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Where's The Remote?
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Shark Wrangler
Meet Jon Hein, the man who has built a multimedia empire around the phrase “Jump the Shark” and claimed veteran TV actor Ted McGinley as its crown prince.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
By Larry Carroll
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Did you catch The Simpsons opening last year that featured Homer jumping a shark on water skis? Or how about the episode of That 70’s Show where Fez day~dreamed he was The Fonz wearing a leather jacket as he soared through the air over, that’s right, a shark? Any loyal television viewer might think they got the reference, that it was a parody on the classic two-parter Happy Days episode that had Fonzie proving his manhood in a death-defying water stunt. But did you really get the joke?
Since 1997, unabashed TV geek Jon Hein has dutifully manned the website JumptheShark.com, where he keeps track of that exact moment when a television program goes wrong. We’ve all been there: you love a show, then you hear that your beloved characters are going to go to college or move to California or bring in a new recurring actor, and you just know it’s the beginning of the end.
“The phrase was coined in 1987,” says Hein during a recent telephone interview with FilmStew. “My college roommates and I were sitting around, having a conversation about our favorite shows and when they went downhill. Happy Days came up and my roommate Sean Connolly said, ‘When Fonzie jumped the shark,’ and then there was a pause. We all knew exactly what he was talking about.”
Ten years later the website went up, and television lovers from all over the world started e-mailing Hein with the moments they knew their shows had peaked and begun going down the wrong side of the hill. “I guess if we had talked about Mad About You and said it slipped when they had the baby, I could’ve called it WhenTheyHadtheBaby.com,” he jokes. “Any time you have a baby, I don’t care if it’s Jonathan Winters or the alien baby on V, the show has jumped the shark. You’ll get great ratings at first, but then it goes down.”
Hein laughs. “But 'Jump The Shark' works because it just resonates.”
Flash forward to 2004, and Hein has thousands of visitors a day, a Jump the Shark book, a day-to-day calendar, a deal to create a television program, and a worldwide community that pepper their language with the phrase he and his friends created. “It amazes me when I hear people use it everyday,” marvels the 36-year-old Hein. “Last year, it was put into the new Oxford English Dictionary. I know it will be on my tombstone.”
Indeed, a quick perusal of the Internet for April 2004 reveals the use of the phrase by critics in recent articles about everything from Jessica Alba's movie Honey and singer Chubby Checker to the beloved children's character of Elmo and the now infamous talent competition contestant William Hung ("She Bangs").
The cultural shorthand has gotten to the point where it applies to almost anything. The next time you’re having a conversation about a Senator who lost an important election, a football quarterback whose career season was two years ago, or even an old flame who doesn’t look as good as they used to, don’t be surprised if the person you’re talking with says that they “jumped the shark”. Meanwhile, tongue-in-cheek shark jumping has become a winking acknowledgement to fans of many television shows.
“With The X-Files,” Hein remembers, “on the episode where they killed The Lone Gunmen off, it was titled “Jump the Shark.” I read last year that David Chase was concerned The Sopranos would jump the shark. The Simpsons had Homer jump at the beginning of the fantasy music camp episode. And That 70’s Show did an episode with Fez jumping as well. That’s a real kick.”
Starting with eight categories in 1997 (Same Character Different Actor, Death, Birth, Live Episode, Puberty, Singing, I Do!, and, of course, Ted McGinley), Hein organized everyone’s favorite shows into the moment each fell apart. Now there’s nineteen categories and over two thousand programs listed.
Each show has its own web page and a history of debate: check out The Cosby Show for instance and you’ll find people blaming the show’s demise on Cousin Pam and Olivia, Rudy’s puberty, the episode where the men got pregnant, Theo’s dyslexia and even Cliff’s conversion from cheap sweats to pricey sweaters.
McGinley, an actor who seems to be to sitcoms what nicotine is to the human lung, may never have appeared on Bill Cosby’s show, but he wasn’t on Welcome Back, Kotter either and it doesn’t stop him from being blamed for that show’s failure. “Bo (who looked like Ted McGinley)” is the top-rated moment of demise as voted by Jump the Shark visitors.
“I look sometimes, just to make sure he’s not hiding in the bushes waiting for me,” says Hein when asked about the veteran actor credited with killing The Love Boat, Happy Days, The Practice, Married…with Children and Dynasty, among others. “It’s business, not personal.”
“The guy has been working for so many years, we’re not hurting him,” he continues. “He’s on Hope & Faith now. But he comes onto these shows and they just go down. His being on TV is good for us.”
What should the star of a hit program do if McGinley is announced as an upcoming guest star? “Duck,” Hein chuckles. “Thank the producers for your time on the show, and start sending out your resumé.”
And so we come to the question now begging to be asked… What beloved shows have jumped the shark recently? “The most glaring example this past season would have to be Average Joe,” Hein insists. “At the end of the second run with Melana, when she chose the good looking guy instead of the average Joe, they had built up this big reveal. It turns out the secret was she had once dated Fabio. That was a clear jump the shark moment.”
"The West Wing jumped when Aaron Sorkin left; when the President starts talking to ghosts, that’s bad news,” adds Hein. “Some people think killing off Wild Bill on Deadwood is a jump the shark moment, but I think the jury’s still out.”
“There are different ways that shows can jump, of course,” he explains, “but you just know there’s nowhere to go from there. The show can only get worse. Then sometimes you have a great moment, like when Henry Blake died on M*A*S*H*, where the show just could never get any better. The one constant is you know it has to go downhill.”
Surfing onto Hein’s website and reading through the many impassioned user comments, one thing seems certain: Jump the Shark isn’t going downhill anytime soon. So next season, when you’re watching C.S.I. and they introduce Grissom’s precocious cousin Oliver as a new recurring character, you know where to go to register your disgust.
“When I say something has jumped the shark, I’m not saying it’s garbage. I’m just saying it’s not as good as it once was,” Hein laughs. “But sometimes, yeah, it is garbage.”
| [Twice a month, Larry Carroll’s TV opinion column “Where’s The Remote?” takes a look at the latest television trends and some of the personalities responsible for them. To reach the author, please email larrycarroll@filmstew.com.] | |
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