That’s what gets me about JTS. It’s one thing if you are actually looking at a show with a good start and trying to figure out when that start went wrong. But nowadays I see two bastardizations of the concept. First, shows that were never good. How can you talk about the turning point for a show that sucked from day one?
Secondly, I like me a good bitch session as much as anyone, but now it seems like there’s this big rush to be the first to declare that something has “jumped the shark”. Shows that are barely into their first season have people falling over themselves to declare the turning point, without any evidence that the show is good to begin with or that a decline in quality is actually as tragic as the term supposedly indicates.
Am I thinking about this too much? I think this response jumped the shark around the third sentence.
During the spate of shark attacks here in Florida a couple of years ago, (last year?) one of the surfers was quoted as saying there were so many sharks in the water that he and his buddies had to jump over them in order to surf. I thought the phrase took its origins from that piece of idiocy.
What Legomancer said. Shit, I should just make “What Legomancer said” into my sig. “Jump the Shark” is an unfunny catchphrase spawned by an unfunny website in reference to an unfunny show, which poorly describes a phenomena that’s already perfectly easy to describe. What I want to know is, where is the violent backlash? Where are all the people who were pitching frothing fits over “All your base” on this issue? This is at least 15x more annoying than “All your base,” and twice as played out. People, please, for the love of Jesus and cute furry puppies, please stop!
Bullshit. I’m laughing my ass off. Every. Single. Time. I love that bit. Always have, always will.
Even before I read my first Dave Barry article I was alway’s thinking of things in terms of Band Names. It just so happens that he turned it into a cliche.
And I don’t care. I think it’s funny as shit. I’ll continue to use it whenever the fuck I feel like it. Call me Jack Batty and Braying Assholes for all I care. I still think the shit is funny.
“Jump the Shark” has gone past cliche and has practically worked its way into the public lexicon.
I don’t just get band names but CD titles and track listings too. Hell, I sometimes imagine Casey Kasem’s voiceover as he counts down America’s top 10:
Then there’s the cool Behind The Music specials you could have.
I don’t know about Fark, but it’s definitely a Something Awful bit, to the point where the person in charge of Photoshop outlawed any Akbar pictures whatsoever - or tried to, at least.
Just migrated from one to the other. Who’s to say where it started? The best will always be in some shopping thread where he was put next to a large blue sheet. “It’s a tarp!”
(1) There are two expressions that I’ve learned in the past few years that would be overused and irritating if it weren’t for the fact that they were actually darned useful.
One of them is “24/7”. The other is “jumped the shark”. If someone says “I think that The West Wing has jumped the shark”, that simple statement carries with it a wealth of implications that no other statement of equal brevity could. (Whether Happy Days was ever cool to begin with is irrelevant).
(2)And, like some others, I still laugh at the occasional band name.
(3) And there’s one other SDMB cliche that still strikes me as amusing. But I can’t remember what it is.
