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When Shows Jumped The Shark


Benji

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Glee's a victim of its own popularity. It started off as a quirky, kinda dark musical comedy about underdogs, but then it got huge, and the hype started to feed into the writing. The show is really just about the show itself now - stuff like the Rocky Horror episode, or the numerous tributes, or the original songs. It's lost almost all semblance of character-based stories or logical plotting and is now basically nothing but "Hey, look, we're Glee! And we're doing stuff!'

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Mighty Boosh series 3. Probably the Crimp episode. Watching back, series 1 is actually really really good. Series 2 has some quality moments but series 3 just poops itself. I'll save the first couple of episodes though because Stationary Village was fantastic.

Yeah, Series 3 was appalling - the Crimp episode was far, far too self-aware, Vince went from being naive and childlike to a genuinely unlikeable character, and I hated the Crack Fox, or any of the other drug references. Part of Boosh's charm was that it never relied on cheap shit like that, but as soon as they got big enough to not have too many restrictions, they lost that. Give me Bryan Ferry in the woods any day.

As for Red Dwarf, I'll forgive series 7 its sins for the Kennedy episode. It's one of the best they did, and actually a really solid piece of speculative science fiction.

Twin Peaks did jump the shark pretty much when the killer was revealed - season 2 was all a bit of a mess without Lynch being as involved, though. He never actually wanted the killer to be revealed at all, it was the network's pressure that forced him to reveal it. His original idea was that Laura's death was the catalyst to everything, the starting point of the series, but from there you would meet the characters, learn about their relationships with one another and all that, until eventually it almost functioned as a soap opera. As much as I wish they'd done a Season 3, especially after cramming the final episode full of cliffhangers, I'm kind of glad they didn't, as I'm not sure what else they could have done with it...especially after seeing Fire Walk With Me.

Frasier jumped the shark when Niles and Daphne got married. I know the show isn't about Niles, obviously, but it loses a lot when suddenly he has no real reason to be ridiculously neurotic any more. And, in true jumping the shark moment, it's not that the show goes downhill from that point, but more than when it gets there, it makes you realise how far it's fallen since the second/third series.

On the subject of Glee, I don't really "get" it, but I find it hilarious that it's essentially supposed to be a parody of Fame etc., and nobody realises. They've done such a great job of parodying something, that people take it at face value. They've done it too well. That's admirable.

Though I think now - and it's probably a network decision of some kind - it's become less of a parody and more of a "straight" show to cater for that.

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I agree with Dragon on Buffy. It was never as good when it left the high school. That's not to say there weren't certain story arcs that were good post season 3 but overall it was never as good.

I'm particularly bummed about season 4, The Initiative storyline had so damn much potential and they totally fcuked it up.

It's kind of amusing that I loved Angel right up until season 4 as well. Then season 4 was utter shit. 5 redeemed it to an extent but it never really recovered after the horror that was season 4.

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On the subject of Glee, I don't really "get" it, but I find it hilarious that it's essentially supposed to be a parody of Fame etc., and nobody realises. They've done such a great job of parodying something, that people take it at face value. They've done it too well. That's admirable.

Yeah, no, it's really not. At all. I can see why people might think that, but Glee is achingly sincere.

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I think it was really sort of initially a darker, somewhat parodic response to Fame but also especially the popularity of High School Musical, but it honestly lost that edge after a handful of episodes. Now it's incredibly, incredibly earnest with the occasional moment where someone manages a one-liner that makes me long for the pilot.

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Glee jumped when it returned from its midseason break in season 1. It went from a charming little high school show about underfunded arts programs and other current issues and then became preachy self-indulging pop culture nonsense with no plot, structure or characters.

Heroes jumped when they revealed in the season 1 finale that Sylar wasn't dead.

House jumped with the episode after House left the mental institution. That was arguably the best episode the show ever did and it should've been the series finale.

The Simpsons jumped after Behind the Laughter, which also should've served as the series finale.

Alias jumped when they raided and dismantled SD6 completely out of nowhere in season 2.Rescue Me jumped the shark in Season 4.

