By Simon Castles
The two women next to me at the cafe were doing the newspaper quiz. One was reading out the questions. I was trying not to listen, but we were on one of those communal tables that make me think of meal time at school camp.
"The term 'jumping the shark' was inspired by which TV series?" the quizmaster one said.
Fonzie (Henry Winkler) about to literally jump his shark.
The women, who were in their early 20s, were silent for a beat, and then burst out laughing. It was a universal laugh – the one that means, "we're not doing well here".
"What the hell is 'jumping the shark'?" one of the women said, and they were both off laughing again.
It's hard not to join in a quiz. It may even be impossible. And I blame Tony Barber and being weaned on Sale of the Century for the fact my hand was pressed on an invisible buzzer. I jumped in. "It's Happy Days. The answer is Happy Days."
The women looked over at me. The quizmaster turned the paper upside down to check the answer. "Correct!" she said.
I apologised for eavesdropping and interrupting, but then of course started telling them all keen like about the term "jumping the shark", and how its origins lay in an episode where Fonzie literally jumps a shark.
So keen was I to share my knowledge on this subject, that something one of the women said had taken several moments to register in my mind – a mind that was, to be fair, being flooded with images of the Fonz on waterskis readying for his big jump. But what she had said was, "I've never heard of Happy Days".
I can only say it's a sobering moment when you realise not everyone knows who Fonzie is. I suddenly saw that I may as well have been talking about a character on 1950s radio serial Blue Hills for all the sense I was making.
"Jumping the shark" refers to that moment when a TV show or cultural product ceases to be what it was – when it strays irretrievably off course. But the term is a reminder, too, of just how brief the moment is for anything to be at, or even anywhere near, the centre of things. Of how quickly things move on.
In that moment of talking about Fonzie to two women who didn't know who or what a Fonzie was, I thought that if TV shows jump the shark, then people – whose time on earth is increasingly measured out in, and mediated by, pop culture – they jump the shark also.
The women went back to their quiz. I returned to my coffee, and consoled myself with the thought that Happy Days continued for seven seasons even after Fonzie jumped the shark.
Simon Castles is an Age desk editor.