I think it came from some old TV show. Laverne and Shirley maybe? Joanie loves Chachi? Something like that. Perhaps Lenny and Squiggy did some beach thing.
Er… no. I just scanned for URLs and didn’t notice that someone had referenced the website without actually linking to it. :smack:
I like the phrase. I like how it’s become so widespread, and unofficially official as a way to describe a phenomenon. I think it will be around for a long time yet, maybe for decades.
Not quite. More precisely, jumping the shark happens some time after the series becomes stale. The shark-jumping is a gimmick that’s used to try to bring back the freshness of the show, by doing something new and different. More often, it’s something like a wedding between two characters who have had a lot of romantic tension over the course of the show.
Yeah, but it’s the third round that really jumps the shark.
Tris
No it hasn’t. Happy Days and the “Jump the Shark” episode predates the Dope, the modern phrase “Jumped the Shark” referring to that episode does not.
The phrase began with the website in 1997. This message board started in 1999.
I guess that’s what I get for being nitpicky. You said the Dope, I read it as The Straight Dope, which proclaims in big letters “since 1973”. But you did say SDMB just before that… so never mind! Nitpick retracted.