In your opinion, what TV shows have "jumped the shark"?
Jumping the shark is an idiom used to denote the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd storylines or unlikely characterizations. These changes were often the result of efforts to revive interest in a show whose audience had begun to decline.
It could be a TV show that is off the air now because someone figured out that it jumped the shark, or one that’s on now, but the plots are just going down hill.
For me, I think Law & Order SVU and House have jumped the shark.
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Chuck. He got the girl, which is a huge no-no in TV land, he’s gained and lost the Intersect more times than anyone can count, the characters have developed about as far as they’re ever going to, he’s running out of mysterious parents, and the producers seem more intent on showing Subway sandwiches than anything else.
I might agree with House. It is one of my favorite shows, but it hasn’t seemed the same since he began hallucinating Cuthroat Bitch.
I agree about House.
Also, How I Met Your Mother.
Might be cliche, but Heroes definitely jumped the shark and nuked the fridge multiple times.
NBC Nightly News. (Also CBS, ABC and Fox.)
NCIS -LA They have to leak some kind of whiz-bang technology every show to keep it interesting but some of it is ridiculous. If our government was really that good, 90% of the world’s problems would be solved already. We would not need a military with millions of recruits. We could have the same world security with a few of cells with 10 or 15 agents doing their thing.
I don’t usually watch shows long enough to notice the change….but a few do stick out…
Older show….The X-Files
Went from weird to absurd….
Same with The outer limits…
Family Guy…
That 70’s show was one I followed, but after Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher took off, it just wans’t the same…. Agreed about House, haven’t watched it in a while unless it’s a rerun…
@Fairylover78 Yes! It was horrible without Topher and Ashton. That new guy with the long blonde hair was extremely unfunny and a bad actor and the actress they replaced Eric’s sister with was no where near as good as the original.
Thank you @erichw1504 The blonde guy drove me nuts, I couldn’t watch it with him on there, I wanted to punch him in his stupid face!
@Aesthetic_Mess
I hate – I really hate, you have no idea how much I hate – to answer a question with “Wait ‘til you’re older” (because of the number of times that lousy answer was given to me a half-century ago when I was a lad), but…
Wait ‘til you’re older and you’ll understand.
The X-Files, there were some weird episodes in the last couple seasons.
I used to enjoy House, but haven’t watched it since Cutty and him. Actually I was kind of over it a year or so before that. NCIS-LA never did take off for me. I never liked any of the characters. I really don’t like it when cop, investigater type shows get the personal lives of the actors too involved.
I should note that after several seasons of Battlestar Galactica, I was telling everyone I knew what a terrific show it was.
Then came the season ender that featured “All Along The Watchtower”.
I thought the show had jumped the shark, and started worrying about all the people I had told to watch that show.
In the next season and a half, they were able to justify that show, and in the end I was very pleased.
So, it is possible for them to pull back and save the show.
Sliders. As soon as Kari Wührer arrived, everything went to shit.
family matters – then it morphed into the Urkel show
degrassi – used to be a decent teen show, now it looks like a bunch shock value like all the rest
I also agree with That 70s Show going off the rocker too.
Oh and maybe True Blood too…. well between season one and season 2 anyway, haven’t seen season 3… mostly because I was so annoyed with the whole Marianne part of it that I stopped watching… It just started getting silly, okay it was already silly, but not stupid…all the time anyway… Whatever I think vampires are hot.
I think Criminal Minds – the story line didn’t really change, but the crimes got more and more violent to the point of ridiculousness. Silence of the Lambs is nothing compared to the crimes that you see on this show and most people were freaked out by that movie when it first played.
@gabby94805 I agree on that one, I quit watching it because of that.
I know this is an old question, but I am adding Suburgatory to the list. The Dallas character is just too over the top. The last episode I watched involved her faking a loud orgasm when her boyfriend touched her (like a hug). This happened a couple of times and her boyfriend was perplexed, but didn’t immediately ask her “wtf?” like a normal person would.
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