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August 20, 2005
arrested development
I couldn't sleep last night, so I turned on TV's smartest show (that I've seen, anyway) and was treated to a most surreal moment of television. It was barely noticeable. Two men and their attorney discussing a case while standing on a pier, and when the latter exits the scene to go to Burger King, he hops over a dead fish and is gone. It was a nothing moment, understated and not commented on, at most a curious bit of staging...except that the actor was a 60ish Henry Winkler and the dead fish was a shark.
So yes, some 28 years after jumping, on water skis, the original shark and thereby signaling his show's creative exhaustion, some 10 years after "jump the shark" entered the cultural lexicon, Fonzie is jumping sharks to signal another show's creative ascension. Cue "Circle of Life."
posted by john at 11:36 AM • permalink