The term originated in an episode of the popular sitcom “Happy Days”, broadcast by CBS in 1974-1984. In the third episode of the fifth season, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), a TV favorite, goes water skiing. At one point he literally jumps over a tiger shark. For critics and fans of the series, this absurd “special moment” was too much. “Happy Days” never returned to its former quality. However, years later, illogical plot twists or “special” events came to be called “jumping the shark”.
Sometimes a lot happens over the course of a season of a show – characters die, make fortunes, lose fortunes, get married, divorce… And at the end we find out that it’s not true. It’s just a dream. This was the case with the soap opera “Dallas”. One of the characters, Bobby, was hit by jealous Katherine. He died in hospital. A whole season passed and at the very end we got Pamela, the widow of the deceased, who is woken up by the sound of a shower in the bathroom. The woman finds Boba there’ego, whole and healthy. He realizes that his death and everything that happened after it was just a dream. No words could express the viewers’ disappointment.
It was similar in the ninth and final season of the sitcom “Rosanne”. The series told the adventures of a middle-class family dealing with everyday problems. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the last season, the characters won the lottery and became millionaires overnight. Then comes a series of absurdities that are not entirely to the liking of the series’ fans. What does the last episode reveal? All this did not happen, but was only the plot of a book written by the main character. At the same time, in a few minutes it informs us about the fate of the heroes. We learn, for example, that her husband Dan (John Goodman) did not survive the heart attack in season eight. When the series returned after almost twenty years, many of these revelations were considered to have been lost.
“Er” turned out to be a show that went on way too long. The original cast was crumbling and the plots were becoming more and more absurd. Suffice it to say that at one point the mortality rate among Chicago doctors turned out to be very high. The creators said goodbye to the sudden death of, among others, Dr. Romano (Paul McCrane) in the 10th season of the series. And thus they jumped the shark.
Some history. Doctor Romano appeared in the fourth season. He was a talented surgeon, but also an extremely antipathetic person who easily came into conflict with his subordinates. He also often used insults. It is therefore not surprising that he was not particularly popular among his colleagues. Despite this, he had a few moments that warmed up the character a bit.
One of them was an accident that occurred in the ninth season. The helicopter’s propeller then cuts off Romano’s hand. His colleagues from the hospital miraculously manage to save his life. For a surgeon, losing a limb is also a professional tragedy – he can no longer operate. Romano, however, remains at the hospital to train residents.
And here we come to season ten, in which Romano dies when… another helicopter falls on him. It was supposed to be a drama, but it turned out to be a farce. McCrane himself admitted in an interview that he was not a fan of the way his character left.
There are series that seem to have made “jumping the shark” the point of their existence. This was, among others, “Riverdale”, a loose adaptation of the Archie comics. I myself was eliminated during the second season when the red-haired hero recorded a video in which he threatened the assassin Black Hood who was terrorizing the town. The boy was not alone, because he gathered his friends with him – flexing their muscles and hiding their faces behind red balaclavas. It was supposed to be scary and serious, but it turned out funny and cringe’that. However, it turned out that the creators had not said the last word yet.
There were musical episodes, there was the Archie fight’ego with the bear, there was Jughead’s speech about being a weirdo, Jughead faking his death, the cult that turned out to be a human organ farm. I won’t even mention the absurdities of subsequent seasons, but there are legends about them. One thing is certain – the writers must have had a lot of fun.
Polish series do not lag behind American ones when it comes to jumping the shark. The most famous example is the death of Hanka Mostowiak (Małgorzata Kożuchowska). Heroine “M like love” she left in the 862nd episode of the series, which aired on November 7, 2011. Hanka was traveling with her sister Anna (Tamara Arciuch). At the last moment she noticed a girl on the road. In order to avoid the child, she drove into the nearby boxes.
Initially, it seemed that no one was hurt in the incident. However, after a while Hanka fainted. In the hospital, her relatives learned that she died as a result of a ruptured aneurysm in the brain. The episode was watched by eight million viewers, and the fragment with the accident was mentioned many times on the Internet – let’s be honest, mainly in an ironic context. Kożuchowska herself also laughs at the above-mentioned scene. “There is a danger that when I die, someone will put a cardboard box instead of a proper tombstone,” she joked in Kuba Wojewódzki’s program.