Seven Season Theory
The art of gaining a cult-like following without jumping the shark.
“Jumping the shark,” a term coined by John Heim after the Happy Days episode where Fonzie literally jumps over a shark while waterskiing, is the moment that everybody knows a show has run its course and surpassed its organic ending. This always happens after the show should’ve ended, and is in no way an indicator that it’s time to wrap things up. The indicator is a rule, and that rule is the “Seven Season Theory.”
The “Seven Season Theory” is a hard and fast law for any type of scripted television series, be it twenty-one/thirty minute comedies or forty-two/sixty minute dramas. To gain true success, a show must fulfill two main factors: maintaining quality season after season television without ever jumping the shark, and keeping it up long enough to gain a substantial following and fanbase.
The first season of almost any series is always a bit sloppy, as show creators test out characters to see if they’re the type of people that audiences can get behind and are willing to root for, but by the second season, most actors and writers are comfortable with the material they have to work with and begin to really delve into what the show is about, which provides a strong sense of purpose for both viewers and members of the cast/crew. Once Season 3 comes, many of the character mythology seeds that were planted in the first two seasons start to awaken, and writers begin stringing episodes together for story arcs. Seasons 4 and 5 are often similar in intensity and quality, a three year long “peak” for the program that includes love interests getting together and other memorable, climactic moments. After Season 5, many shows lose writers/directors/other members of their original creative team to various projects, which is completely natural, but a hiccup and dynamic shift that few programs manage to overcome. Season 6 is a balancing act, as creators struggle to sustain the core of the show while producing original ideas, without creating anything too tangential that could detract from the seventh (and hopefully final) season. With Season 7 comes the occasional shark jumping moment, but many good shows are able to wrap things up in a way that does justice for fans, as well as the cast/crew members.
Some of the highest quality shows are five, maybe six, seasons long, but unless they are the pure, uncut heroin of television (The Wire and Breaking Bad), they will not gain the recognition needed to be considered truly successful. Top notch shows like Chuck were victims of a lack of attention, being silently penalized for only running for five seasons.
Truly successful shows, those that follow the “Seven Season Theory” to a T, include Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, The West Wing, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Good Wife, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Burn Notice, and The Mentalist, each dominating (or creating) their genre. The Americans is headed in the right direction, as the creators just announced that they plan for a total of six seasons. Following this natural conclusion is a near guarantee for renowned success, and now it’s just a matter of enough viewers realizing the excellence of The Americans while the program is still on air.
Unless [the shows] are the pure, uncut heroin of television… they will not gain the recognition needed to be considered truly successful.
Television is a bit like that Batman quote (from The Dark Night), where Harvey Dent says, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Many shows could’ve been (and almost were) like Mad Men, Parks and Rec, and the other aforementioned programs, but the trouble comes with the fact that nobody wants to die.
Shows that could have been one of the greats (most of them will be remembered, but for the wrong reasons and without the fondness that they deserve) include How I Met Your Mother (nine seasons). I love the show, but the catastrophic ending could’ve been avoided had the show been cut down to seven seasons. I’ve watched the alternate ending. That is the ending that the nine season show deserved. It’s not to say that the actual ending was bad; it had been set in place since the very beginning of the show’s time and was very well executed. The issue is that this was the ending for a different TV show (one that lasted two seasons less, therefore gutting the character growth that made the final moments of the show so unrealistic). We didn’t spend an entire year building up to Barney and Robin’s wedding, plus their Season 5 fling, to have it be completely thrown out the window. Sure, bad things happen, and once impenetrable marriages can fall apart, but the way that the alternate finale was put together tells a different story, one of love, patience, and “emotional endurance” paving the way for more between “Swarkles” (Barney and Robin’s ship name), when the Ted voiceover says, during the wedding between he and Tracy, “stuff happens in life,” before panning to Barney looking at Robin, “things fall apart,” and Robin smiling at Barney, “things get put back together.” This was the ending that viewers and the show deserved after nine years.
Castle (eight seasons) had the opportunity to be one of the greatest television shows in its crime dramedy genre (among the ranks of The Wire in terms of quality), but the incredible seventh season finale, the last that the original show creators were apart of (a married couple who based the characters of Castle and Beckett on their relationship, even including lines from their own wedding vows into Castle and Beckett’s) was not kept as a series finale, which it should’ve been (and was written to serve as). Instead, the show was pushed on for an additional season, and went from being “one of the best” to a yet another member of the 2016 shows that completely screwed over their leading ladies. The program jumped its shark within the first two episodes of the eighth season when it broke up “Caskett” for a crazy CIA conspiracy theory (the LokSat storyline, for anyone paying attention).
Other near hits (each running for a total of eight or nine seasons) include Charmed, Dexter, House, Scrubs, The X-Files, and Monk, and many others. Some of the most notable “shark jumping” moments, both of which happen in the eighth season of shows that were once at the top of their game, are continuing on without Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) as a regular (The X-Files) and completely negating House’s character growth and devolving him into the character he was when the show first began (House). Most of these are still beloved shows, but even die-hard fans can point out the moment when their show stopped being their show. Grey’s Anatomy, a repeat offender, could’ve stopped after Season 7, taking some of the highlights of the eighth season (not the plane crash) and creating a memorable conclusion for one of the most successful medical procedurals to date.
Exceptions to the “Seven Season Theory” are rare, but wonderful. Breaking Bad (five seasons), The Wire (five seasons), and Law & Order: SVU (approaching the start of the eighteenth season) are among the few. Both The Wire and Breaking Bad gained the esteem they deserved, despite airing for only five seasons, while SVU has managed to maintain the seriality and devotion attributed to Grey’s Anatomy, as well as the quality that comes with most successful, shorter-lived shows, for over seventeen years. The Sopranos (six seasons) and Six Feet Under (six seasons) are also excellent shows (HBO’s programs, which have always been on the grittier side of things, were consistently solid up until about 2005, when most TV programs were forced into forty-two minute episodes instead of forty-eight or fifty-two), but are held in a separate category because, while groundbreaking, reviews were still mixed.
A well known Twitter parody account referred to the college experience as something “like looking both ways before you cross the street and then getting hit by an airplane.” While completely true, it’s also an accurate description of a TV show “jumping the shark.” There’s hurt, betrayal, and a resounding what the hell? in these moments, but there’s also a great appreciation for shows that have done the art of television justice.
