The worst "jump the shark" moments in TV

[Rogue]

A lot of shows tried this same remedy: Mad About You, Blossom, Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Cosby Show, Different Strokes, Full House and who could forget the show that probably started the trend in the first place, The Brady Bunch. While it might have bought the show one or two more seasons on the air, it usually signaled that the quality of the show had gone downhill.

Married With Children tried it too. It didn't work out, so the next season the kid was never mentioned except for being a face on a milk carton in the first episode.

[lulu]

Married With Children tried it too. It didn't work out, so the next season the kid was never mentioned except for being a face on a milk carton in the first episode.

Seven, right?

[FigureSpins]

Eureka - time travel was cute, but screwed up the cool Eureka vibe when they returned.
Warehouse 13 - time travel season now in session. Absurd and confusing.
Kyle XY - Introducing Jessie as the female (slightly damaged) evil superhuman counterpart and the evil secret organizations. (Zzyzx and Madacorp)
Heroes - the time-travel season was absurd,* but the war among the gifted killed the show.
The 4400 - the war between the two gifted camps.
Alphas - the war between the two gifted camps. (this season)


NBC keeps trying to use the same damn formula - introduce characters with superpowers, let the audience really enjoy their adventures to Do Good, then create a comparable superpowered-group working against them. If you screw up the plotline and get stuck, write in a time-travel arc to jump the shark and reset. Never works, but keeps lazy showrunners employed.

*This, from a huge Quantum Leap fan. Time travel doesn't solve bad writing/planning.

[MR-FAN]

America's next top model, when Janice Dickinson left the judging panel. She was the best thing about this show

[ilovepaydays]

WOW! I am so glad people are enjoying this thread!

Degrassi: Totally agreeing with people who have said that the Next Generation went downhill when the kids stopped being "normal" and turned into celebrity-wannabes. The show was also good when there were fewer characters. There were a couple of seasons where they had what seemed like TONS of characters. I do think that the Lakehurst kids made things worse.

Buffy: I also think they executed the whole Willow and witchcraft thing terribly.

Some more points about Sex and the City: Wasn't the show's original idea that you can still have a great life in your 30s if you are still single? It felt like at the end of the series, they were trying too hard to wrap things up with all of them being "settled down." Plus, I always felt that Aidan was way out of Carrie's league, especially after she cheated on him with Big. She really could have been better after he took her back.

And I LOVED Kyle XY when the series first started but Jessi was a bit much.

[TheGirlCanSkate]

Seinfeld - when they write the show about nothing. I continued to watch but that was the turning point.

[Bostonfan]

I hope this turns into a thread!

What were the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it) "jump the shark" moments in TV? If you haven't heard of the term before, "jump the shark" describes the moment in a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery.

Here of some examples of mine. Feel free to comment and add to these as you wish!

Gilmore Girls: April - I get that they needed something to cause a conflict in Lorelai's and Luke's engagement, but did it have to be with the most annoying girl ever?
Sex and the City: When it became evident how self-absorbed Carrie was.
Roseanne: When the show stopped being about a working class family and started being about how great all the women were and the men were the most incapable people around.

Havent' read the whole thread. Jump the shark moments are specific plotlines, not general. ITA about Gilmore Girls. Ironically the way April was dressed with that oversized bike helmet, should could have literally jumped over a shark.

Sex in the City - More specifically, it jumped the shark when she met "The Russian" IMO.

Roseanne: Again, more specifically, when the Connors "won" the lottery (although it was all a dream). That was one of the worst jump the shark moments ever.

[Karina1974]

Little House on the Prairie... When they started adopting all those kids. I actually liked the Albert character and the actor who played him was very talented, but couldn't they have made him a cousin or a neighbor and not the adopted brother? And then came all those other adopted kids...

