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

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by S. P. Honeybunch, Oct 11, 2016.

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  1. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

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    Marple, PA, USA
    Don't get me started on Ghost Whisperer. In the first season, you have a woman who runs a dinky antique store and dresses like she's a Manhattan heiress. I grant you that she was great to look at, but it really turned me off on the show and I bagged it.
     
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  2. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

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    Not discussing who has the most money - looking at how successful their post-"70s Show" acting careers have been.

    Not sure latching onto the rotting carcass of "2 and a Half Men" showed a career in great shape...
     
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  3. petercl

    petercl Forum Resident

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    Seekonk, MA, USA
    I was tired, I obviously meant Andre Braugher (Frank Pembleton) and Jerry Orbach (Lenny Briscoe)
     
  4. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

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    Deep Texas
    I just watched the film Extract (2009) again just to enjoy the opening scene where the Mila Kunis' character steals
    the cherry-red Gibson ES-335 from under the noses of the guitar shop 'fusion-geeks' that are trying to impress her.
     
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  5. bluejeanbaby

    bluejeanbaby Forum Resident

    Location:
    NW Indiana
    The killing off of Matthew early on in Downton Abbey didn't seem to harm that one much..
    Or was there a point where even they jumped the shark too?
     
  6. misterdecibel

    misterdecibel Bulbous Also Tapered

    I think it was around Season 3 where they realized that the show was more popular in the USA than in its homeland, and they started doing more exposition to explain things that Americans might not get about British culture.
     
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  7. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    I found the show maintained its quality throughout though the Edith pathos got a bit old a some point. The last tumultuous relationship might have been the tipping point.
     
  8. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    I'm looking at the word success. Very, very few actors in TV history have been lucky enough to wind up on two different hit sitcoms, let alone shows that pay them huge money. If you make so much money that you can pick and choose your projects and only do what you really, truly want to do, I think that's the very definition of "success" to any actor.
     
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  9. Glenpwood

    Glenpwood Hyperactive!

    You each make a good point but honestly a debate over Grace vs. Kutcher isn't the same as comparing say Streep to Hepburn or Pacino to DeNiro. Grace and Kutcher each occupy a specific narrow lane that works for them as an actor. Attempts by them to break that limited range haven't worked well enough financially to make them bankable leads in film. Kutcher had many more tries at this over the past decade with the major studios but essentially what works with the public is him playing sweet funny and naive variations on Kelso. Grace got a few shots in stuff like Take Me Home Tonight, Valentines Day (Ashton also appeared in this) & Win A Date With Tad Hamilton which all play like an extension of his Eric character. Grace has already fallen back into playing mostly secondary ensemble stuff at this point at the major studios and Kutcher has made enough money now thanks to investing and 2 1/2 Men to hold out for another Chuck Lorre type to call him up and retrofit him into an Existing series or build a new one around his limited skill set. Neither one showed they had the range to move up the next rung on the ladder in Hollywood when they were given the chance...
     
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  10. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident

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    Secaucus, NJ
    Me-TV played the episode of MASH where Hot Lips gets upset at the nurses for not including her in things. MASH has lots of possible Jump The Shark moments so I propose that episode as at least one.
    Not a horrible episode but the acting of the nurses (including Mrs. Puffs) is abysmal.
     
  11. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I agree that neither one staked out a prominent place as a leading man. Kutcher always made more sense in that regard - he has the more traditional "handsome guy" look - and he got a shot but his movies were moderate successes. Stuff like "What Happens in Vegas" and "No Strings Attached" did okay but I don't think they did much to turn him into an "A"-list lead.

    I wonder if the critical and commercial failure of "Jobs" weighed on Kutcher. He's been semi-MIA from movies since then, and it seemed like his stab at "dramatic credibility" - but it bombed.

    Grace seems more content to be a supporting actor in big projects...
     
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  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    You can say that about 1000 actors. I know a lot of very talented who sit at home waiting for their agents to call. Success in one medium does not always mean success in another. Heck, there are some famous movie actors who tried to go the other way, doing a TV show, and falling on their faces. In the case of That '70s Show, I was glad that Laura Prepon at least did a whole bunch of shows afterwards; I worked on one of them, October Road, but it didn't last long. She did better on Orange Is the New Black. But again, I doubt that she has 1/10th the financial success or impact of Ashton Kutcher. But Laura is a very talented actress who does great work.

    I got to work on some films in the 1980s with a few actors that I thought would have been huge stars; two of them were C. Thomas Howell and Bridget Fonda. I'm baffled as to why they didn't become major, major successes, because they both were enormously talented. There's a whole bunch of actors who came up around the same time as Tom Cruise, and I never would've picked him as an A-list star who'd be making $20 million per film 30 years later. I also did some sitcom pilots with people like Paula Poundstone and Dave Chappelle who I thought for sure would be huge hits, and the shows flopped terribly.

