Okay, so I've had some people rave to me about jumptheshark.com, like it's the source for finding shows that have jumped the shark, but.... I'm not really impressed with it.
To start with, for any given show, you have to wade through dozens of 'responses' from people, to the tune of 'this show sucks monkey balls for such-and-such lame reason'.
Just for an experiment, I looked up "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and their two main 'jump the shark' justifications were 'Ashley grew up' and ' they replaced aunt Viv'. I watched that show from start to finish when I was in highschool, and those two things never changed the nature or the course of the show in any real significant manner. The show only went maybe a season past when it should have stopped, in my opinion, but that's just me.
Jumptheshark.com has allowed all of the nitpickers of the internet to crawl out of the woodwork and wreak havoc on what used to be a fairly well-defined term.
For those who don't know, jumping the shark is when a show changes a major element (a character, a setting) or adds some wacky storyline in an attempt to get better ratings. The most famous example being Henry Winkler jumping over a bunch of sharks on waterskis, the moment when everyone realized the show Happy Days was past its prime. A more extensive definition can be found here.
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