I'm a huuuge Alias fan.

I don't care what anyone else thinks. I like it. Even when it sucks. So it comes to my surprise that the news about JenG's pregnancy being written into the show has people saying that it has "jumped the shark?" First of all, why is "jump the shark" such a popular term? I know that Fonzie actually jumped a shark in Happy Days and that's where the term originally came from. But Happy Days? I'd feel a little better about using the term if it came from a show that was actually...you know...good. If I had never seen that episode of Happy Days, I wouldn't know that "jump the shark" even had a bad conotation. Jumping sharks is not only amazing. It's very uncommon. I didn't see a lot of people jumping sharks in Jaws or its maligned sequels, did you?? So, in the spirit of discussion, I've come up with a few negative-conotation alternatives for "jumping the shark," now that the phrase has in essence jumped as well:

1. Punching The Shark In The Face - If you jump an actual shark, you could theoretically survive, depending on your velocity and height of the jump and the humidity. But punching it? That would probably make it angry. And after bears, sharks are the last things to piss off. "Ahhh man! Will & Grace totally punched the shark in the face!" See? It just sounds doomed.

2. Sunk Its Battleship - This would combine a fun board game that everyone knows and loves with a term that, worldwide, instilled a sense of disappointment during times of war. Game over.

3. Got An Ugly Chick Pregnant - OHhhhhh noooooooooo!!! You always have that one friend in high school that this exact thing happens to. It's like crashing into a brick wall and then having to live forever in the smashed-up aftermath like nothing's changed. Very sad.

4. Slapping Your Mom - If I ever did that to my mom, that would be the last episode of "The Me Show." There wouldn't even be a commercial. It'd just go straight to black.

5. Dropped A Baby On Its Head - I'm definitly not advocating dropping babies. That's terrible. And I believe highly illegal. But have you ever met someone for the first time and something was just a little off about them? And then they said, "Oh, yeah. My mom dropped me on my head when I was a baby." And then you were like, "Ahhh" as you slowly backed away. Studies show that people who are dropped on their heads as children have this happen a lot. So saying a show dropped a baby on its head would cause similar reactions.

Secondly, who says that having a baby on Alias would be so bad? Not only is that a new form of sympathy for Sydney while she's all on the DL on her spy missions. But that baby could come out of the womb being a superspy itself. Sydney could throw the baby at bad guys or have it parachute on bad guy's heads. You could even get some kind of tether cord and make a huge swinging baby superweapon. That would be pretty sweet.

Any other suggestions?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2005 at 1:08 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.