Yup, ITA, although I do love the show (have the entire show on DVD). Also... the whole "Mary/Adam Kendall" scenario had absolutely no connection to the reality of the real Mary Ingalls' life. They also made it seem like Mary only went away to the blind school for a few months. IIRC she attended the school for something like 8 years, and after that she lived at home with family for the rest of her life. However, I *do* get it that this was the way to show (because LHOTP was an "issues" show in so many episodes) that people who are blind can work and live independently.

I remember reading somewhere how Michael Landon defended the show's storylines and the liberties they took by saying that, had they followed the books exactly, the show would not have lasted anywhere nearly as long as it did.

Besides, anyone who does a little research into the real LIW's life would find that she herself took liberties in writing the books. She was only 2-3 years old when they lived in Indian Territory (1869-1870), for example, but in the book Little House on the Prairie she makes it seem like she was 6-7 years old.

There used to be a website called the LHOTP Nit-picker's Guild, which dissected every single episode for errors in continuity, straying from the fact's of LIW's life, etc. etc. I don't think it's online anymore, but it was an interesting read.

[Bostonfan]

A couple of others not mentioned:

Charmed - I really think it died when Phoebe went evil for a time with Cole. I actually felt it declined with the death of Prue, but it was interesting for a little while when they found Paige. But then it went off the rails.

ALIAS! This was such an awesome show for the first two seasons. Even the start of Season 3 was interesting when Sydney "lost" 3 years of her memory. But then it slid out of control with it's relentless (and seemingly pointless) obsession with the Rambaldi device. I stayed with it until the end, but couldn't care less about the mythology at that point.

Veronica Mars - again, good overall the first two seasons. But lost something when she went to college.

[pollyanna]

Speaking of Whedon shows, even though they had some really good episodes in season 5, Angel jumped the shark when Cordelia left to become a higher power/being/whatever - the beginning of what Jennifer Crusie later called The Assassination of Cordelia Chase.

Oh gawd yes, this was so not like Cordelia at all. I always figured it was Whedon's revenge on Charisma Carpenter for getting preggers.

But I forgave him as soon as I saw season five's Smile Time episode. Never have I laughed so hard than at the sight of muppet Angel and Spike going at it.

And although I didn't really like it much when Buffy was brought back to life, I do agree that Buffy's The Body and Once More with Feeling were two of the best BtVS episodes ever. They nicely complement once another too, with Once More with Feeling full of and The Body completely devoid of music.

[Karina1974]

Nevermind the whole creepiness factor with a 23 year old Almanzo and 14 y/o Laura bopping around the prairie in her pigtails. Just ick.

FYI the real Almanzo was born in 1857, and the real LIW was born in 1867, and they married in 1885. So the age difference was actually correct.

[Wyliefan]

Havent' read the whole thread. Jump the shark moments are specific plotlines, not general. ITA about Gilmore Girls. Ironically the way April was dressed with that oversized bike helmet, should could have literally jumped over a shark.

It's not a "jump the shark" thing exactly, but I HATED how the GG writers engaged in character assassination every time they decided they wanted to rid themselves of a character. Dean started out nice and ended up awful. (Not to mention that he started out smart and then they deliberately, majorly dumbed him down to look bad next to Jess!) Anna started out nice and ended up a raging, er, witch. Chris -- despite some huge weaknesses -- was being really nice and thoughtful to Lorelai, and then suddenly bailed on her when her father was sick. It was the quintessential example of lazy, careless writing, and they did it again and again and again.

[Rex]

Sex in the City - More specifically, it jumped the shark when she met "The Russian" IMO.

But they had already decided to end the show I think...but yeah, it was pretty much exhausted by then. The show is entertaining in re-runs, but OMG, Carrie was a selfish cow. LOL, I got so angry with her when she bullied Charlotte into lending her the money to put a down payment on her condo. All those years she pissed her money away on Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos...and she laid a serious guilt trip on Charlotte.

[julieann]

I agree with Roseanne JTS after they won the lottery, or at least continuing after it, it should have been the series finale.

