Outside of the In-Crowd – Jump up my shark, jackass
Courtney Enlow |
There are many common sayings, phrases, terms and colloquialisms that I wish would take the leap and get out of dodge and get off my plane. These include, but are not limited to:
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- I’m not racist, but …
- Twilight was a well-written series of books with totally rational and sane fans with discerning taste and completely healthy interpersonal relationships.
Also, there are people out there in the world still quoting Borat and Napoleon Dynamite, but I am certain that we’re all on the same wavelength on that one. But the phrase that dicks me off the most? “Jumping the shark.”
When the phrase originated, it had a perfect meaning and came equipped with the best of intentions. It describes the exact moment in a beloved television series when things completely went off the rails, and was to be utilized to describe that moment in other programs.
That last part hasn’t really worked out for it.
Instead, the phrase is now used to describe any moment in any TV series that pisses you off. Yes you, one single individual person, most likely on the Internet.
The latest misuse has launched this past week, following the Jim and Pam wedding episode of The Office. Per uszhe, I got on Twitter to see just how wrong people thought I was for liking it, and I counted four allegations of shark jumping among those I follow.
Let’s discuss the very term before I start yelling at people for having wrong opinions (this is the Internet, mawfucker!). “Jumping the shark” has become more ubiquitous than Starbucks, or even jokes about how ubiquitous Starbucks is, which is in and of itself more ubiquitous than Starbucks. So it’s really super all over the place. And it seems as though people have lost sight of what it is and what it refers to. The phrase stems from a dude water-skiing over a goddamn shark while wearing a leather jacket with his swim trunks. That’s ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome, but ridiculous still.
Of course this was probably not the first time Happy Days had shown signs of taking a turn for the goofy. Fonzie had been steadily gaining super powers as the show went on, and this was merely the tipping point for fans to finally say: “Dude, what the shit?” except it was the ’70s so they were probably all “*toke* Huh? *toke* Well, whip inflation now I guess.”
When Jon Hein created this magical game-changing phrase out of brain dust and sunshine, he really had the right idea. He was talking about really stupid things indicative of the writers just saying, “You know what? Fuck it.” Fonzie’s Jaws-jump, the appearance of Cousin Oliver, stars leaving their own show to be helmed by secondary characters, location changes, the culmination of sexual tension and Ted McGinley.
But today it’s used so incorrectly that it’s lost all meaning and is primarily only used by uncreative people on Internet comment threads. I dare you to go to IMDb’s forum for any given television show (don’t do it; it will hurt you in the soul place) and no matter what the program (“You know, Ken Burns really jumped the shark when he focused on Yellowstone in this park series …”), no matter how long it’s been on (“You know, this Modern Family pilot really jumped the shark when they added the Mexican kid …”), no matter anything, people will find a way to decide that it’s no longer worthy of being on the air.
The worst thing about all this? You can’t determine if a show has “jumped the shark” at least until the next episode, you wasteoids. That’s what the phrase means, that this was the moment that the show went downhill. So when people are online five minutes after the show airs rampaging about sharks and Fonzies, you already know they can’t be trusted.
I’m not saying people are wrong in disliking any moment or episode from a TV series. Hate the shit out of it, see if I care. But deciding in a single moment that an entire series is now officially degrading past the point of Small Wonder is being pretty melodramatic. Jim and Pam’s wedding is thrown off by a YouTube meme? Shark jump! Robin and Barney start dating? Shark jump! They don’t kill Kenny in every episode anymore? Shark jump! The SVU team catches another pedophile? Phil Hartman dies and they bring in Jon Lovitz? Shark jumps abound! Jesus dies in the Bible AND gets resurrected? Dude, shark jump!
The Internet contingent isn’t exactly known for giving solid chances to TV shows. Except Dollhouse. I mean seriously, we are trying really really hard to love that damn Dollhouse show. But other than that, most people don’t give anything a fair shot for longer than a season or two. Once 40 or so episodes – beloved and cherished episodes at that – have passed, the Internet elite suddenly decides that it sucks and should have been canceled and why can’t American TV work like British television and blah blah rhapsodizing on Battlestar blah blah.
