jumping the shark

The term jumping the shark ( Engl. "About the Hai jump") comes from the US media and describes the time at which a television series has passed its peak and the audience loses interest in her.

The term was established by the website jumptheshark.com (now taken over by a commercial company; all original content and comments have been deleted), which dealt extensively with the topic. Its name goes back to the third episode of the fifth season of the television series Happy Days , Fonzie in Hollywood - Part 3 , in which Fonzie , one of the main characters, jumps over a shark with water skis . This episode aired on September 20, 1977. Some critics saw this "ridiculous" scene as the end of the series - in the meantime, however, there has also been a voice against this view, because the series then ran for seven years until September 27, 1984.

Distinguishing features for the jumping-the-shark effect are, for example:

• Leading actors drop out of the series (for example Happy Days , The Wild Seventies )
• The main characters are after several years of a pair (for example, The Nanny , Who's the Boss? , Superman - the adventures of Lois & Clark , Nikola )
• Additional characters are integrated (for example in a terribly nice family )
• Characters that were actually written out of the series reappear (for example, the resurgence of Bobby in Dallas )
• The child actors are getting too old and replaced by new children (for example The Bill Cosby Show or Full House )
• The actor in a role is changed (for example Aunt Vivian in The Prince of Bel-Air )
• One or more main characters experience a drastic change in their life, for example due to a move or something similar (such as an alleged lottery win in Roseanne ).

The term is now used metaphorically in the United States for people and things that have passed their zenith .

See also

• Nuking the fridge

Web links

Wiktionary: jump the shark  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Shark Jumps on US TV , US Article Explained, May 21, 2008
• TV-Wissen - Jump the Shark - When series get dead , contribution by Hendrik Efert in DRadio Wissen , August 31, 2011 (6:57 min)
• Unofficial successor site BoneTheFish from JumpTheShark.com according to TV Tropes

Footnotes

1. ^ Fonzie jumps the shark . Video on YouTube . April 9, 2006 (0:45 min)
2. ↑ Fred Fox Jr .: First Person: In defense of "Happy Days" '"Jump the Shark" episode . In: Los Angeles Times . September 3, 2010
3. ↑ Maureen Dowd: Bike-Deep in the Big Muddy . In: The New York Times . August 27, 2005
4. ↑ Till Raether: Found food . In Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin . Issue 19/2006