Point of Shark Jump: When Did Any Given Television Show Jump?

You can always buy the DVD box set:https://www.amazon.com/Barney-Miller-Complete-Hal-Linden/dp/B005BUA1JY

 

Interesting that you mentioned Semple leaving halfway through the second season. While rewatching the entire series last year (when the DVDs came out), I sensed something was "off" toward the latter part of Season 2 -- well before the start of Season 3 and the entrance of Batgirl. Maybe Semple's departure explains it...

 

I always thought The Sopranos jumped during the slow, boring stretch that was Season 4, but then jumped back during Season 5 remaining great all the way to the end (Junior shooting Tony injected some needed life into the show later on, IMO).

 

I dunno..Season 4 had some interesting moments. Christopher and his heroin addition..The end of Ralphie..Carmella and Tony's split.

Season six had too many "who cares" storylines for my taste. Plus pretty much everybody dies or is on life support.

 

I could have stoped watching The Office once Michael leaves. But I did very much enjoy the storyline of them finally getting to see the documentary.

 

The end of Ralphie was one of the few great moments in that season I thought (it's actually one of the best episodes of the series as well).

 

Modern Family has jumped the shark, but I am not sure where it happened, Gloria's baby? The two sons not being funny anymore? I think Phil needs to have an affair with Gloria and make it a "very special" Modern Family.

 

Does anyone remember the episode of Boston Public when the teacher fired the handgun in the classroom full of students to discipline them?

The teacher received a severe reprimand from the principal for his behavior.

This is when I realized the writers of this show have no idea about high school.

 

Also Christopher's intervetion is pretty amazing.

 

I always thought THE SIMPSONS jumped the proverbial shark when they killed off Maude Flanders. Not because she was terribly important to the narrative, but because it seemed gratuitous and cruel. Making jokes about grieving made me think the creative forces behind the show simply didn't care about the Springfield universe they had created (or inherited). The tone of the show had changed substantially from its beginnings and having a character die for cheap yuks seemed more SOUTH PARK or FAMILY GUY.

 

No, I agree with you.

I hated the final episode. Here's Walter White, brilliant scientist, and his way of dealing with the Nazi guys is rigging a 50 cal (or whatever it was) to come out of his trunk and kill everybody but him and Jesse. Meh.

I get that Gilligan wanted to wrap things up in a nice little package but I didn't like the writing behind that episode at all.

 

Regarding Twin Peaks, it's pretty much agreed that the show jumped after the Laura Palmer murder was resolved. Some of those latter Season 2 episodes were the weakest of the series. But, IMO, I always thought the show jumped back and redeemed itself quite nicely with the final six episodes dealing with Windom Earle and the Black Lodge (the final episode, in particular, being one of the best of the series).

Of course, it remains to be seen how things will change when the show returns next year. With David Lynch directing the entire series, it should be incredible...

 

Huh - I just watched Season 7 a few weeks back and thought the show was as good as ever!

I'm not a huge fan but I think it's still funny.

And the sons were never especially funny - Gould and Rodriguez started as the two worst actors on the show and that's not changed.

Worst part of Season 7? Adam Devine as Haley's love interest - cripes, is he an annoying actor!

 

Do you mean Adam Levine??

 

I know it's not a tv show (although it's on everyday) Warner Bros cartoons jumped the shark about 1960. The writing got a lot worse, characters like Speedy Gonzalez were introduced, and Bill Lava did a lot of the music.

 

That was due mostly to budget cuts. It's interesting when you watch the trajectory of those WB cartoons between 1950 and 1960. In 1949/1950, they were at the absolute top of their game. (Apologies to Bob Clampett fans) The quality of the animation and music seems to deteriorate ever so slightly every year after around 1953. By 1960, you can see clearly that the best years are over.

 

Before that final episode, I felt like White had so many moments of pathetic cowardice that it was only in that last episode that he became the badass that Heisenberg was rumored to be.

I didn't feel like it was a MacGyver moment. It's not like he was climbing out on his car hood while it's going downhill 100 miles an hour to fix mechanical problems.

 

True, but how he rigged up the gun and it shot all the bad guys (pulling off a complicated plan perfectly) belonged more in a formulaic action movie than the finale of a tightly plotted TV series. It seemed to me like Vince Gilligan knew Walt had to (a) kill the Nazis and (b) rescue Jesse, and couldn't think how to do that in a believable way that was in keeping with the show's established style. It was too much of a fist-pumping, crowd-pleasing finale for me, out of tone with the rest of the series (which is what I found shark-jumping about it). Even earlier in the episode, the way Walt was able to evade the law and the manhunt for him to see Skylar (and his son) and have that scene with her, I found that forced. How was it so easy for him to ghost back into Albuquerque and do all the things Gilligan needed him to do in order to gain redemption? Walt became a cross between a super hero who can do anything and go anywhere undetected, MacGyver and a Hollywood action hero in that episode, and it felt like if Gilligan had needed him to climb out on his car hood at 100mph downhill to fix the engine, so that he would gain his redemption and tie up all the loose ends in a fan-friendly manner, he would have had him do that too. Even if it wasn't jumping the shark, it was taking serious shortcuts to make sure the series ended a certain way.

 

Deb falling in love with Dexter (her adopted brother...) on Dexter. And after six seasons of near-misses, how does she finally find out her brother's secret (he's a serial killer)? (This was the pivotal moment the series had been building towards). By walking in on him committing a murder, not because of clever police work or putting all the clues together, but because she wanted to declare her feelings for him, and just chose a really inappropriate time.

 

To be fair, I don't think he would have seen it as a failure if he'd been killed then either. And he thought that Jesse had betrayed him - when he set the booby-trap up he had no idea Jesse was being held captive.

 

Of course what I said is only my opinion. I thought Luke was funny when he was just a kid but now just seems awkward. Whenever someone has a tv baby it seems like a move in the wrong direction.

 

I checked out on Modern Family after season 2. Not for any jump the shark reason, it just became predictable and less funny.

 

Dexter was a weird, weird show, and I think it kind of peaked with the John Lithgow season and never really recovered. One of the weirdest moments was when he told his kids, "sorry for your loss" when their mother was brutally murdered.

That was also one of the weirdest situations in TV history when Deb & Dexter actually got married in real life, realized it didn't work, divorced about a year later, but kept working together on the show. I suspect that was not a comfortable set.

 

Lorenzo Semple bailed on Batman around that time, and interestingly he never wrote for TV again. Some of his movies (like Three Days of the Condor, Papillon, and Parallax View) were really brilliant, but then he wrote Flash Gordon, Never Say Never Again, and Sheena Queen of the Jungle, which were just awful.

You can make a good argument that Batman jumped the shark with Batgirl.

 

Season 4 was absolutely the peak of Dexter's run. John Lithgow was brilliant (as was Keith Carradine as Lundy), and the decision to end the season on such a dark note (Rita's death, at Lithgow's hands) was, in Dexter terms, incredibly bold. But it was all rapidly downhill after that. It should have been wrapped up after 5, 6 at most, seasons, but they somehow carried on to do eight. Seasons 5 and 6 were particularly bad, but the 'Deb loves Dexter' plot development was the jumping of the shark for me (one of the most egregious plot missteps in modern TV history, in my opinion. A real 'what were they thinking?!' situation).