Snark Attack: In Television, Overkill Is Underrated:

Why “Jumping the Shark” Is Necessary for a TV Show’s Success

On the season finale of Southspoitation vampire extravaganza “True Blood” a woman gave birth to quadruplets of unknown mystical origin, one of the main characters turned into a pile of goop and then reformed out of that goop, multiple unnamed vampires exploded in what can only be described as a fountain of gore, and someone made something called a “Cajun margarita” that made me really thirsty for whatever a “Cajun margarita” is.  “Downton Abbey” this is not.

It used to be that when a television show made an untoward leap into the land of implausibility, it was called “jumping the shark.” The term was coined after a 1977 episode of “Happy Days” when the Fonz water-skied over a shark and is primarily used to describe the point in any show (either a single episode of the series as a whole), where things just get too damn silly. Now, it feels a little disappointing if a show doesn’t jump the shark, every episode, or maybe multiple times an episode. What’s more, jumping the shark seems like an essential part of our scatter-brained twenty-first century culture.

An hour-long drama is hard enough to squeeze into your busy day. A two-hour movie (for which jumping the shark is called nuking the fridge, a reference to a typically ludicrous sequence in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”) is even tougher. It doesn’t matter if you’re marathon-ing the episodes or movies on Netflix or downloading them some illegal backwater website, watching something still takes time; time that could be used for finessing your OK Cupid profile or checking yourself for ticks.

While writing this article alone I’ve Tweeted my feelings on fall coming on, shared a photo on Instagram of my dog (she looks extra fluffy today), watched the trailer for the upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where he plays a grizzled small town sheriff, and texted my friend in California about this place in LA that tops their steak tacos with quail eggs (to die for). It seems that, in the freeway pile-up of modern technology, we are jumping the shark each and every moment of our lives.

And since we are unable to focus on something for more than 10 seconds without feeling the need to tweet, Instagram or text, it makes sense that shows have to be increasingly outrageous to garner attention and steady ratings. It’s the only way to tear us away. “Community” is one of the most beloved shows on TV, at least critically, but trying to describe any given episode to a non-fan would probably get you committed. Even “conventional” sitcoms like “Happy Endings” often take bizarre, borderline surreal detours. And “Breaking Bad,” a killer thriller praised for its restrained storytelling style and emphasis on moody atmospherics, had a centerpiece moment hinged around an outrageous train heist worthy of one of the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies. If the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies were, you know, about drugs.

It’s part of the reason I still miss “Lost” so goddamn much. Sure it petered out in its final season, but no other show this side of “Twin Peaks” brought it, week in and week out, with the gleefully unrestrained power of its shark-jumping weirdness. (“Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof wrote this summer’s sci-fi freak-out “Prometheus” which frequently nuked the fridge, providing us with, among other things, the lead character in a Hollywood blockbuster giving herself an abortion, and a slickly phallic monster simulating male oral rape.)

But you wonder if shows could be a little bit more consistent about jumping the shark. For every one “American Horror Story” (whose first season included ghost rape, a latex S&M suit, and the Black Dahlia murder) there are, sadly, a dozen “Raising Hopes.” As great as television has become, it’s still used primarily to sell soda and cereal, and dumb people like things they can stare at without having to think too much. Sure, there are series like “Downton Abbey,” which has become a sensation despite being the type of series that you feel you have to watch through some old timey bifocals. But the show’s insistence on finite historical placement (the Titanic just sank y’all) and emphasis on Maggie Smith’s zingers offer a strain of outrageousness in an otherwise straight-laced series. Now Maggie Smith drinking a Cajun margarita would be some appointment television!

If anything, shows are going to have to up their game in the outré department (especially after the fully-Facebook-integrated iPhone OS drops this October). Thankfully, they seem up to the challenge. This new season of shows seems like there are some wonderful potential shark-jumpers, most notably “Last Resort,” about a nuclear submarine that goes rogue (it’s really good), and the second season of “American Horror Story” is said to feature Nazis, aliens, a serial killer called Bloody Face and Chloe Sevigny. Sadly, there are just as many things like NBC’s sitcom about the grumpy veterinarian – he’s great with animals but he’s lousy with people! Where did I put my suicide pill?