"Jump the Shark" Thread

[Drtooth]

Yeah but at least he had some personality. I dunno...the new show he just seems like a moron with little to no personality. Actually, none of the characters have personality in the new show. They are all so flat...and I can't blame the voice actors because they are the same as What's New Scooby Doo with the exception of Shaggy.

But thinking back, they didn't really have much personality in the original show either.

The new series tries to add depth to things that weren't there. It's not successful at first, but near the end of the first season and through season 2, Fred and Daphne really have some character development. Even Scooby-Doo has become kinda bad&$$. It really has taken an even darker turn, and they're heavily implying Scooby's going to betray the gang. Even the Venture Bros parody of the characters weren't that dark, and they based them off of famous serial killers.

But Fred never had personality, same with Daphne. To some extent Velma too. Pup turned them into parodies of themselves, and the show was all the better for it.

 

[KremlingWhatnot]

Regular Show- It Started To Jump The Shark When It Came To Middle Of The Third Season, It Has Picked Up A Little On The Fourth, But I Wouldn't Say It Has.
Fantastic Max- This Show Dropped In Quality In Second And Last Season When They Started Using Too Many Puns, (Straight Flush To Name One Example)
SpongeBob Squarepants- Started To Drop Quality When It's Fourth Season Came Out
Adventure Time- This Show Dropped In Quality When Flame Princess Arrived
Rocky & Bullwinkle- Jumped The Shark In The 4th Season
Mork And Mindy- Jumped The Shark When They Had The Manbaby

 

[Drtooth]

I don't think understandably slight dip in quality is Jump the Shark. That's a term when a show does something irredeemably stupid and reality breaking (if it's a sitcom)and never comes back from it because it gets goofier.

Regular Show and Adventure Time are consistent with their quality, even going to opposite way and growing a beard. I absolutely love how the characters in Regular Show developed, Benson becoming more and more sympathetic, Muscle Man gaining depth and becoming Mordecai and Rigby's best friend... the show has come a long way since the first season. Only thing that bugs me about Adventure Time is that they have great potential for massive story arcs that they resolve way too fast (the alternate Fist of the North Star-esque world where the Mushroom war never happened and the one where Jake's a father... those kids grew up too fast).

As for Jumping the Shark for realz, I'm very generous with The Office. I don't think it jumped when Michael Scott left (though it was a perfect way to end the series, they just decided to continue because almost everyone else had longer contracts). I think it jumped the shark to an unforgivable degree when James Spader left the show. I loved that character, especially the Halloween episode and the one where he has to get rid of his bachelor pad. it freaking rejumped with lame replacement characters like Nellie and the two lame interns. And it bebopped and scatted all over it when they broke up Erin and Andy so they could give a love interest to the flattest of the replacement scrappy interns. Of course, they did redeem themselves with Andy's passive aggressive revenge, not to mention the inner fourth wall breaking moment where one of the guys filming the documentary comes to Pam's rescue multiple times... but this is a pretty lame way to end the series.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

The new series tries to add depth to things that weren't there. It's not successful at first, but near the end of the first season and through season 2, Fred and Daphne really have some character development.

Ah...late first season is when I stopped watching it, so I guess I missed that. But it's funny you mention how dark the show is, as THAT is my main reason for not liking it. The original series was dark, but it still had a comedic element. What's New Scooby Doo was a comedy throughout, and that's why I like it the most. I think Scooby works best as a comedy and being lighthearted. The new show just doesn't do anything for me. It's like they are being gritty and dark just for the sake of it.

 

[Drtooth]

It's dark and gritty in a playful way. It still manages to keep its humor and it seems almost Buffy like. Not to mention that it's very humorous about it's mythology, even having an episode based on the self made crappy knockoff series. I wouldn't say it's dark for dark's sake. It's far too well written to be lumped in with that. Most of the movies made in the 90's were around as dark as this one was. I personally take it as making up for Shaggy and Scooby get a Clue. That wasn't a terrible show, but the bad guys were the only thing remotely good about it, and they could have generically inserted any characters into it.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

Maybe I just stopped watching it, or didn't watch it enough, before I could see what you are talking about.

I actually think I know what episode you are talking about. That was the one with Speed Buggy and the Funky Phantom right? That one was like the only episode I've seen that I actually liked.

 

[beatnikchick300]

But Bean is another story. The writers not only didn't know what to do with the character, they couldn't even match the character with his puppet counterpart. Bean turned into a nonconfident, constantly depressed Eeyore type character (didn't he even play Eeyore when they parodied Pooh?) who was always the butt of jokes, rather than the overly optimistic, cloyingly cute Muppet we know and love. I don't see where they got that comparison.

I actually think that maybe the way he was presented on MB might be where I got the idea of Bean Bunny being the "Meg Griffin of the Muppets" (something I referenced in the first Super Muppets story I wrote).

 

[mr3urious]

The show should have ended at least a season before Charlie went nuts. The show was devolving into an unfunny caricature of itself, and that was the perfect time for the show to go out on top. I REALLY wish both parties could have stomached each other till the end of the series and came up with a rushed but satisfying ending. But NOOOOO! Chuck Lorre had to be all passive aggressive and hire a lame actor to turn the show into something even less funny than it already was. Now it's the Ashton Kutcher sitcom project with Two and a Half Men characters in it, and it's an entirely different, almost saccharine sitcom. Other than lame crotch jokes at Alan's expense.

And as they risk Angus Jones leaving the set after pulling a Kirk Cameron, now should be a good time as any to put the show out of its misery.

 

[D'Snowth]

CBS as a network is NOTORIOUS for hanging onto successful series for as long as they can because they seriously don't want to start losing all that money that they make off of the series.

This dates way back, M*A*S*H seriously should have ended after its seventh season, it just kept getting worse and worse afterwards, and the cast and crew wanted to end it, but CBS wanted to hang onto it, until finally, after ten seasons, the cast and crew finally just up and said enough already, and Season Eleven ended up being the final season... BUT, then CBS tried to make the post-war spinoff with Potter, Klinger, and Mulcahy all working in the same stateside hospital that was a ratings and commercial failure, and was canceled before the Season Two finale ever aired.

 

[snichols1973]

Between 2005 and 2007, it seemed like there was a ratings war between two similar shows: Disney's American Dragon: Jake Long, and CN's The Life and Times of Juniper Lee.

The main character in each show was a pre-teen Asian-American kid with special abilities, with a grandparent as their mystical mentor that helped train them to protect the city from supernatural beings. They also had younger siblings with potential magic powers of their own, and enchanted dogs that through some inexplicable magic, are actually centuries old, and have extensive knowledge in the supernatural ways which they use to help their preteen masters.

Somehow, it seems quite odd that two similar shows existed on rival networks, and even stranger that they didn't (to the best of my knowledge) get involved in some sort of copyright infringement lawsuit....

On the other hand, the Munsters and the Addams Family managed to co-exist on different networks (CBS and ABC, respectively) from September 1964 to the spring of 1966, and even those programs were distinctly different from each other, with the Munsters as a Transylvanian family that considered themselves "average Americans", while the Addams Family were a group of rich eccentrics who apparently took pride in their eerie, macabre family traditions....