On TV 49 Years Ago, A Beloved Sitcom Ruined Its Reputation and Created the Ultimate Gimmick

It has been 49 years since one of the most embarrassing television tropes gained its name thanks to a once-beloved sitcom that ruined its reputation in one moment. Happy Days premiered in 1974 on ABC, created by Garry Marshall, and it ended up as one of the most successful television series of the 1970s. The series followed a family and mostly focused on the teenage son, Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard), and his friends. However, the breakout star of the show was the bad boy with the heart of gold, Fonzie (Henry Winkler). While Fonzie was the coolest character on the show, he ruined all of that in Happy Days Season 5’s third episode, “Hollywood: Part 3.”

In this episode, released on September 20, 1977, the California Kid (James Daughton) challenges Fonzie to jump over a tiger shark on water skis. Refusing to back down from a challenge, Fonzie successfully does so. At this moment, the term “jumping the shark” was born.

It Has Been 49 Years Since Happy Days Literally Jumped the Shark

The episode seemed silly from the start. It was the third part of the “Hollywood” episodes, and it had the ridiculous moment where Fonzie, in his leather jacket and bathing suit, jumped a caged tiger shark on water skis to prove he wasn’t scared of anything. One of the reasons this happened was that Henry Winkler had told Garry Marshall that he knew how to water ski, and it ended up being added to the show.

Ironically, even though Happy Days literally jumped the shark in this episode, it didn’t really hurt the show at all. Fred Fox Jr., the man who wrote the episode, said the stunt didn’t affect the popularity of the show. He even said that the show still got over 30 million viewers. In a second interview, Ron Howard said that Donny Most (Ralph Malph) thought the stunt would ruin the show, but he said it was one episode and that Happy Days was still a success for years after that. In a third interview, Henry Winkler said Happy Days remained the number one show for four more years. In fact, the same season that Happy Days jumped the shark was also the same season that Robin Williams debuted the extraterrestrial Mork, a character who got his own spinoff in Mork & Mindy.

Fonzie literally jumped over a shark, but Happy Days didn’t jump the shark. It wasn’t until Ron Howard left the show after Season 7 that the series finally began to drop in quality, and after both Scott Baio (Chachi) and Erin Moran (Joanie) left after Season 9, the show was finished as a hit series.

Examples of TV Shows That Figuratively “Jumped the Shark” After This

Jumping the shark was named after this Happy Days episode to show a time when a beloved show hit its peak and did something so ridiculous that it was all downhill from there. While Happy Days didn’t suffer after the jump-the-shark moment, there have been many shows that did.

The TV show The Brady Bunch was a hugely popular sitcom about a family formed when a man with three sons married a woman with three daughters. The entire series was about how the six kids tried to figure out how to get along as a family, and it was an often funny and wholesome series. However, it jumped the shark when Cousin Oliver (Robbie Rist) was sent to live with the family toward the end of Season 5. Fans hated Oliver, and the final six episodes of Season 5 ended up being the end of the series. This was labeled as the “Cousin Oliver Syndrome,” where a show adds a new cast member to try to save it from cancellation.

Moonlighting was one of the funniest shows on television for years, and the biggest draw was the “will they or won’t they” relationship between Dave (Bruce Willis) and Maddie (Cybill Shepherd). The show was one of the top 10 most-watched shows in its third season, but then it made a mistake. Dave and Maddie consummated their relationship, ending the entire dynamic, and the show dropped in viewers after that. It ended up being cancelled after the fifth season. It was a lesson that ending the romantic tension took away a big reason fans watched the show.

The nighttime soap opera Dallas was one of the most-watched shows while it was on the air. In fact, the “Who Shot J.R.” storyline helped the show achieve a record-breaking 53.3 Nielsen rating and a 76% audience share in the United States. In total, 350 million people tuned into that episode. Later in the series, Dallas repeated the death motif and killed off J.R.’s brother, Bobby Ewing. However, Dallas jumped the shark at the start of Season 10 when Bobby’s wife, Pamela Ewing, went into the bathroom and he was in the shower. She was dreaming the entire season’s events, and fans completely checked out.