Quotes / Jumping the Shark

Podcasts

"Yup, the shark had its slippers on, was relaxing on the couch, now it's hurriedly getting dressed while his wife shrieks at him, 'I thought you weren't doing jumps this late anymore!'"

— Mike Nelson, Spider-Man 3 RiffTrax

Web Animation

"It was a shark. You jump the shark. Just like Homestarrunner.com."

— Homestar Runner: Hallrunner

Webcomics

"They don’t just jump the shark, they go back and beat the shark to death, then chop it’s body into chum to attract more sharks! Which is cool. Heh. Chopped sharks."

— Jarry's Kid, explaining the recent plot twists in Guilded Age

"I did a cool thing with my shark and it's just been all down hill for me from there."

— Lien, The Order of the Stick

Web Original

Always a devoted fan to this bright, funny family show when I was a kid (I didn't even mind the previous season's shark), when the Happy Days producers had Fonzie go blind at the start of this sixth go-around, this 13-year-old quit checking in so regularly with the Cunninghams.

—Paul Mavis

There is a longstanding and not particularly interesting debate over what the killing blow for the classic series was. I say it is uninteresting because it is, quite frankly, supremely easy to answer.

—Dr. El Sandifer

It’s hard to watch The Twin Dilemma these days without getting a sense that we’re watching the show commit a form of suicide.

—Darren Mooney on Doctor Who, "The Twin Dilemma"

Imagine the pitch meeting. "Okay, so Voyager is cruising through space where they come across an old truck hanging in space and when they get it on board they pick up an SOS signal in Morse code from a nearby planet where Amelia Earhart is chilling out!" Any reasonable person would do their best Alan Sugar impression and say "you’re fired", but no, they jumped all over it and in a way you have to kind of admire that they did. However, as we head into a season that flaunts some outrageous concepts (yeah Tom and Janeway lizard babies, I’m looking at you), this is a warning that this show is about fall off the rails.

—Joe Ford, "Captain we’re picking up a distress call from an ocean planet…it’s the crew of the Marie Celeste!"

WWF put their title on future A-List actor The Rock. WCW put their title on past, present and future D-List actor David Arquette.

—WrestleCrap, "WCW Champion David Arquette vs Tank Abbott"

The lesson to be learned from all this?

Is there one?

I mean, you ever heard the story about the snake? 'Bitch, you knew I was a snake.'

This is television. You can't expect it not to break your heart. If you expect greatness, pretty generally, you will be thwarted, just like in other mediums.

What is rare, however, is a show to start so well and devolve to this level on so many facets of its creation and execution.

— Neal bailey on Smallville

Web Video

However, towards the end of the decade, as popularity and hype towards this series began to wane, the writers behind the Ultimate universe decided it was time to do a major event that would shake up the status quo, altering the landscape of the universe in a way never really attempted in the regular continuity. The result of this was Ultimatum, a five-issue 2009 miniseries written by Jeph Loeb that saw unprecedented death to every corner of the Marvel universe, killing over twenty established heroes and villains within five issues. Now, today Ultimatum is widely regarded as one of the biggest misfires in the history of Marvel comics, and event devised to surprise readers and boost sales with the shocking deaths that in the end only served to kill the universe that it attempted to save.

— Owen Likes Comics, "ULTIMATUM: How Marvel Destroyed the Ultimate Universe"

"This prompts Kirk to make what I believe is the first Star Trek fart joke. Hard to believe that three films prior he was battling a villain who quoted Melville, and now is an inch away from 'pull my finger.'"

—SF Debris on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Matt: Jump the shark! Jump the shark!
Pat: I don't wanna jump the shark! ...Aw, we jumped it.

— Two Best Friends Play: Donkey Kong Country Returns

"We've established that Renegade 3 didn't so much jump the shark as repeatedly jump up and down on the shark whilst screaming 'Look at me, I'm Mr. Jumpy Sharko!'"

— Dr. Ashen

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear: this is not jumping the shark. I'll repeat that again. This is not jumping the shark. Oh, no, no, no, no. (Beat) This is jumping the shark, coming back, shooting it in the balls, raping it, EATING ITS FLESH, CONSUMING ITS SOUL, MOUNTING ITS HEAD ON THE WALL, AND THEN DOING THE SAME THING TO TWELVE MORE FUCKING SHARKS JUST TO BE SAFE!"

— The Nostalgia Critic, on seeing the Rock Biter singing "Born to be Wild" in The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia.

Bardock: Hey! You! What year is it?

Chilled: 2222

Bardock: B.C. or A.D.?

Chilled: The hell are those?

Bardock: [deadpan] I'm in the fucking past. [enraged] OF ALL THE STUPID! [Headdesk] ASININE! [punches ground] SHARK JUMPING BULLSHIT! [headdesks again, goes Super Saiyan]

— Dragon Ball Z Abridged, "Episode of Bardock"

Beth: There comes a time when life gets you down, and the ratings are low.

Tim: Gotta do what it takes, gotta up the stakes, 'til there's nowhere left to go!

Both: Shaaaaa-aaark Jumping! Making some friends on the way together we're Shaaaaa-aark Jumping!

— Shark Jumping Theme Song.

"At first I wanted to say it doesn't just jump the shark but it loses the force of gravity while in the process of jumping the shark and floats off into space and flies into the center of the fucking sun."

— Stuart Hardy, on Sherlock, The Final Problem

"This movie did not just jump the shark, it jumped it, shot it, roasted it over an open fire, ate it, and pissed on its bones."

— Smeghead, on Peter Parker's "emo dance" scene in Spider-Man 3.

Western Animation

"We're so meta, the shark jumps us!"

— Yakko Warner, Animaniacs (2020)

Real Life

"I next joined Pierce and co at the premiere of Die Another Day in 2002, which marked the 40th anniversary of the series. When asked later what I thought of the film, I merely said 'interesting.' In truth I thought it just went too far — and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please! They gave the public what they wanted, though maybe they too realised there was only so far they could push it before Bond became a caricature of himself, and the funeral directors were called in."

—A lesson in how to properly shade by Sir Roger Moore

Yes, it's a more modern idiom, "jump the shark". It just means the point in a TV show or film franchise when it seems to become ridiculous. Obviously named after an episode of Happy Days when the Fonz did jump the shark.

—Richard Osman, explaining the phrase when it was an answer on "Animal-Based Idioms" on Pointless

I think it was a point where we were in the room and we were talking about bringing Geordi's mother in, and we all kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'This is sad. This is the best we can do? Is this the best we can do, is Geordi's mother?' It was such a "who cares" idea that we were just sort of, 'Oh man… This show has got to end'.

—Ron Moore, on an episode of the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation

To me, it felt more like the episode had betrayed its own contestants, as well as its audience, with a lack of expertise among judges, and a lack of curiosity among hosts. Paul Hollywood explaining steak tacos with pico de gallo and refried beans to Prue Leith would be howlingly funny, if he weren’t positioned as an expert.

It was even worse than the clips implied — an hour of incompetent exposition, farcical bumbling and maracas-shaking. A distraction for an increasingly insular, self-referential show that’s run out of energy and expertise, and refuses to find it elsewhere.

—Tejal Rao, writing in The New York Times about the infamous "Mexican Week" on the The Great British Bake Off

---