Jumping the shark
 

I hate it when you watch a show faithfully and then comes that one episode or season where you realize that the show should have just ended. I have this fear about Dexter because the last episode of the 3rd season was fairly impractical. I feel like Secret Diary of a Call Girl just jumped the shark after a season and a half. I remember watching Nip/Tuck up through the 4th season and finally not being able to stand it. Hell, I even tried to watch a new episode while I was flipping through the channels one day recently and its even MORE bizarre.

Does anyone else realize when their favorite shows start to jump the shark?

absolutely. In the past year, I've stopped watching about 3-4 seasons because they got too far away from the original idea and have now become really boring to watch. If they do it to dexter, I'll be pretty mad!

But to be honest, there has to be a stop point on most shows or this will happen no matter what! Prison break is a good example: season 1 was amazing! season 2 was a great follow up. Season 3 kept the same feel without being too off but it was getting too much. Season 4 has been so far from the original that I now hate most of the character! ...

I always wish for a Series Finale when the show is still good just to say it was a great series instead of having a show that lasts for 28 seasons and is pure crap.

Shark Jumper: Children of the '70s may remember how the A-Team totally shit the bed after the oddball Season 4. Stockwell? Frankie? Total crap.

If your guest stars are Hulk Hogan and Boy George... you're already kinda screwed. Just hang it up.

...

Anti: HBO's Rome is an example of a series that cut out and left you willing to sell a kidney for more. The single best executed series I've ever seen.

Scrubs should have ended after season 6, and the last season of that 70s show is so unfunny it's sad.

Other than that, there are very few series I watch nowadays. It seems like no sitcoms can resist the urge to become a soap opera.

Sadly I think Mad Men jumped the shark when Don went to California.


It really fucked with the flow of the show. I understand that it was all about explaining is past a little more... But still. I hope season 3 makes up for it.

Heroes jumped it pretty early. I just continue to watch it because I'm one of those onlookers who can't avert my eyes from this impending train wreck.
Battlestar Galactica came close, but damnit, everything is all coming together.
Burn Notice hasn't jumped yet, but it's getting pretty damn repititive and I'm losing interest fast.

The most infuriating victim that I remember was the John Larroquette Show. It was a dark edged sitcom set on the night-shift at the St. Louis bus terminal.

The first season was original and daring with both comedy and drama balanced together. And then in the second season they tried to lighten it up by giving John a wacky neurotic girlfriend and moving much of the action to his apartment. It was textbook Jump The Shark and immensley disappointing.

I thought Dexter was best ended about midway through the first season. jesus, i got so tired of him explaining to himself how different he was. but perhaps its comforting to know that even serial killers can be tedious and dull. maybe that's the point.

i've never been a habitual of watcher of tv shows - that is until last year when I kind of went crazy with them.

I have watched: Lost (up to the last season...none of the new episodes), Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, The Sopranos.
...and all of these could have ended sooner without any gripe from me. I do believe it always gets to a point where the writers are having to try too hard...and by that time they should probably have stopped at least a season ago.

Currently I am watching Big Love (waiting on the third season to come out on dvd) and already I am sensing a 'tiredness' in the writing.

I have also watched the first season of Weeds, but that first season love is usually pretty palpable. What is to come remains to be seen.

I couldn't get through more than a few episodes of Rome, either...eh...just didn't get into it.

yeah, that's all.

CSI: Miami jumped the shark in the very first episode.


The very first time he took off his fucking sun glasses... God I wanna punch that douchebag in the face.

HAHAHAHA... That's odd, I had the very same feeling.

Lost should've been a six episode mini-series and nothing more. I remember really being into the first season and once the second came around it just got ridiculous - dead people coming back to life, the "others" and the fact that you can't go 15 minutes without a flashback. That early sense of mystery that the show had has long since been replaced by a sense that the writers have written themselves into a corner and can't figure a sensible way out.

Big Love is done as well. Once they began to consider a 4th wife I knew I had to stop watching.

MM, don't give up on Weeds. I've seen up to the 4th season and it's well worth it.

I have no plans to traipse along with the Lost bunch any further...i get too hoarse from yelling at the tv.

I have season 2 of weeds sitting here with me now. :)

Lost keeps getting better and better. I love what the writers are doing. The fact that there is a definite ending point, and they know when that is going to be has enabled the writers to orchestrate the progression and the loose end tie-ups much more effectively. Ah, but I have digressed. I have seen the "jump the shark" in many sitcoms and hour long dramas. I wish Dancing with the morons would jump soon. I am so tired of hearing about that show.

Prison Break, First season was awesome, 2nd season was necessary to finish up the plot. It didn't need a season 3, and certainly not a season 4.

Lost, CSI, Scrubs, Smallville, oh my, Smallville... I could go on..

Looks like jumping the shark...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/09.../_aHoratio.jpg

lands a show in Davy Jones' locker.

Yeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!

-------

Another show that jumped the shark is House.

Same shit, different week. Someone has a mysterious disease/illness that only the gimpy pill-popping asocial Dr. House can diagnose and treat, all the while flaunting the hospital rules and keeping his semi-beard the same length.

I quit watching in the 2nd season.

I agree, the second I saw that they ended up in the Latin American prison I swore off the show and havn't seen it again.

Well executed, Fremen. Props on the tie-in.

I thought that 24 was jumping the shark in Seasons 4-5, getting a bit repetitive with the Jack Bauer saves the day routine and it felt like the writers were running out of ideas for dangers that could be defused. I still watched, but was less enthused. The current season though has a fresh feel to it with the disbanding of the old agency and some of the old favorite characters kind of running things rogue.

