Thursday, March 27, 2008 – 6:48 pm “With the Fed having jumped the shark it’s beyond doubt we’ll be seeing inflation over the next several years.”
“Last year, this column, after consulting its readers, declared that Nicole Kidman had jumped the shark, based on a string of embarrassments that displayed chronic bad taste in scripts.”
“eBay remains an efficient Web-based auctioneer, and its PayPal platform is a winner, but otherwise, the company jumped the shark years ago.”
“Is it a sign that social networking has ‘jumped the shark,’ when a coffee company launches a social networking site?”
“And I know that a lot of folks think the magazine jumped the shark around 2000, but every month since 2002 I prided myself on the stories that I was turning into my editors.”
These are just a few usage examples of the phrase “jumped the shark” in today’s news. Jumped the shark is a relatively new slang phrase that first appeared in the late 1990’s, but it has already become a very common phrase used in all segments of the American media (politics, finance, entertainment, etc.). In order to understand this phrase, you need to understand where it comes from.
In the 1970s there was a very popular TV show in the US called “Happy Days.” At the peak of the show’s popularity, one of the main characters performed a water skiing stunt in which he jumped over a shark. The popularity of the show declined after this episode. Looking back at the decline of the show, critics claimed that the moment when the lead character “jumped the shark” was the moment the show began to decline. The idea of jumping a shark was absurd and stupid to most people and many fans of the show saw this idea as a sign that the writers of the show were out of good ideas. For a complete history of this phrase, check Wikipedia.
Here is the actual scene that this phrase originated from:
This is considered one of the worst/most ridiculous moments in television history.
So what does it mean to say that something has jumped the shark, then?
When referring to TV series, jumping the shark refers to the point at which the characters or plot of the series veer into a ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary storyline. Such a show is typically deemed to have passed its peak. Once a show has “jumped the shark” fans sense a noticeable decline in quality or feel the show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm.
In a more general sense, something that has “jumped the shark” has passed its peak — in other words, it has just started to go out of fashion after a period of extreme popularity, usually by doing something ridiculous. Another way to put it: something was new and cool, but now it is just old and stupid.
This phrase has become very common over the past ten years: I hear it or read it at least once per week. It was originally applied only to TV series, but is now applied in a general sense to people, newspapers, companies, stocks, etc.
Update: Just to illustrate how common this phrase has become, I just happened to read this today:
“And perhaps more than anything the fact that in the last week or so the Clinton campaign has just descended into something like an all-night shark hop.”
This is a variation on “jumped the shark.”
