You’ve all heard the phrase by now, and I’m sure you all know the derivation. But I’ve got a lot of opinions I’d like to share.

From the Wikipedia: Jumping the shark.

The idiom “jumping the shark” refers to the moment a once-successful enterprise goes permanently and irreparably wrong. It was invented by the roommate of someone named Jon Hein in 1985 to refer specifically to the point in television series when plots and characterizations begin spiraling towards the absurd, unlikely and downright terrible.

The phrase specifically refers to a moment in a 1977 episode of Happy Days when Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis.

For a while, jumptheshark.com was a popular website¹ that allowed users to vote on when various TV series jumped the shark. The site has since been swallowed up by TVGuide.com, and indeed, the phrase has fallen out of popular favor.

This part is not on the Wikipedia, but nowadays, whenever anyone uses the phrase “jump the shark,” someone else will counter that the phrase is overused, and probably joke that saying something has jumped the shark has itself long since jumped the shark. I would — and have — argue that joking that the phrase jump the shark has jumped the shark has also jumped the shark.

It’s a shame, though. Whether or not the phrase is trendy, it describes a real phenomenon, and one I don’t think is limited to television series at all.

I’ll confess I still use the idiom pretty frequently, and I have certainly blurred its meaning beyond Hein’s original intent. To me, “jumping the shark” refers to anytime a creative process of any type has been dragged out longer than it should be, and I rarely identify a specific moment. I can remember pointing to bands, writers, classes, and even friendships that jumped the shark.

Basically, anytime it becomes clear that someone is trying too hard, working either to recapture and imitate past successes — thus often drifting into self-parody — or pushing to create in a realm too many steps beyond the limits imposed by reality, he is probably jumping the shark.

Of course, maybe that’s not jumping the shark at all, per its original definition. But that’s the best term I’ve got for the thing I’m talking about, so it’s the one I go with.

And I bring it up now because it strikes me as very likely that the Omar Minaya/Jerry Manuel administration jumped the shark Friday night, if it hadn’t already.

¹– Big news for editors, as of Friday. Web sites are now websites.