Jumping the Shark

Have you ever wondered where exactly the phrase "jumping the shark" came from? Here's where.



Even though Happy Days went on for several more seasons, this episode was lambasted by many as the point where the show started its downhill slide. I mean, really, the Fonz in tight swimming trunks and his trademark leather jacket, water skiing about a mile in the air to fly over an enclosed area with a killer fish swimming inside? That's not exactly quality entertainment. Happy Days had jumped the shark.

In recent years the phrase has been used to refer to any television show that begins to lose itself and devolve into incoherence. More broadly, people use the phrase for any action that crosses the line over into absurdity. As in "Kevin really jumped the shark with his sermon on 'Calvin: The Giggling Theologian.'" Or, the feds finally jumped the shark when they tried to inject a trillion dollars of Monopoly money into the system. Or, the English department jumped the shark with its seminar on "Irish scatological mysticism in Shakespeare's Early Sonnets." You get the picture.

So impress your with-it friends and try to incorporate "jump the shark" into every day conversation.

Now you know.