The Walking Dead 10 TV Shows Of The Past Decade The Jumped The Shark

Whether it's sticoms How I Met Your Mother or The Office, or dramas like Supernatural or Homeland, which shows from the past decade jumped the shark?

Named for the iconic scene in which the Fonz jumps over a shark on water skis on the classic sitcom Happy Days, the term "jumping the shark" generally means that a show that is desperate to remain relevant or rework the show in a dramatic way resorts to absurd twists or plotlines in order to do that.

In the intervening years since Arthur Fonzarelli made that fateful leap, many other shows have metaphorically jumped the shark. With that in mind, here are 10 shows from the past decade that seemingly pulled this hail Mary move.

10 House Of Cards

Typically a TV show jumps the shark because it's writers are all out of ideas and just throw something out in a desperate attempt to make things work, but sometimes they jump the shark for better, more understandable reasons.

It's clear why House of Cards wanted to write Kevin Spacey out, and that was the right call, but suddenly rewriting a show without it's main character is no easy task, and the resulting Frank-less material is a mess.

9 Two And A Half Men

Once again, sometimes a character needs to be written out of a series for a specific purpose, and again, in the case of Charlie Sheen, it was clearly the right choice for Two and A Half Men.

Where the long running sitcom fell short though, was that Chuck Lorre let his anger get the best of him and killed off Sheen's character in a notoriously ridiculous way. The show was never high art, but it was low hanging fruit even for them.

8 How I Met Your Mother

It's hard to know whether or not How I Met Your Mother jumping the shark at it's last moment makes it better or worse, but it's finale will go down in history as one of the strangest and most loathed in TV.

After telling a coherent story for nearly a decade, the ending of the series was an unsatisfactory shocker that made zero sense, and the surprise reunion of Ted and Robin is something no one expected or wanted. It seems like the show was desperate for a memorable ending, but it's memorable for all the wrong reasons.

7 Supernatural

It's pretty rare for a TV show to last even half as long as Supernatural has in this day and age, but that shorter shelf life also means that at the very least, most shows only wind up jumping the shark once.

Supernatural on the other hand feels like it has been jumping the shark on a regular basis since perhaps even as early as the season 5 finale. The show is still entertaining, but it's hard to take any of it's twists and turns seriously.

6 Grey's Anatomy

Much like Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy has had many shark jumps throughout it's insanely long run at this point. It's a show that has thrived on drama, but it takes that soapiness to extremes that are hard to handle sometimes.

It's tough to know what the real jump the shark moment was. Was it Izzy's Denny ghost? Was it the resurrection of a deer? Was it the death of Derek? There are way to many to choose from.

5 The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries started it's run as an impressively tense and surprising supernatural thriller with a hearty helping of teen drama to keep things moving, but eventually it felt far more like a soap opera than anything else.

It had some pretty cringe worthy twists, but it seems safe to say that their true jump the shark moment of no return was when they wrote off their leading heroine, Elena Gilbert.

4 Homeland

Homeland is generally a very will written and intense show that sometimes pushes the boundaries of believability. But it pushed things way too far with it's whole bizarre "hacking the vice president's pacemaker" plot.

Not only does that scenario sound exceptionally far fetched and scientifically sketchy, it's hard to miss the fact that if terrorists wanted to murder a politician, there are likely less complicated ways of doing it than that.

3 The Office

When the leading character of a TV series is being written off, most viewers assume that the show is about to take a massive nose dive in quality. However, NBC's The Office actually managed to retain it's humor and absurdity, and despite the fact that Steve Carell was a loss, it was still pretty great.

Unfortunately, they were clearly afraid of losing their audience, and thus went on a stunt casting spree of potential Michael replacements to retain viewership.

2 Game Of Thrones

For a while it seemed like Game of Thrones was going to be the greatest show in history. However, once it got up there in seasons, the showrunners decided that they wanted to wrap things up sooner rather than later, and thus the final two seasons were an absurdly rushed mess.

Fans had wanted Jon and Dany to meet for years, but when they finally did they lacked chemistry, had no real story, and it was hard to tell how the audience was even supposed to perceive their relationship. And unfortunately their muddled, weird saga took a front seat at the expense of everything and everyone else.

1 The Walking Dead

Like many of other long running shows, The Walking Dead has seemingly had a few jump the shark moments, and it's hard to tell what the turning point was. In recent seasons the show has actually rallied spectacularly and rivals earlier seasons in quality, but the game changer really seemed to be Negan.

He's a decent character, but he was a cartoonish, bizarre villain in a (relatively) grounded show. The show also built up an enormous amount of hype around him, and once he arrived he was the constant center of attention, so that abrupt shift really killed the momentum and direction of the series.