Monday, July 8, 2019

Go to Hawaii and Jump the Shark

The expression "jumped the shark" pops up on the internet somewhat often.   It refers to the old "Happy Days" TV show episode where the Fonzie character is out surfing or waterskiing (I didn't see that ep) and hops over a large, nasty shark.  The point being, that was when Happy Days ran out of creative steam, ratings dwindled and then eventually was cancelled.  So when some person, political movement, fashion, hobby -- whatever -- visibly outlives its original inspiration and resorts to stunts or odd behavior to retain attention, the shark has been jumped and decline is inevitable.

Years before, back in the distant days when I watched TV shows, it had dawned on me that when the setting of the program shifted to Hawaii for an episode or two, that show had run out of ideas and was doomed.  There was more than one case of this, but that was 40 or so years ago and I can't cite examples: sorry.

I'm not sure if the folks running the programs realized what was happening in those terms.  It's possible a producer thought it was be fun to do a Hawaii-based episode as a treat or reward for the cast and the production workers.

Or maybe they did know that the end was nigh.

Regardless, when a program had a Hawaii episode, the Grim Reaper of television was lurking in the wings.

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