The One Where They Jumped the Shark
I didn’t watch the “Friends” finale tonight. The show stopped being Must See TV a few years ago for me. I hung in there longer than I should have, for old times’ sake, but I’d never really given much thought to exactly when the show started to go South.
I was interested, then, to see that Salon.com is trying to determine this very thing. They’re collecting opinions and anecdotes from readers who gave up on the program in an attempt to find out just when “Friends” jumped the shark. For me, it was probably that first episode in which Ross started plaintively exclaiming “We were on a break!” — sometime in season four, I think. It was the most glaring sign (though not the first) that the writing team had lost its emotional foothold with the characters. It marked the beginning of the slow decline into mannered, self-parodying characters that also afflicted “Seinfeld.”
How about you? Send your tales of disillusion and woe into Salon, or better yet post ’em right here.
Update: Salon’s results are in, and boy do some of those folks take their television seriously.
