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What's the significance of "Jump the Shark" from the Happy Days episode?

posted 8 years ago by Liburnius
4 replies | jump to latest

From my understanding, these fairly often-used phrases, "Jump the shark," or "Jumped the shark," are attributed to a certain episode of the sitcom Happy Days. I may have seen only about a dozen or so episodes of that series, years ago. I don't recall watching the entirety of the shark episode. My questions are, how popular was Happy Days at the time of the shark episode, and why did the act of Fonzi jumping over the shark on water skis come to symbolize the decline of something (TV show, movie, game, book, and anything else)? Was it the apparent ridiculousness of Fonzi wearing a leather jacket while doing the jump, all the while there was the looming threat of a shark involved? Is this connected in any way with the popularity of the Steven Spielberg film Jaws, and what it brought to the fame/notoriety of sharks in popular culture? I think I'm most fixated on why "jumping the shark" is always meant to mean that something has faded in popularity. I would be interested in reading the story behind the phrase's connotations, especially in connection to the show Happy Days.

"A New Kind of Man" (John Foxx, 1980):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt4oi-PRbN4

[–] yoredm 8 years ago

You almost answered your own question. By the time Fonzi was set to 'Jump The Shark', the show Happy Days was getting a little long in the tooth. Most characters had grown up, and they had done just about every story line they could.
I remember watching this as a kid. It was a 'two-parter' as we call them. The drama of The Fonz risking his life on a dare had us glued! Looking back at it from an older perspective, it was quite silly and an obvious ploy for ratings.

So the term has become a way to say that a show has gone past its prime and is trying to garner ratings by doing something ridiculous.

That's my thoughts on the subject. It is worth what you paid for it!

[–] norway-jm 8 years ago

It doesn't just mean that something has faded in popularity, but that it's resorting to embarrassing gimmicks to get attention. Sort of like a last gasp that's really desperate and pathetic, and usually something that's completely out of character or too implausible to take seriously. It's the moment when a show and/or character began a downhill slide from which there was no return.

[–] amyghost 8 years ago

Sort of like the Benson episode where the cast gets stuck on some deserted island, or in the desert, or something, and everyone has to rely on the housekeeper Kraus's power of mental telepathy (which had never been mentioned before on the show) to save them. The mental powers were just a gimmick tacked on by the writers, not something intrinsic to the character as she was originally conceived.

50 Is The New Cutoff Age.

[–] Colorado_Kid (213) 8 years ago

Happy Days still had a few good seasons left in it after Fonzie "jumped the shark".