I would agree that CSI:Miami has already jumped the shark, except for the fact that the handsdown hottest woman on tv is still on it:

http://images.vietnamnet.vn/dataimag...ilyProcter.jpg

I think that Battlestar Galactica has finally jumped the shark now that Ellen Tigh is back on.

I feared for both Lost and Battlestar, but I think they've both come around. Having ending points for the shows helped, I'm sure. Wish I could say the same thing for Heroes.

If they go on long enough, every show jumps the shark. Some of my faves, Buffy, Homicide, hell, ever the Simpsons, get weaker as they go on. I wish we would adopt a style closer to that of the BBC, where shows have a 6-9 episode arc, and then they go away for awhile. It would allow for more variety and stronger writing.

However, Arrested Development never jumped, except is a cool exteremely funny way. :)

Lost is a bad example. The only season of that show that can remotely be considered bad is season 3, and even it wasn't that bad, it was pretty much necessary to build up the Benjamin Linus character (which has turned out to be possibly the best character on the show). Now Heroes or nip/tuck....there's some good examples.

The ultimate example in my mind is The X-Files. I'm just going to pretend seasons 7-9 never existed.

Unfortunately I own them all on DVD..

CSI jumped a whole bloody shoal of sharks, on unicycles, wearing a bag over it's head, when thy started using magic science.

You know the deal - that they can zoom in infinitely into a photo taken on a cheap surveillance camera and eventually read a newspaper reflected in the eyeball of a paserby.

Remember that episode of Happy Days, when Fonzie goes skiing, and...oh. Wait.

The shows I love tend to get cancelled before they jump the shark. Which, on the one hand, is good... but on the other, is annoying.

I almost want to say season 7 of Buffy. The whole "First Evil" and Potential Slayers thing had me rolling my eyes more often than not. Still, some good episodes came out of the season, and a bad Buffy season is (was) still better than a lot of what's on TV now.

I realize now that The Office has jumped the shark since Jim asked Pam to marry him.

Without even thinking about it, I have hardly watched this season.

I would actually posit that season 6 of Buffy jumped the shark, but they redeemed themselves with season 7. Buffy slinging hamburgers at the Double-Meat Palace? Gimme a break.

Me either. I also think the writer's strike didn't help with that situation...it really killed a lot of the continuity for me.

CSI:Miami was the shark. CSI:New York was a whale.

I think Seinfeld pretty much waited to jump in the finale. What was that?

Yeah, it jumped the shark with the last episode of the first season, when Sylar's "corpse" disappeared, at the end, like a slasher movie cliche.

:rolleyes:

But if it didn't jump the shark then, it certainly did with the first episode of the second season, when it was revealed that Peter survived going nuclear.

:orly:

Seriously, up until that point I was thinking Heroes was one of the best series ever, on TV. I own the first season, on DVD, but I will never buy another season. And I will never watch again that final episode of season one.

:shakehead:

I fear that Fringe and Terminator will either a) go on too long and never wrap up or b) will get canceled and never wrap up

I wish Pushing Daisies had had the chance to get near the ramp...

I'm watching Bones... Anyone think they've jumped yet?

Eastbound and Down - about 30 seconds into the first episode. I couldn't finish watching it, it was so pathetically bad.
WTF has happened to HBO? They pull the plug on shows like Deadwood, John From Cincinnatti, and Rome - and replace it with shit like this?

Also, My Name is Earl hasn't been funny for a couple of years.

Conversely, I think this year is one of the best for Lost. They pretty much lost me sometime during last season, but I've really enjoyed this season - so much, in fact, that I've had to give up watching the incredibly beautiful A. J. Cook in Criminal Minds, because I watch Lost live and TiVo Life (which needs to refocus on who framed Crews more) in that time slot.

ER jumped it after Greene died. And then they rebounded a bit until Noah Wyle's character moved to Africa... which was weird. Then it just sucked. They brought on the red-headed kid from Charles in Charge or something and John Stamos. Need I say more?

I have similar fears as Derwood about Fringe and Terminator. And House. Just don't screw up House. No more kissy-face!

MM, Weeds continues to kick ass. I loves it.

West Wing, end of the 4th (5th) Season, Zoe kidnapped, Hoynes resigns, enter Speaker of the House John Goodman...

Almost, but somehow they recovered and season 7 turned out to be pretty darn good.

I was thinking this - just seeing an ad for this killed any idea I had about watching it.

Touche. Also, the whole "magic as a metaphor for drugs" addiction was a little much.


Season 6 has "Once More With Feeling," though, which I feel makes up for a lot. :)

stargate had a perfect ending then it just kept going only now it seemed like a different show
Stargate:Atlantis failed the standard of mindless entertainment
LO SVU stopped being about happiness and semi thought provoking (my roommate can create a plausible meaning of life after peeling potatoes)
LO after LO trial by jury got launched
cops, after I saw the kid who bullied me in high school on it

I have to ask - as a cop, or a criminal? :paranoid:

It jumped for me after a few episodes when I realized they had no intention of staying with the way the books are written.
I couldn't get past it.

start threadjack

The kid who bullied me in high school became a cop, then a few years later, went through the front window of his squad car in an accident (failure to wear a seatbelt) and turned into the nicest guy you could meet. Mental capacity of a 5 year old, but a sweet guy. Karmic destiny, anyone?

end threadjack

See, I've never read any of the books.


For me it kind of jumped... a small leap if you will... When the young intern guy, can't remember his name, ended up being a serial killer.