'Jumping the shark'

If you’re going to jump a shark, jump a big one.” I read this quote by Ricky Gervais the other day in the Herald Tribune, and it reminded me how often this idiom gets tossed around by our generation. Yet few of us actually know where the expression comes from.

“Jump the shark” comes from the ‘70s sitcom Happy Days, and refers to a particular episode in the fifth season when the show was really starting to suck and the character Fonzie (Henry Winkler) was called upon to jump over a shark tank on water-skis. It describes a nadir of creativity, when a show has reached the point where it’s more humane to unplug the machine. “Jump the shark” quickly came to refer to any TV series that had outlived its usefulness, worn out its welcome or become terminally lame. (Happy Days had done that long before the shark-jumping episode, in my opinion.)

Ricky Gervais prepares to “jump a big one” as host of The Golden Globe Awards.

Synonyms for “jump the shark”: Over. So last year. Stick a fork in it. Done. Time to pull the plug. Do Not Rescusitate.

But referring to ‘70s sitcoms seems a little, er, retro for this new generation of young ‘uns. So why hasn’t anybody updated this idiom to fit the times? A likely source to overhaul the tired expression might be the show Lost, a series that lost its mind completely by the third season, and just proceeded to trot out twist after twist, with few coherent threads tying it all together. A good substitute for “jump the shark” for this TV generation might therefore be “go back to the island” — the point in the penultimate season of Lost when the rescued passengers decide they must do just that.

Lost is actually a perfect example of a show that jumped the shark somewhere in its third or fourth season, but still kept flogging the dead halibut, flailing around like it had somewhere to go. Sometimes TV shows are like zombies: the brain is dead but they just keep turning up, week after week, season after season. (As Jesse Eisenberg says in Zombieland, sometimes it takes a ”double tap” in the head before the undead get the message that they’re history.)

Other shows have long overstayed their welcome: people tell me that Big Bang Theory could use a Kevorkian right about now, even though its ratings are still high; American Idol jumped the shark pretty much when Simon Cowell left the room; and C.S.I. continues on (and on) even without lab heads William Petersen or Laurence Fishburne on hand. It’s time for an autopsy.

Pull the plug: Even ruthless dictators can jump the shark, like Kim Jong Il and Muammar Gaddafi.

As for Ricky Gervais (a man for whom the phrase “acerbic comedian” should be permanently grafted onto his name), he was commenting on his cameo appearance on a recent episode of the American version of The Office — a show that jumped the shark well before Steve Carrell jumped ship. In typically snarky fashion, Gervais was pointing out how his original UK version of the documentary-style comedy was far superior: “I assume most people know that I didn’t do the US remake for the art. I did my version for the art. That’s why I stopped it after a few hours of telly.” Indeed, the British series The Office pulled the plug after only two seasons, a rare case of going out before the suck settles in. (Seinfeld could have learned a lesson there.) Yet in a world where commerce is the bottom line, shows like Saturday Night Live continue to jump the shark season after season, with different faces and few surprises.

Interestingly, not only TV shows jump the shark. People can jump the shark, too — or as Urban Dictionary puts it, “Tom Cruise jumped the shark when he jumped on Oprah’s couch.” That may have spelled the beginning of the end for Tom’s image, but so far, people like the Kardashians continue to find news ways to jump the shark with an ever-expanding roster of pointless spin-offs.

Jumping the shark is now routinely applied to celebrities, politicians, foods and brands — even ruthless dictators. While Muammar Gaddafi can be said to have jumped the shark for years before being tracked by a US robot drone (the ultimate Nielson ratings cancellation) and jumped by a cadre of disgruntled Libyans, Kim Jong Il jumped the shark well before kicking the bucket. Other despots have fallen in quick succession, in proportion to their shark being jumped: Saddam Hussein, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarek, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, among others: all people who haven’t figured out they’re not so popular anymore. And despite GMA defense lawyer Ferdinand Topacio’s admiration for Adolf Hitler (and a large poster of the Nazi leader decorating his office wall, according to the same Herald Trib), the Führer jumped the shark somewhere around 1944, as the Soviets beat back the German army, though he did stick around another season before pulling his own plug in a Berlin bunker with Eva Braun. Some people just don’t know when to quit.

Speaking of not knowing when to quit, Gervais was invited back a third time to host this week’s Golden Globes, despite being eviscerated by the press for his, um, indelicate comments about celebrities and stars in his midst. Not one to slink away from a fight, or a hype, Gervais donned the tuxedo once again and lashed out, in classic Fonzie-on-water-skis fashion:

Cue Jaws theme music: It’s better to leave on a good note, American Idol, Lost, C.S.I, and Big Bang Theory.

“Hello, and welcome to the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards. Tonight, you get Britain’s biggest comedian hosting the world’s second biggest award show on America’s third biggest network. Oh, sorry, fourth. It’s fourth. For any of you who don’t know, the Golden Globes are just like the Oscars, but without any of the esteem. The Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton, actually: a bit louder, a bit trashier, a bit drunker and more easily bought…”

To be fair, Gervais’s Don Rickles routine adds much-needed vinegar to the self-congratulating awards show. But you can tell the producers of the Golden Globes were contemplating their own “jump the shark” moment: “Should be bring back the guy who wouldn’t know warm-and-fuzzy Hollywood ribbing if it bit him, just for the controversy and ratings? Or should we go with John Larroquette again?”

Indeed. What would Fonzie do?

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Next week: “Drinking the Kool-Aid.”