This story falls into the "you learn something new every day" category. I was listening to airamericaradio.com today, which is something I do pretty often. The subject of discussion was former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who is currently running for the Senate, and headed for a dismal defeat. Harris gained considerable notoriety for her role in stealing the 2000 presidential election, although, in the interest of fairness and balance, I'll point out that if Gore had managed to carry his home state of Tennessee, what happened in Florida wouldn't have mattered.

It seems that Harris has been going around saying that Florida's Democrat members of Congress are telling her privately that they hope that she wins. This claim is being dismissed as complete nonsense, and Air America Radio commentator Sam Seder said that Harris has "jumped the shark".

My reaction was to start wondering where the expression "jumped the shark" came from. Thanks to Google, I was able to find out in about a minute.

It's a Hollywood term, and it originated with the Happy Days sitcom. This show deteriorated badly during the last couple of years that it was on the air, and during this period, the character Fonzie (a greaser played by Henry Winkler) jumped over a shark while water skiing. The expression "jumped the shark" came to apply to the point where a TV series has been on too long, and gotten stale or silly. The best example that comes to mind is the last season of Ally McBeal.

There's a jumptheshark.com site which contains viewer evaluations of 2,500 TV shows, and visitors can vote and comment on the moment when their favorite or detested show jumped the shark. This Hour Has 22 Minutes is listed; there are 17 votes for "when Rick Mercer left the show", and 17 for "never jumped". There are 50 voters who say that Desperate Housewives has "never jumped", and 19 for "the second season". There's also a "bait shop" where you can by a book with the title Jump the Shark.

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