What does "Jump the shark" mean?..nt

It comes from the Happy Days episode when Fonzi jumped the shark on waterskis.

When something has passed it's golden age...

The phrase itself talks about the episode of Happy Days
where Fonz jumps some sharks in a tank. It was all over
after that.

there was an episode where fonzie decided to do a stunt where he jumped over a shark tank on his motorcycle.

the show went downhill from there.

the term has come to mean "the point at which something stopped being cool/good and went downhill".

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jump+the+shark&f=1

1. jump the shark
a term to describe a moment when somethin that was once great has reached a point where it will now decline in quality and popularity.

Origin of this phrase comes from a Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumped a shark on waterskis. Thus was labeled the lowest point of the show.

it comes from a Happy Days episode where Fonzi jumped over a shark (on water skiis or his motorcycle...) for a ratings boost.

it is scrambling for ratings and does something stupid. (Think of all the 80's shows when they have a surprise "baby" being added to the show.)

It's the action or the moment when something that's been going along alright, finally just takes an irrecoverable dive. It refers to the episode of Happy Days when the Fonze jumps a shark on water skies, I think.

http://www.jumptheshark.com/

You can go rate when things are or have jumped the shark.

Here's the shows which have *never* "jumped the shark"
according to http://www.jumptheshark.com

The Simpsons
Police Squad!
Newhart

WKRP in Cincinnati
The Prisoner
Magnum, P.I.

The Tick
Barney Miller
The Rockford Files

Homefront
The Larry Sanders Show
Freaks and Geeks

The Dick Van Dyke Show The Odd Couple Fawlty Towers
The Critic The Young Ones St. Elsewhere

An episode from Happy Days hits the modern internet with a phrase that I feel foolish for not knowing. We live in strange times.

Thanks for all the responses. :grouphug: I'm heading off to contemplate this weird world.

Don't feel foolish cally, I hadn't heard of the phrase until this past Saturday while watching the Happy Days reunion special. The producer (Gary Marshall?) quipped that Happy Days did about another 100 episodes so he thought the whole "jump the shark" thing was overblown.

Wow! Who knew? Apparently, a lot of people.

It refers to when a television show goes from pretty good to absolute crapdom. It's origin is as a reference to the episode of "Happy Days" when Fonzie jumped a shark tank in his motorcycle, or was it on skis?, I believe in an episode filmed in Hawaii. It was the point many saw the show, which was pretty good when it started, as going complete shit. To use the term in reference to anything - U.S., Bush administration, mainstream media, whatever - is to analogously say something good or effective has hit the point of no return.

From the website www.jumptheshark.com :
"It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite TV show has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on. It's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it jumping the shark."

By the way, I saw the "Fonzie Jumps Over the Shark" episode when it originally aired and even as a kid, I thought the show had long since started sucking, so there's always some debate about when exactly the shark jump takes place. One of the reasons it was so stupid was that they had already done a Fonzie motorcycle jump episode.

Inside the site there's lots of discussion of those things.

:-)

started with "Happy Days" when they did an episode where Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis, if I remember correctly. It was filmed at a beach, not over a tank. "Happy Days" did 100 more episodes after that episode, and some "Happy Days" fans will argue that the series was still good after that episode. Nevetheless, the expression "jumping the shark" went on to become a catch phrase in the TV industry, to indicate the point at which a series started to run out of gas and did some ridiculous stunt to try to keep the series going, or just started on an inevitable decline. There is an entire web site about this one subject, which you can contribute your own opinions about current and past TV series:

http://www.jumpingtheshark.com/

....not a motorcycle.

It came from the series of episodes where a Hollywood talent scout is passing through Millwaukee when his car beaks down. He hires Fonzie to fix it, notices the way Fonzie has with the ladies (just a snap of the fingers and they come running), and offers Fonzie a chance to come to Hollywood and do a screen test for a possible role in a movie. (They think he could be the next James Dean). So Fonzie flies to Hollywood, bringing the Cunningham family with him (and Potsie and Ralph).

In Hollywiood they meet up with a local hotshot called the california kid, or something. The california kid gets on Fonzies nerves to the point where they wind up challenging each other to a contest between the two of them on waterskis.

They wind up with a tie.

The california kids accomplice suggests, to the CA kid, to challenge Fonzie to jump over the shark (that was captured and held in some sort of netting or cage out in the water), pointing out that the fonz will back down, and the CA kid will win by default and wont have to jump.

Fonzie accepts the challenge, and somehow it got decided that the kid has to try to jump the shark first. He chickens out, and the Fonz wins by default, but that isnt good enough for the Fonz. He insists on still jumping over the shark, which he does.