Some series end too soon and never fulfill their potential. Other series go on so long at some point they just go overboard and you have to dump them.
In US parlance (and maybe other places as well?), "jumping the shark" means a series has completely lost you. It comes from Happy Days where Fonzie literally jumps a shark. I guess this was lame; Happy Days was way before my time. Point is, I think we've all come across a series where we were kind of teetering on the edge of giving up (or not), and then something happened and we were DONE. Toss that book on the floor and move on to something else.
Behold! A short list of scenes where long-running series jumped the shark for me:
- When Anita Blake and Richard slept together in Blue Moon. I was never that into Richard, but the way Anita and Richard hooked up in Blue Moon totally put me off. It was like the Anita Blake series was just becoming an agent for vicarious sexual thrills... OH WAIT, it was.
- We find out Yuki Cross and Kaname Kuran are brother and sister in Vampire Knight. Incest is one of those things that's guaranteed to make me lose interest in a story, even if I'm enjoying said story, which was the case here. I just can't buy into it. And it's too icky.
- Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Kenyon stated that she foresaw Acheron's book as being the last of the Dark Hunters series, but moved it up because fans wanted his story soooo much. Um, who's the writer here, Kenyon or "the fans"? Anyway, I liked Ash's book, and after I finished it I had no more questions about the series. So I guess it was a good ending (even though the Dark Hunter series and its plethora of spin-off continues).
What scenes jumped the shark for you in a series?
