Jumping the Shark - An Investigation

I can remember being a young lad and watching "Happy Days" on television and thinking, "I hope this show never ends..." It made for wonderful viewing for a twelve year-old boy, and its storylines hearkened back to a simpler time (in 1972, we considered the fifties and early sixties as a "simpler, much cooler" time, what with Elvis Presley and The Beatles and all). We were familiar with Ron Howard from his days as Opie on "The Andy Griffith Show" and the character of Richie Cunningham gave us an idea what Opie would have been like had we seen him continue to age. I always thought that he had traded down when he gave up Andy Griffith as a father and picked up Tom Bosley, but I blame that on his agent. We got to know Richie's goofy, hormonal friends Potsie and Ralph Malph, whose only thoughts were of making out and hanging out with buds, much like the twelve year-old boy sitting Indian-legged on the living room floor in front of the television.

Then there was Fonzie. Uber-cool, Arthur Fonzarelli was the good-hearted, motorcycle-riding hoodlum who watched over the Land of Happy Days, dispensing advise on love, life and the art of cool. Fonzie was viewed by the kids at Arnold's Drive-In hamburger shop as a rebel - although he began the series wearing a white windbreaker, as per ABC's strict control over chicanery. Soon enough, his trademark leather jacket and feathered ducktail were in full rebellious display. Fonzie could turn on the jukebox with a well-placed cuff to the side of the machine. Fonzie never sweated the ladies - he snapped his fingers and they came a-running. Yep, Fonzie was cool - Richie, Potsie and Ralph knew it and so did we. So did the Cunninghams and there was always an undercurrent of sexual tension between the Fonz and Richie's mom, Marion. Kind of twisted if you think about it, but if you were married to Tom Bosley instead of Andy Griffith and had to listen to that little freckled harpy Joannie, you'd jump at the chance to jump on the Fonz-Arelli, too.

Yep, I never wanted the show to end.

Somewhere along the line, something changed. Perhaps the change was so subtle that we viewers could not register it. Suddenly, several seasons into the show's run, I found that I cared little whether I was home to watch or not. Maybe girls and music and life and shenanigans got in the way - I was simply getting older. Or perhaps it was something more base than my gentle slide into adolescence - it was possible that the show began to suck.

Fonzie and boys began to wear hairstyles more appropriate for the mid-seventies than the early sixties. Potsie began to sing on the show. Richie left. The show was taped before an audience rather than filmed by a single camera. The studio audience began to shriek every time the now nearly-superhuman Fonzie entered the scene. Fonzie's cousin Chachi, with his full head of seventies-feathered-blown-dry hair came aboard. Everyone knows what happens when TV shows introduce new characters - see the obnoxious little cousins brought aboard "The Brady Bunch", "The Cosby Show" and "The Partridge Family" - and apparently Chachi was created to romance little Joanie Cunningham, which was disgusting enough. What made matters worse is that they were bequeathed a spin off of the show called "Joannie Loves Chachi". Ugggghhhhh...

At the beginning of season five, in some ridiculous storyline that would strain even the most hearty of the "Suspension of Disbelief-ers", it was finagled that Fonzie would water-ski jump (wearing his leather jacket) over a contained man-eating shark. What??? Decades later, this was pinpointed as the moment when the show had nothing compelling left to offer. Henceforth, the term "jumping the shark" has been used to convey the episode that a television show went into its death-march to cancellation.

Hearken the Death-Knell

 

Some tell-tale signs that a show has jumped the shark:

• "A Very Special..." - just turn the set off. When Blossom, the Keatons or Ingalls find the opportunity to have a very special anything, it is time to pull the plug. Seriously, if I want to have a family moment examining teen-pregnancy, drug-abuse or the menses, I will watch the Kardashians.
• The re-casting of a main character. The only reason that the Partridge Family survived the replacement of the bug-eyed, dark haired drumming munchkin Chris Partridge with the tow-headed, squinty, Michael J. Pollard-looking drumming munchkin Chris Partridge is that everyone had their head up their ass in David Cassidy-envy and didn't notice - otherwise the show wouldn't have lasted the season. Check Becky Connor on "Rosanne" or Darren Stevens on "Bewitched"... Jump the Shark moment - you make the call.
• Adding Ted McGinley to your cast. Know as the Patron Saint of Shark-Jumping, McGinley take the demise of the already-jumped "Happy Days", "Married With Children" and "The Love Boat" to his shark-jumping grave with him. He is a bane and when he shows up on the set for his first day of shooting, young cast members have been known to burst into tears.

 

"Good luck" is right... Sayonara.

 

 

I suppose strong cases could be made for "Replacing Characters" ("M*A*S*H", "Two And A Half Men", "Cheers", etc.), "Special Guest Star Episodes" and "Introducing a young munchkin cousin who looks like John Denver" (See Cousin Oliver on "The Brady Bunch") as being strong indicators as well. All I know is that television producers, much like aging athletes, often do not know when to call it quits. I say there should be a committee (I would be delighted and honored to be a member) that keeps an eye on this. When I am King, this committee shall be formed and maintained rigorously. It will be well-paid and beyond reproach and their say will be final. No more Ted McGinley Mishaps and no more icons water skiing in leather jackets. And any scripts submitted introducing a new, precocious mop-topped cousin (with round, wire-framed glasses or not), will be incinerated, along with its writer. We need to get back to a purer, entertaining television and this would be a good start.

 

I submit that television itself jumped the shark the day a camera was allowed in the back seat of a police car for the pilot episode of "COPS". When the lid came off the reality TV bottle, there was simply no turning back. Cheaper to film and extremely popular with the ridiculously huge audience of  retarded lemmings who watch, reality television has beckoned the medium itself to begin its walk down the green-screen mile.  Television will survive without a doubt, but it will never be the same. Some are of the mind that this is okay. A plague on their houses, I say.

