Jumping the shark has jumped the shark...

[Meltsner, Kenneth]

"Jumping the shark" was originally a media critic term.   It referred to an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie was supposed to jump his motorcycle over a shark tank, and the show ended up with an ending that did not include Fonzie chewed up and eventually digested.  The original meme was that this was the pivotal moment when the show lost all credibility, that it became clear that the show's producers had given up trying to work within the fictional universe that they had created.

Similar moments for other shows have been defined -- e.g. the infamous shower scene in Dallas -- and the term could also be used for other media.  For me, "Star Wars Episode I" definitely jumped the shark, while other may feel that the introduction of the Ewoks in RotJ was the beginning of the end for that saga.  Other email lists have drifted into this morass, of course.

I'm not sure when the phrase came to mean something like "a significant transition," or whether the new meaning is used outside of FoRK.

Ken 

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom [mailto:tomwhore@slack.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 11:07 AM
To: Joseph S. Barrera III
Cc: fork@xent.com
Subject: Re: Adam thinks I should fork this ...

...

Pirecing has jumped the shark.

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