And fuck all y'all... Buffy NEVER jumped! Season 6 is overbashed, I wouldn't even say it's the worst season of the show.

While that was a little out of nowhere, I never really felt like Alias jumped the shark. It did some questionable things and left a little unanswered, but I enjoyed it throughout. A lot of that was done to the charm of some of the characters like Sark, but I loved that show from start to finish with only a few hiccups inbetween.

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I was jumping for joy at that point.

Thing is, post-Marissa death and after Ryan was done being an ANGST-RIDDEN CAGE FIGHTER, The OC was pretty good in Season 4. Seth and Summer was dead and buried, but I'd blame that more on them breaking up IRL than anything else. Autumn Reeser, Che and Kevin Sorbo were all fun additions.

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One thing that I do appreciate about British Television is that they aren't afraid to cancel a show when it's popular. I think that TV shows should have a beginning, middle and end. They don't need to go on forever, it lowers the quality eventually and eventually will leave the majority of the fans pissed off at the end. I'd much rather have an excellent show that goes three seasons than something spectacular for a season or two before becoming dull and boring for another five or six seasons.

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I agree with you guys, but I think there is only a very small number of people who would throw the money of future seasons away just to fullfill their vision (not only in reference to creators but to everyone involved).

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I feel like the ideal US series length is generally four to five seasons. There are obvious exceptions to this, but it's usually after season four that things fall apart, especially if it's a network show (whereas if it's a premium cable show, for example, the creator usually does have an end date/number of seasons they want to do in mind so you're not getting The Sopranos, season 9 or whatever). Like, I still decidedly enjoy The Office even if I think it's clearly lost a step from its peak at seasons two and three but if you condensed the events of season four through this past season into one fourth season or maybe two seasons tops you'd probably be looking at a pretty perfect run, as opposed to a creative peak followed by some usually entertaining but very uneven seasons that followed.

EDIT: Of course, the writers strike sort of crippled season four a bit so that would make it difficult to hit all the beats I think you'd need (Michael's relationship with Jan falling apart, the start of his relationship with Holly, Jim and Pam getting engaged and then getting married, the Dwight/Andy/Angela triangle, possibly the Michael Scott Paper Company arc, and Michael leaving his job to be with Holly. You could pretty much cut out all the SABRE stuff, Michael dating Pam's mom and that one chick, Jim and Pam having a kid, and probably a bunch of other stuff without the show really suffering).

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Heroes is a big one for me, but I liked seasons 1 & half of season 2. >_> Halfway through 2 I was like "Wow, this is really turned to shit." and just deleted it from my recording schedule. Glutton for punishment that I am, though, when season 3 premiered I re-added it, hated it, deleted it, and went through the same process with season 4. <_<

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I feel like the ideal US series length is generally four to five seasons. There are obvious exceptions to this, but it's usually after season four that things fall apart, especially if it's a network show

I think 65-75 episodes is a good ballpark number. That would be 5/6 seasons of most cable shows and 3/4 seasons of most network shows. The problems come when network shows feel the need to stretch out the A plot over a number of seasons because they're afraid of giving the pay off away and then having nothing left to talk about.

Using the shows I referenced, Friends was a solid show for about 5 seasons and the last 5 were awful.

If Glee had been planned to be a 3/4 year show from the get go and just focused on the original glee club's run through their remaining years of HS with the hope of winning Nationals they would have had a beginning, middle and end. Instead, the show is spinning its wheels and the quality has dropped off as characters are shuttled in and out to tell some minor, insignificant story.

Scrubs should have just been about JD, Turk and Eliot getting through their internship/residency and ended with them "graduating" or having a season devoted to them starting to teach the next JD, Turk and Eliot.

Nip/Tuck was great until the Carver reveal and that should have been the high point with one of the two surgeons or someone they knew being "the big bad". Instead, they clusterfucked their way through another 2 or 3 seasons that were unwatchable.

And of course, HIMYM should have ended about 2 seasons ago instead of having 2 more left :shifty:

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