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At what point did a pop culture series “jump the shark” and lose your interest.
I had a little trouble pinpointing any actual true jumpage of sharkage moments but I did put together a list of nail-on-the-head moments for me when franchises I otherwise loved or at least liked officially started their slow slump to suckage.
When Fonzie Jumped the Shark on Happy Days (obviously)
Jaws 3-D
Jaws 3-D
When Home Movies lost the squiggle vision
When Elaine changed her hair on Seinfeld
When Jay and Silent Bob became their own entity
When Hasbro took on the Neon décor in the GI Joe line (About 1991 and onward)
Once Harry Goz died on Sealab 2021 and was replaced by the
Coach to which the show took even more ridiculous (and incrementally unfunny) plot lines.
When Dr Forrester stopped being the antagonist on MST3K and
was replaced by Pearl and Bobo.
When Roseanne hit the lottery. (I dont even count this as a season)
When the Simpsons critique on our times actually reflected how sucky our times were becoming.
When Phil Hartman died and was replaced by
the tremendously unfunny pair of Jon Lovitz and Lauren Graham on Newsradio
When New Super Mario Bros Wii came around which somehow marketed a perfect game from 20 years ago and managed to screw up the controls and bring nothing remarkably new to the table on a current gen console and call this "New." Sorry Nintendo...your New New Mario Wii U looks pretty much like more of the same too. Not impressed.
Resident Evil 5
The Dead Space 2 Commercial (Your mom’s gonna hate it)…”what?”
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| Shut up |
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
When death’s voice was changed from Norm MacDonald to Adam
Carolla on Family Guy
When the Ninja Turtles toy line went to space (along with
any other toy line…the true sign they are officially out of ideas) and/or began playing "Wacky" sports...oi.
When Peter Parker married Mary Jane
Whenever any American company tries to remake any British
show…Watch the American pilot for “Spaced”…mindnumbingly bad...is it possible to start a show by jumping the shark? You tell me.
When Niles and Daphne got together.
Any Looney Tunes cartoon that has Bill Lava associated with the music... very dated usually associated with cheaper late-60's animation, mostly Speedy Gonzalez and Roadrunner cartoons dealing with Sylvester or Daffy who just become assholes as opposed to funny.
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| Enough...please...enough. |
ABC's "One Saturday Morning"...uh-oh....
Let's not forget when Henry Winkler actually jumped the shark (again) on Arrested Development.
Not so strangely enough, the two moments on the list where sharks are physically jumped are the only cases where I didn't tune out of the series in question.
ReplyDeleteFantastic list! I wish my memory was half as good as yours--I know there are a ton of shows that lost me, but I'm struggling to remember the exact moments.
ReplyDeleteThis is a truly great list nice work! I do have to say when I was a kid I loved those neon GI Joes though. I think some came with play-doh that could be molded into armor of some sort, cannot recall exactly.
ReplyDeleteHahaha! This is awesome!
ReplyDeleteGreat list. I never thought about doing a multiple example list.
ReplyDelete