    Both the Jobs film with Kutcher and the Steve Jobs film with Michael Fassbender bombed, and (ironically) both made roughly $35 million each, which was about half of what they needed to make in order to break even. I think in both cases, the audience stayed away because they didn't want to see a movie about an arrogant, sociopathic, difficult billionaire who was brilliant with technology but bad with people.
     
  13. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    Kutcher is very hard to work from what I hear.
     
  14. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    At least "Steve Jobs" was well-received by critics. It got very good reviews, while "Jobs" was viewed poorly.

    I never saw "Jobs" but "Steve Jobs" was a strong movie - still surprised it didn't get more Oscar love...

    Ah - this explains why no one has made a movie about me yet! :laugh:
     
  15. Scopitone

    Scopitone Caught the last train for the coast

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    I thought Kutcher did a decent job embodying Steve - more charismatic than Fassbender's bully. (The real version was probably a mix of the two) I don't really blame Kutcher, but I suspect he still gets the "see, I told you he couldn't carry a drama film" argument.

    Jobs was not a good film. It's slow and dull - Pirates of Silicon Valley did a better job telling the same story. Steve Jobs had a creative story structure that helped set it apart from the usual biopics.
     
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  16. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    I saw Pirates of Silicon Valley and I thought it was a good movie. The two scenes that stick out to me are:
    • The scene where Jobs is talking with a group and Bill Gates is prowling around the group like a shark.
    • While Jobs is showing the classic Apple 1984 commercial one of his subordinates catches Jobs' eye. He looks at Jobs, points at the commercial screen, and then at Bill Gates.
     
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  17. misterdecibel

    misterdecibel Bulbous Also Tapered

    I thought the standout performance in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" was John DiMaggio as Steve Ballmer. He really captured that sort of shameless obnoxious extrovert thing.
     
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  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    Don't forget the snappy Aaron Sorkin dialogue, which I think helped a lot.

    The problem is that I think the enormous success of Walter Isaacson's #1 best-selling book on Jobs led people to believe that maybe there was a hit movie idea in there. The truth is, some people you're willing to read about in a book, and other people are interesting enough that people will watch their story on screen. I don't think Steve Jobs made it to the latter category.
     
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  19. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    I think I agree. Some stories don't translate well into other media. For me, an example of this is Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days.

    While I enjoyed his performances on A Prairie Home Companion when I tried to read the book it just wasn't the same for me. I think a factor is that it isn't just the story he is telling but it is the way tells the story vocally which didn't come across for me on the printed page.
     
  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    No, he was very humble and cooperative on That '70s Show. I don't know how he's been in the last 10 years, but for that show he was a good guy. He was very much in awe of serious actors like Kurtwood Smith, who have huge resumes. If anything, Ashton was very insecure on the show because he'd done almost no acting and had really been making a living as a model. Everybody around him had far more experience as an actor, and I think it forced him to up his game and learn very quickly.

    On the other hand, I know a couple of crew members on Two and a Half Men and I actually filled in on the show once in awhile, and Charlie Sheen was never a problem on set. The only thing people started to notice was when he had trouble standing and also started getting very thin, plus he had trouble memorizing his lines. But there were no temper tantrums or screaming matches on set. All those problems happened backstage in Chuck Lorre's office. You could see Charlie was getting a little out of it, but he was not hard to work with from a crew point of view.
     
  21. Scopitone

    Scopitone Caught the last train for the coast

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    Good points.

    Steve had a lot of bad qualities, but he was something of a magnificent bastard who could charm anyone (at first). To make him likable, you have to play up that lovable rogueness without overlooking the negatives. Sorkin's film focused on his dickishness.

    Noah Wylie's portrayal in Pirates works best for me at capturing the plus and the minus of the man.
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    I thought the Walter Isaacson book had a lot more balance on Steve Jobs' brilliance as well as his mean, vindictive side. It's been widely reported that Jobs' wife Laurene Powell, who is worth a staggering $17 billion dollars, worked tirelessly to discourage anybody from working on the Steve Jobs movie. I think Fassbender was like their 20th choice on who to play the eccentric computer mogul. Powell is said to be extremely angry about anybody who tries to paint her former husband as a bad guy.

    To get back on the "shark jump" topic: it's interesting to note the number of TV series that never jumped. Jon Hein was fond of saying that Seinfeld and The Sopranos arguably never jumped until the final episode, and Breaking Bad was great all the way to the end. Hein has also said that although he's glad he profited from selling the "Jump the Shark" website, he's not happy that TV Guide buried the contents and basically shut the whole thing down.
     
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  23. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    I'm trying to remember the shows on the JTS website that never jumped (consensus). All I'm remembering are Cheers, Taxi, WKRP.
     
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  24. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney Thread Starter

    Magnum P.I.
    Barney Miller
    The Rockford Files
     
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  25. aforchione

    aforchione Forum Resident

    Location:
    Englewood, Florida
    Two Broke Girls - the first episode.
     
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