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

I was just thinking about Dexter regarding this thread, but discovered that there were some excellent posts about that series already. The shark-jumping already began (for me) a bit in Season 5 when there speeding up/slowing down of storylines and forgotten plot-devices began to show. I think they had enough material for about four great series, after that there were to much 'soap'-elements and the Dexter-character even began to get on my nerves. I never finished watching series 8....

 

I thought season 8 actually began pretty well, and looked promising, especially with Charlotte Rampling. For the first few episodes I was hopeful the series was returning to form and would reach a satisfying conclusion. But the ending was absolutely terrible. If I could un-watch it, I would.

 

Becker:
The show changed when "Reggie" (Terry Farrell) left the show. imo

 

I can tell you that behind the scenes, everybody on the show was struggling, and there was a succession of writers and producers that came and went in an effort to "fix" the show.

 

It's been ages since I watched it, but I'm sure it had got substantially worse somewhere before that - it must have done, as I didn't watch most of the last season before the cast change...

 

It got worse, but only because they ran out of compelling stories. They didn't actually jump the shark until the final season.

 

I wouldn't say "jumped the shark" but the whole season 5 of hey, cousin Tony Blundetto is very close to Tony Soprano, basically a brother, as pretty bad. Did they ever mention him before? At least French LaManna was mentioned a number of times previously. And is the FBI really going to tell Adrianna to bring Chris in and refuse to have someone follow her, in case someone decides to kill her? And the various dreams episodes were so lame that naturally the critics salivated over them.
But Frank Vincent as Phil Leotardo does bring a forceful malevolence to the show so it wasn't all bad.

 

Scooby probably should have slapped him around a little bit.

 

I actually think Lily has become surprisingly amusing - and Aubrey Anderson-Emmons was almost LITERALLY a baby when they started!

And I agree that it's almost always a sign of desperation when a TV series adds a new kid - see my Pebbles reference earlier. Luke wasn't added or a baby, of course.

IIRC, Lily and Joe are the only added kids so far. I think Lily's amusing - jury's out on Joe.

"MF" seems like a series better able to assimilate new family members without going off the rails because those new kids will never be the focal point. The show has such a big regular cast that there's only so much damage one new castmember can make...

 

I agree it's a fairly predictable show - though they've tried to broaden the characters a bit, they still remain pretty close to their original definitions, so a lot of the jokes are predictable in a sense.

But I still think it's funny. It's not my favorite series but I think it's amusing...

 

No, I mean Adam Devine - also in the "Pitch Perfect" movies and the recent "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates". Annoying MF!

 

Battlestar Galactica towards the end of Season 2. Once they'd exploited the original series as much as they could (as far as the Pegasus story arc) they had no idea what to do next and lurched first into the preachy New Caprica and then to the whole Final Five gobbledegook.

 

Scooby should have shoved Scrappy back in the box and sent him back where he came from.

 

I preferred Winchester over Burns. For me, the problem with Frank Burns is that there was a limit to what you could do with him and he tended to come off as a bit of a cartoon while Winchester came off as a real person. Winchester was a character who could hold his own against Hawkeye and B. J. but also work with them when the situation called for it, and he wasn't always the butt of the joke the way that Burns was. He is a case of the replacement being better than the original.

 

According to show (I think it might have been Biography but I could be wrong), they tried to transition from Dick York to Dick Sargent by only showing reruns not featuring Dick York in preparation for the new season where Dick Sargent would take over as Darren.

 

A former child actor just died at 57, and I think he was the cute kid they added to THE PARTIDGE FAMILY toward the end. Maybe.

 

True. I never thought of Lily as an added baby because she was there since very early on. Joe is more like a jump the shark baby. It also feels like there aren't enough episodes for it to be in syndication. Every time it comes on it seems to be the same first 3 seasons.

 

It jumped for me when Gloria had the baby.
The stupid iPad episode was the ramp.

 

I was wrong - Lily's been there the whole series, as her adoption was part of the pilot.

I saw Aubrey didn't join the cast until 2011 and inferred that they didn't bring Lily into the show until then, but I inferred incorrectly! I guess they just used a different actor for baby Lily!

Joe does smell more "JTS" - even if Lily had been added S3, she felt more organic. Probably helps that she's a more interesting character, whereas Joe is just your traditional tow-headed urchin...

 

The last 4 episodes of season 7 and first half of season 8 were absolute dreck. I nearly stopped watching, but the second half got better and yeah, season 9 was pretty good.

 

That was Mary who became blind. She didn't sell it for you?

 

The last season of Empty Nest- just awful.

 

When I was a kid I hated Speedy Gonzalez with all my heart, I found it ridiculous and in addition to that I don't know how or what he said in English, in Spain we got Latin American dubbs (which to the average Spanish sound silly and overacted) and Gozalez said "arriba, arriba, arriba, ándale, ándale" which made it sound even more ridiculous and dumb. I won't get tired of saying this, Latin Americans and us Spanish use the same words but don't speak the same languaje.

 

Not every show has a "moment." I would argue that most do not have a specific moment. it certainly isn't a moment just because somebody didn't like when _isnert event_ happened.

With Modern Family, I think it's just the typical run of a family oriented sitcom (or any sitcom really). I noticed especially last season that it's been very uneven and really, probably the season before it. I still watch because it's still capable of good stuff, but it's just a show past its peak and getting stale.

 

Yes, we learned in Spanish class in Florida that Cuban Spanish, Castilian Spanish from Spain, and Spanish in Latin America are all different.

What bugs me is when I can tell the writers are just treading water and not much is happening. I refer to this as the "take 15 minutes of actual plot and extend it out to 45 minutes" syndrome, which happens way too much on extended-run shows like Walking Dead.

I though they did a pretty good job at getting an opposite character as a replacement on M*A*S*H: somebody who was extremely competent (instead of inept), somebody who was very well-educated (as opposed to being an idiot), and somebody who was smooth and articulate (as opposed to fumbling and bumbling). But Major Winchester was a good adversary, and I thought the character worked well for the show. I didn't like how they "smoothed the edges" off all the characters and made everybody nice in the last few years of the show, which I thought was a result of the actors hectoring the writers into making them less villainous and more likable.

I would also say Kirstie Alley on Cheers is a rare example where the replacement character was done very well and helped extend the life of the show many years. They did that very well, though I wasn't that much of a fan of the show.