02.24 | 'Jumping the shark' means 'when it became awful' - it's a 'Happy Days' reference - 'nuff said, eh?
"What everyone really liked about '24' was Kiefer Sutherland leaping around like the biggest repository of Alpha Male sperm known to womankind, and the clock going off in the corner. Instead of trying to remake the original '24' all over again, why didn't Fox take the cast and the format and give them new characters and scenarios? The explanation to all this lack of originality — and the sudden plethora of cast-members who fall into the nubile blonde category — may lie in the highly lucrative sponsorship deal with Ford Motors for the second series. Sponsors don't like to write cheques for new things. Essentially, they just want to backdate it to the previous, successful project. And put more tits in."
It's funny how Caitlin Moran, ex-Melody Maker journalist and general good sport, has written an article for The Times about '24' 'jumping the shark', when she herself 'jumped the shark' when she presented the series 'Naked City' with Johnny Vaughan back in the mid-'90s. I think she's just jealous that Kiefer can make his career recover, whereas she has ended up writing mis-judged comment pieces for a misjudged 'newspaper' read by an audience full of misjudgers.
I'm sorry: I'm taking this all seriously. Please strangle me. But not for another 22 weeks of Sundays.
