Q&A
Why do we say ‘jump the shark’?
• SHORT ANSWER
A TV trope was born when, in Happy Days, Fonzie… you guessed it, jumped over a shark
• LONG ANSWER
To ‘jump the shark’ is when a television show in decline introduces a gimmick in a desperate attempt to rejuvenate its ratings, only to fail. The – rather literal – origin of the phrase is the wildly popular 1970s sitcom, Happy Days. In the fifth season, the beloved character Fonzie, the leather-jacket-wearing, jukebox-hitting greaser played by Henry Winkler, accepts a challenge to water ski off a ramp over a penned-in tiger shark. For a show about an everyday family in the US Midwest in the 1950s, the stunt felt out of place – at least, it did to University of Michigan roommates Jon Hein and Sean Connolly, who coined the phrase ‘jump the shark’ and set up a website to record other times television shows lost their way in ridiculous fashion. But in truth, this wasn’t a jumping the shark moment for Happy Days: the show ran for another six seasons, only ending in 1984.