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How Many Episodes Should You Watch Before Quitting a TV Show? A Statistical Analysis
(www.statsignificant.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Stop saying jumped the shark ! It's dumb and never should have become a saying! You definitely didn't need it 4 times in an article!
I try to give a new show 3 episodes before i walk away.
Jumping the shark was a—metaphorically and in one case literally—real thing that used to happen, back when 22 or more episodes were cranked out per season, leading eventually to there being no juice left to squeeze from the show’s premise, causing it to go off the rails. It doesn’t mean just a “decline in quality,” or at least it originally didn’t.
Or it could be their "cousin Oliver" moment. That point in a tv show where the writers have squeezed all they can from the characters and have to inject some wacky "wild card" character out of the blue in a desperate attempt to revive things. It got the name from the Brady Bunch who had cousin Oliver show up suddenly. Married With Children had it with cousin Seven, Happy Days with Mork from Ork (yup, that is how it started), The Flintstones with The Great Gazoo alien, Scooby Doo had his Scrappy Doo...
Or two cases, if you're familiar with the work of Barry Zuckercorn, Attorney at Law.