadcast year: 2010-2015
Even at the height of the Downton Abbey mania, this acclaimed British drama showcased quite a few of its "shark jumping" moments. Some commentators have pointed out that Matthew Crowley's spontaneous recovery from a brutal injury in the second series is rather ridiculous. Most people think the season four ends when the show gets a little silly for its own good.
emergency room
Rating: 7.7
Broadcast year: 1994-2009
Another term for "jumping shark" might be "helicopter crash," if there's any basis for this medical drama. No stranger to gimmicks, "Uh" shows a creepy helicopter blast in the tenth episode of season ten, "Free Fall," where Dr. Robert Romano was killed in an accident, having just been slashed in an arm by a helicopter blade just before a season ago.
Game of Thrones
Rating: 9.3
Broadcast year: 2011-2019
A longtime darling of pop culture, HBO's epic fantasy series has divided fans throughout the show. With the premiere of the eighth season, there was widespread disappointment as the show continued to deviate from the raw materials. Misguided plot choices lead to truly disastrous endings.
Gray's anatomy
Rating: 7.5
Aired: 2005 to present
This long-staged medical drama has experienced various ups and downs over the years. An ambitious seventh-season musical series, Song Under the Song, sounds a little daunting. It can be said that this is one of the many times in this series to jump out of the shark, but then it has regained its footing.
Happy days
Rating: 7.4
Broadcast: 1974 to 1984
The idiom "Jumping Shark" is the rocking water ski created after Arthur Funzaleli (Henry Winkler) jumped the shark in the season five of "Hollywood: Part III" and his iconic leather jacket, fonz takes the show away from its nostalgic origins. About 30 million viewers watched the event.
Space fairy love
Year of broadcast: 1965-1970
According to the myth inherent in the show itself, an elf loses her power after marriage. That didn't stop Jenny and Major Anthony Nelson from getting married in the fifth season of The Wedding, which is often seen as a response to the moral standards of the time, but it still marks the relative low point of the classic series.
Virgin Jane
Rating: 7.8
Broadcast year: 2014-2019
The love affair between Jane (Gina Rodriguez) and her husband Michael (Brett Deere) abruptly ends after her death in the third season of "Chapter 54" Instead of dealing with emotional differences, the show highlights the style of the tv novella. Since then, things have become even more ridiculous, including the discovery in the final episode of season four that Michael is not dead after all.
Lavin and Shirley
Rating: 6.9
Broadcast: 1976 to 1983
In the sixth season, when the protagonist moved from Milwaukee to California, the sequel to Happy Hour also plummeted. It wasn't until lead actor Cindy Williams left the show two seasons later that the show managed to concoct the occasional highlight. Her last appearance was in the episode "Windows on the Street," which marked the shark's official jump.
Lost
Year of broadcast: 2004-2010
Given the internet's need for quantity rather than quality, the wildly popular series was overwhelmed in the third season of Strangers in a Strange Land, an extremely slow episode that only provided a backstory for Jack's tattoo, but did not advance the plot. Whether the sixth season is equally inferior or cautious depends on the person asked; but perhaps nothing compares to the show's last episode, "Twist," which caused an uproar among fans and critics alike.
Part-time
Rating: 7.6
Broadcast year: 1985-1989
The romantic tension between the protagonists Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepard has viewers paying attention to it early in the mystery series. When the two finally end up in the third season of "I'm Curious... When they meet in Marty, it's a satisfying moment, but it's an ill-fated story. Behind-the-scenes drama also led to a subsequent decline in quality and ratings.
office
Rating: 8.9
Broadcast year: 2005-2013
Some fans have linked the decline of this classic comedy to the marriage of Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) in season six. However, it wasn't until Michael Scott, played by Steve Karel, left in the next season of "Goodbye, Michael" that the sharks officially jumped. He gave a brief review of the last episode of the series.
Once upon a time
Broadcast year: 2011-2018
This unique blend of fairy tale fantasy and modern drama initially captivated fans with its immersive plot and complex characters. By the fourth season of The Apprentice episode, the show's world pattern had grown to the point of oversaturation. What was once clever and gripping is now nothing more than artificial.
Orange is the new black
Rating: 8.0
Broadcast year: 2013-2019
The Emmy-winning "Prison Delamedi" became one of the most shocking moments on television with the death of a major character in the season four finale. By the time the season five premiered, the show's creators seemed to be struggling to fill the void left by her absence. The series was rather volatile, although it can still be observed since then.