 

Vote Jerry Ford for King in the upcoming election. Take two pencils.









Pretzels For Breakfast

When I moved into this apartment with the brother of my ex-wife, I thought it would be fun and save us both some money. Then children from both sides came pouring into the place and suddenly we were in the child-care business.

It was an interesting time, with us sharing the parenting duties and trying to keep the peace, while both of us toiled in the restaurant business, sometimes working fifty or sixty hours a week.

I’m sure the kids don’t think about it much, but Kelly and I both know that we earned our stripes that year.

Among the notable instances:
Once nearly losing a couple of the young ‘uns in a blizzard just a hundred yards from the back door. We took turns making trips to the pack and carrying the kids one by one through the thigh-deep snow while the other waited with the children to try to minimize their panic until we had the entire passel inside and warm.

We may have drank some Jameson’s following our dramatic rescue.

Pretzels For Breakfast

It was like “The Brady Bunch” viewed through one of those circus mirrors that distorts an image through refraction, thus skewing the overall picture. Five kids, two sets of twins, all girls, all under the age of five, raised by two men who mostly walked around, hands held in a defensive position, wondering what hit them. Sounds like a sitcom, right? Welcome to my world.

Now divorced, the father of twin girls, nearly five, I live with my brother in law, also divorced, also the father of twin girls, nearly four and a “singlet”, aged five. He is not a bad sort, my brother in law, and the fact that I was once married to his sister I no longer hold against him. I have visitation of my girls on the weekends and at the time I moved in with Kelly, his daughters were in North Carolina, in the custody of their mother. We figured we would save a little money, share expenses and hey, we would be two swinging bachelors in a fine, swinging bachelor pad. The world was our oyster—it was a fresh start.

The alarm sounded, waking us from this blissful, idyllic vision of life with a start the day his ex-wife showed up with the kids and dropped them, literally, on our doorstep. As men will sometimes do, we accepted this change in circumstance with a single-mindedness of purpose that can only be found in divorced fathers, or really dumb dogs. “Good,” I declared, rolling up my sleeves. “They’re better off with us anyhow.” “Yeah,” Kelly said, as we rearranged the furniture in the living room to better accommodate a set of bunk beds. “You got that right.”

We high-fived, chest butted and got down to business. The first week went smoothly—we were old pros, after all, we had been fathers for years, and moreover, we had been married—nothing could intimidate us.

Until the weekend.

I picked up my daughters, who were giddy with joy when I gave them the news of their cousins’ return. It would be wonderful — one big, happy family, the girls with flowers in their hands, running slow-motion through meadows with the sun glistening off their golden hair. The two proud fathers, in their pressed khakis, golf shirts and Cordovan loafers, standing in ankle-deep clover, relaxed smiles beaming from their tanned, chiseled faces as they protectively watched their daughters frolic in innocent bliss.

We arrived at the apartment just as Uncle Kelly was getting ready to leave for work. The hurricane of shrill, screaming voices and stampeding sneakers moved in a tow-headed flurry to the living room, thereafter known as “ground-zero”. Kelly and I watched after them for a moment. My brother in-law turned to me, a look of relief coming over his face as he reached for the doorknob. “Are you going to be
alright?” I smiled bravely. “Of course I am.” We gave a half-hearted high five and Kelly bolted out the door, down the driveway and into his minivan with more grace and speed than Barry Sanders in an open field. I gazed from the doorway as he backed out of the driveway and barked ‘em off down the street with a hurried wave. I closed the door quietly and mouthed a silent prayer as I walked toward ground-zero.

It was now filled with manic, blonde heads, all bright and smiling and screaming and rabid and ten little arms churning in attempts to dismantle the toy-box, its contents and most of the entertainment center and its contents as well—just for good measure. “Hey, hey,” I said, wading through the children, who turned to me and began to grab and claw, their young, girlish laughter belying the cunning and innate sense of battle savvy that lay just below the surface. “You kids aren’t supposed to be playing with the stereo,” I began. As two or three of the children tugged at me, forcing me to my knees and the “Roughhousing Position”, two or three more darted off to another room, for more pillaging and plundering. I didn’t notice until it was too late—the floor was littered with tattered CD covers and the walls were crayola-covered. It was divide and conquer worthy of Eisenhower—I had to smile with pride even as I cleaned the invasion-zone.

After a dinner of macaroni and cheese, a food-fight of Belushian proportions and a bath-time that involved more spilled water than the Titanic disaster, we settled in for the two and a half hour battle of wills known as “bedtime”. When the kids finally drifted off to sleep—from five separate sanctioned areas of the house—and after I had carried them to their beds and tucked them in, I stood back to assess the damages. The angelic faces that lay before me overshadowed any injuries the house may have sustained. I cleaned and straightened and laundered and laid out breakfast for the morning—pretzels and Coco Puffs, the breakfast of champions—and sat back on the couch and a Barbie-doll arm. I pulled the arm from under my backside and tossed it in the toybox with the other wreckage.

“Not bad,” I muttered to myself. My pants were still wet from the bathwater and my shirt bore remnants of the dinner battle. My hands had nearly stopped shaking and the shrill ringing in my ears had dimmed to a distant hum. It was going to be a long war, with many battles and hard-earned rewards. I would see things that few men could ever dream. A long road lay ahead and we would have to be prepared and fight together if we were to persevere. It wasn’t the Brady Bunch, but then again, Greg and Marcia never got to have pretzels for breakfast.