Also, wtf did they do to Laurie Metcalf's character? Her Jackie started off as a very real person: smart, but suffering from chronic low self-esteem and bad relationships; towards the end her character was reduced to a Gillian caricature.

I hated what happened to Jackie's personality, Gilligan is great name for her.

The thing was, Melissa Sue Anderson was SOOO good, earning an Emmy nomination (the ONLY cast member to be nominated in the show's history) that the ratings were sky high so the network kept it on. But then they ran out of ideas. The move to Winoka, Albert the demon child, James and Cassandra, Nancy. The show jumped the shark after Mary went blind. Nevermind the whole creepiness factor with a 23 year old Almanzo and 14 y/o Laura bopping around the prairie in her pigtails. Just ick.

Michael Landon should have also been nominated at some point, why he got snubbed is beyond me.

There really wasn't anything they could have done about Laura and Almonzo, there was an age difference. I hated the whole Nancy adoption but I did really like the show.

Did The Golden Girls ever jump the shark?

Nope! Fabulous from start to finish! The Golden Palace spin off OTOH......

Some of the comments here are more about character development. On Friends, the whole show didn't jump the shark, but Monica did. She started as an intelligent character with some OCD tendencies, but after a few seasons became a neurotic parody.

She didn't become a mess and went from one of my favorites to one I liked the least.

[Karina1974]

Albert had a one episode morphine addiction,

Oh GOD, I can NOT watch that part of the episode where he is doing the vomiting of what looks like milk (IDK, it's some white fluid).

[Karina1974]

Not to mention for the series finale, they literally blow up Walnut Grove.

That was Michael Landon's decision. According to Melissa Gilbert's autobiography, NBC cancelled the show and did not even tell him they were going to cancel it, never talked to him about it before making the decision. So the blowing up the town was his feck-you to the network he had been on since Bonanza premiered in 1959.

[lulu]

I agree with Roseanne JTS after they won the lottery, or at least continuing after it, it should have been the series finale.

Roseanne tried to remedy the lottery fiasco to some extent by the series finale, by saying that Dan actually did pass away from heart attack and the family did not actually win the lottery; but after Dan's "death" she wrote a book about the family where he cheated on her, because his death felt like a betrayal and as part of the book's plots, she had her family win the lottery. I think if she had left the series finale with that explanation, it would of been fine. It would have also been way to acknowledge that the last few seasons of the show strayed away from the show's roots. Unfortunately, she also added that Becky was really with David, and Darlene was really with Mark. Which made even less sense than the entire Conners win the lottery plot. Oh, yes the mother wasn't a lesbian, but the sister was.

Nope! Fabulous from start to finish! The Golden Palace spin off OTOH......

ITA. The Golden Girls was brilliant. I've never seen The Golden Palace though.
I think Designing Women JTS when Suzanne & Charlene left the show, I never could stand their replacements. Not to mention, Suzanne was the best thing about the show. We wouldn't have Julia's infamous "the lights when out in Georgia" speech without her.

[Twizzler]

Slightly off topic, but are there YouTube clips from Little House when Christopher Bowman was on it? I used to watch that show religiously, but can't remember when he was on or the character he played.


A ??? JTS moment happened on Felicity when Keri Russell cut her hair. The ratings plummeted. It wasn't a writing issue, but the show never recovered after that. Used to love that show.

[lulu]

Slightly off topic, but are there YouTube clips from Little House when Christopher Bowman was on it? I used to watch that show religiously, but can't remember when he was on or the character he played.

Per IMBD, he played "Benjamin" for two episodes. I know Bowman was a child actor before he skated, but I had no idea he was on LHOTP

[Jenny]

Slightly off topic, but are there YouTube clips from Little House when Christopher Bowman was on it? I used to watch that show religiously, but can't remember when he was on or the character he played.

IMDB is your friend Two eps/two different characters are listed, which should help you track down any video: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0101303/