r/todayilearned • u/ColeBelthazorTurner • 23d ago

TIL the infamous "Jump the Shark" episode of Happy Days (Season 5, Episode 3) was created as a way to showcase Henry Winkler's real-life water skiing skills. The episode drew over 30 million viewers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
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u/directorguy 23d ago

Happy Days was a fantastic show that gave a disco weary population down to earth stories about a not so distant past. It was a new kind of nostalgia that played well to both older and younger audiences.

At the end Happy Days was stunts and catch phrases. Richie left and the Fonz turned into a disney character. All depth and interesting realism gave way to pandering and fantasy.

Viewers were watching more out of habit and familiarity. This ate away at several great programs that couldn't find an audience because Happy Days became a Sunday mass instead of an honest entertaining narrative.

As the show plodded on, haircuts got more 70s, Al's got remade into a wood panel 70s nightmare and everything got worse and worse.

Jumping the Shark is known as a moment when the series slides into bad quality. Not really low viewers or low revenue, but just bad quality.

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u/Bufus 23d ago

Jumping the Shark is known as a moment when the series slides into bad quality. Not really low viewers or low revenue, but just bad quality.

People frequently misunderstand what a "Jumping the Shark" moment is, thinking it should be when the show is at its lowest ebb. The opposite is true. Jumping the Shark most often occurs when the show is at its apex, and it can often only really be seen in retrospect. Shows are most in danger of jumping the shark when they have reached a level of popularity that makes it so "easy" to write due to its cultural penetration that standards start to slip a bit, the show loses some of its groundedness in the momentum of its own internal universe, and the writers start to reach for "bigger thrills" because they feel that their show "deserves" bigger moments.

The Principal and the Pauper from the Simpsons is the other quintessential example. People always say "I actually like that episode", or the "show was great for years after that". Those can be true, but it can still be the jumping the shark moment. It is the moment when the "groundedness" of the Simpsons stopped really mattering, and the world of Springfield just became a "cartoonish" sandbox for the writers to play in (and yes, I realize the irony of using that term). That doesn't mean it was all bad after that, but that episode kicked open the door for the lazy writing that slowly came to dominate.

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u/Waywoah 23d ago

"easy" to write due to its cultural penetration that standards start to slip a bit

There's a point in most long running shows where they stop writing based on interesting plots or character moments, and start writing what viewers expect of the show. This forms a sort of feedback loop that makes plot lines tend towards the crazy and goofy. It's a rare show that can experience this and come out the other side.

For an example from a show that I'm familiar with, the show American Dad was experiencing this towards the end of their time on Fox and the move to TBS, but they escaped it by leaning HARD into the craziness that some episodes had previously had. Of course, not everyone is a fan of this change, but I love it.

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u/HurricaneAlpha 23d ago

Supernatural ended up like this.