The origins of Fonzie's "Jumping the shark" and how it links to JAWS

The term jump the shark wasn't coined because of Jaws, but the ensuing Jawsmania after the release of the Steven Spielberg shark classic may have played a part in feeding the media's continued fascination with sharks...which is how we end up with The Fonz literally jumping over a shark in Happy Days.

After the monster success of Jaws, sharks were everywhere, whether it was on The Six Million Dollar Man or the world of Hanna Barbara with Jabberjaw. One place you'd probably not expect to see a dorsal fin appear was on Happy Days.

Yep, that's where this shark curveball takes us with The Fonz (Henry Winkler) water-skiing and jumping over a great white shark with Ritchie Cunningham (Ron Howard) driving the boat, Chief.

And you can link Howard to Jaws, as he'd starred alongside Richard Dreyfuss in American Graffiti (1973), which was co-edited by Verna Fields who would on and win an Academy Award for her editing of Jaws.

And Winkler would have his own link to Spielberg years later, as he was one of the producers of Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) which Spielberg would executive produce.

Who knows perhaps that Happy Days scene even helped them come up with the concept for Jaws 3D (1983), that had jumping water-skiers and a great white. Although we got to see the fate of non-water-skiers in Jaws 2 (1978), perhaps that was revenge for this TV stunt that upon viewing today - to paraphrase Quint - as an experience, it’s not gonna be pleasant.

The series didn't sink as a result of that episode, which aired on September 20   1977. If anything, it got more obtuse as it later introduced Mork (Robin Williams), an alien from another planet, with the series coming to an end in 1984.

The phrase jump the shark didn't come into being back in 1977 though, it wouldn't be coined until around 1985 when Jon Hein used it for his website about the outlandish desperate measures TV shows go to to get viewers to tune in that week.

It's now became part of the vernacular, with Steven Spielberg unwittingly cresting his own updated version of it after the opening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull  which see Indy (Harrison Ford) climbing into a fridge to escape and survive a nuclear bomb. The term nuke the fridge was born, but jumping the shark has still not lost any of its power or use.

Did Jaws or any of its sequels ever jump the shark? If so at what precise moment or event do you think the series jumped the shark?

Words by Dean Newman

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