Come on guys. All we should be asking of TV shows is that they make us laugh, make us think, or at the very least give us a somewhat enjoyable 22 – 42 minutes. Do we really demand perfection on a weekly basis? If you’re reading this column, probably not, but the fact still stands that we should at least try enjoy the things we enjoy instead of spending our free time being pissed at stuff. Call me crazy, but at the end of the day we should think outside of the box and just like things. It is what it is. Vote for Pedro.
Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.
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Enjoyable article Court but it only deepens the ever expanding chasm between my intelligence level and that of my daughter. I find you to be a really smart, funny person and in tune with what’s happening in the real world today. On the other hand, I’m just getting old and out of touch as I sheepishly admit that I’ve never heard the expression “Shark Jumping” before. I like to stay up on current events and spend a lot of time on the “internets” as you sometimes call it, but I must not be reading the same shit that you do. At any rate, thanks for helping to expand my vocabulary and fear not because I think it’s a truly stupid expression that you will never hear me utter.
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Thank you for this. Just…thank you. Overuse of the shark-jumping label is one of those things that annoys me about my fellow internet geeks.
Now that I know I’m not the only one, I can stop feeling guilty about still enjoying new episodes of The Office and HIMYM.
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Great article. I’m glad someone finally addressed the overuse of this phrase.
However, I do have an issue with one line in this column. I think John Lovitz taking over for Phil Hartman on Newsradio was when that show went downhill. It was never quite the same when they lost Hartman.
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And I concur with that Joel. I’ve just always heard that phrase associated with that moment and it hardly seems fair when compared with other shows where the writers just gave up or lost interest.
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I admit to being guilty of this when I watched the episode, but the thing about The Office jumping the shark is that unlike some shows (Alias comes to mind), we can pinpoint the exact second in which it happened. I think that wedding dance scene, and the sheer predictability of it and subsequent eye-rolling is what led to so many twitter posts about it. As soon as they got to the actual ceremony in the church I think we were all hoping and praying we wouldn’t have to hear that awful song, and yet…there it was.
I don’t think the quality of the show has gone down as much as by having a pregnancy and wedding, the show entered the land of sitcom cliches. It’s still mostly funny, but also kind of predictable in a way it previously wasn’t.
I will say, tho, that if there’s any reason to have faith, it’s because of Dwight’s t-shirt. That was awesome.
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You are totally right – it wasn’t the writers’ fault that the show went downhill. It was certainly a circumstance beyond their control.
As for this whole Office thing, I guess I am in the minority who actually didn’t mind the dance scene. It was ridiculous, but it was portrayed as being ridiculous. You were supposed to think the characters were lame for doing it, which is why it worked. Jim (who has always been a stand-in for the audience) buying the tickets to get married on the boat because he knew everyone else was going to do the YouTube dance was a bit of a wink to the audience in that regard.
Besides, the low point of that show is still the episode where Michael was so dumb that he drove a car into the lake because he thought the GPS told him to. That and when he kidnapped the pizza guy over a coupon. Both scenes were just absolutely painful to watch and not funny or believable in the least. But luckily, the show has rebounded since then and has not “jumped the shark.”
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Good points all Steve. One thing that I meant to touch on but got tired/distracted by shiny things was the audience’s need for characters to stay in a state of arrested development. We don’t like when characters’ lives progress like normal people’s. We don’t like weddings or babies. In fairness, it’s usually because TV writers don’t usually write them well (I’m of the belief that there’s just not much funny about babies, probably because I’m not a mombie just yet [please lord, save me]). But done right, I guess they could be pretty good. It’s just rare. Really rare. As in I can’t really think of any examples other than Marshall and Lily from HIMYM.
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It’s a good phrase though to be accurate about Happy Days we’d have to really say the show went down hill after it “Cameoed the Orkan”.
Personally I’ve never liked the phrase “Think Outside the Box” no great creative type has thought outside the box, they always think around the box; take the rules and restrictions they have facing them and find creative way to use them to produce something different.
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You forgot Right Wing Conspiracy
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People will always hate on good things. I thought The Office Wedding was amazing and funny and to be expected if you follow the show. I loved that Jim bought those tickets knowing that Michael/Dwight would do something ridiculous. I laughed a lot. I’m not a couch critic, I don’t think to far into tv because it’s tv. There’s always more of it to go around. It’s not perfect.
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Oh no, you didn’t!
(That never gets old.)
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