Has there ever been a TV show that's turned it around after seemingly jumping the shark?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

"Jumping the shark" of course being an expression for when a television show crosses a threshold and starts to decline in quality.

I was watching the show "New Girl" last night, and it just wasn't very good at all. The thing was, in the first two seasons, the show was hilarious. I used to look forward to watching it every week. The male characters were all hilarious. And while they made the Zooey Deschanel character a little too quirky at times, it was all okay because it was Zooey Deschanel and she's got to be my number one celebrity crush.

Then the third season came, and it was just awful. Terrible. The male characters all started to go over the top, the jokes fell flat, and Zooey's quirkiness was far less subtle and way more overbearing.

Now I'm seriously considering just dropping it from the DVR queue.

But I have to wonder, has there ever been a show that seemingly had gone into a clear decline in quality and somehow turned it around and managed to refresh itself? It just seems once a show starts to go downhill, that's it for the show. But maybe I'm wrong.

[Chan790]

1. Did you watch the first season of Agents of SHIELD?

It started bad, got worse as the first 3/4 of the season went on, jumped the shark in the episode before the premiere of a tied-in movie...and finished the season with possibly the strongest 3 episodes of any series anywhere.

People were writing epitaphs for Whedon's career at the season midpoint before they pulled it out.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. Haven't seen it.

That being said, if it was all in the course of one season, and if the storyline was serialized, a bad beginning isn't necessarily a bad harbinger of a show's entire season. Sometimes a show's directors and producers have a way of creating order out of chaos and starting with a bunch of seemingly loose ends and pulling them together perfectly.

"The Wire" is an excellent example of this. David Simon would start each season slowly in various directions, but by the season finale he'd masterfully sewn together everything like a perfect symphony.

[sharp_stick]

3. I gave New Girl up about

four episodes into season 3. I didn't really like anybody anymore, including Zooey and that was kind of sad.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. It was just flat and soulless.

The post-Super Bowl episode guest starring Prince was just horrible. I don't think I laughed once throughout the entire thing. In smaller part because I never really got Prince or why some people like him so much, but in greater part just because the writing was so off from where it had been before.

[NewJeffCT]

5. To be honest, I'm sure it's been done

but, if I give up on shows and i typically don't go back.

[KurtNYC]

6. The Simpsons

The writers created the "Poochie" episode in Season 8 (1997) as a comment on their own show and the not-so-behind-the-scenes drama surrounding the show and ratings at that point. Fox threatened to cancel the show in 1998 (Fox threatened to cancel it again in 2011) but 16 years later the "proud under-achiever" it is still going strong.

The show mainly deals with themes commonly known as "jumping the shark", instances that usually occur when a failing show adds a new character or twist to boost ratings. The first theme is a commentary on adding a new character, when the show has run for too long. Usually, this is a technique used in shows that involves children, who have grown up. This was the case in "Oliver" in The Brady Bunch or "Luke" on Growing Pains. Both Poochie and Roy are used to reflect this, by attempting to keep The Itchy and Scratchy Show and the Simpson family fresh respectively.

Another theme is the notion of network executives forcing ideas onto a show. The interaction between the writers and the network executives in the episode underscore the differences between them. The writers understand the show's inner workings, but the network executives approach improvements to the show from a business point of view. They try to incorporate what they see as a rebellious character with the comment "This is popular with the kids", but the viewers later reject the character. The writers themselves are satirized in the episode, and are depicted as lazy and pretentious with few original ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Itchy_%26_Scratchy_%26_Poochie_Show

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_The_Simpsons

[cemaphonic]

7. Twin Peaks, in a "too little, too late" fashion

The first season, and the first few episodes of the 2nd season were some awesomely gripping TV, but between executive meddling, and Lynch putting it on the backburner to do more movies, the middle episodes of season 2 was a damn parade of shark jumps - wacky Ben playing Civil War, David Duchovny in drag, amnesiac cheerleader Nadine, and the most boring adultery/femme fatale plot imaginable. But then, things started to pick up and get scary, tense and interesting again, and with cancellation looming, Lynch came back to direct the last episode and completely knocked it out of the park. By then, pretty much everyone but the hardcore fans had bailed, so the cancellation stuck.