Important Television Thoughts:
We finished the first season of Mad Men months ago, and we have yet to start the second. I mean, we intend to. But as Kevin said last night, sometimes you have to wonder if you’re watching the same show everyone else is watching. I like the theme song and the pretty clothes, but I think it was right around the time Don Draper uttered the words, “My mother was a prostitute and my father got kicked in the face by a horse” (not verbatim) that I said, “No, Mad Men. No.”
It’s just a moment where a little piece of your television show dies—like the second Dawn appears on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or, to use an analogy I just acquired last night, when Zoey Bartlett is kidnapped (?) and John Goodman comes in to smooth things over (???!?!???). I mean, really, The West Wing? John Goodman? You know he was in the live-action Flinstones movies, right?
Jumping the shark is a colloquialism used by TV critics and fans to denote the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations.
The phrase jump the shark refers to the climactic scene in “Hollywood”, a three-part episode opening the fifth season of the American TV series Happy Days in September 1977. In this story, the series’ central characters visit Los Angeles, where Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, jumps over a confined shark on water skis, answering a challenge to demonstrate his bravery. The series continued for nearly seven years after that, with a number of changes in cast and situations.
(via Wikipedia)
