When did each series Jump The Shark?
 

For me, it goes like this:

OT: I guess I'd have to go with when the Red Sky episodes started. They weren't bad episodes, but the fact that they were obviously pulling hard for a Batman vibe (after TAS was such a hit) just proves that they knew they were losing it.

Movies: The nightclub scene. We're led to believe we're about to see an epic battle at a construction site, but we end up getting V Ice. And I still hate the way they knocked out Tatsu :ohwell: Seriously, I've been roughed up more than that in a church-league softball game.

4kids show: Turtles Forever made up for it, but the obvious answer here is Back to the Sewer. I mean, using super-simplified character designs that were based on a semi-popular 2 year old movie that had no chance at a sequel is garbage. Exact moment for me would be "Something Wicked" when they kept saying "Think like a cybernaut!". I hate the word cyber lol.

I don't think the original cartoon ever jumped the shark. It was never a serious show to begin with.

The quality did dip a bit during Season 4, but that was only due to the sheer mass of episodes that season. But Seasons 6-8 were great, and Seasons 9-10 were fine.

Fred Wolf: The third season had hit a great blend of saturday morning adventure show with it's unique humour but Season 4 and particularly season 5 is where it started to tilt more to humour and outright goofyness. Not that there wasn't any good stuff there but it wasn't the same.

Season 7 (barring the European vacation eps) is when they started to bring it back but by then it was too late. The first Red Sky season was a decent attempt to recapture the then current audience but it was not to be.

4Kids: Fast Forward. I think it was a fairly well done show once we got over the initial episodes, I even ended liking it but there's no denying that it was a prime jumping off point for many fans.

Movies: I could go either way on this one. Secret of the Ooze is very much an inferior sequel and Vanilla Ice pretty much cements it's ridiculousness but arguebly it hadn't forced the audience away to the point we couldn't have got them back for round 3.

The waning popularity of the brand and a movie which wasn't what people expected put the original movie series well and truly over that shark.

Season 6 was the same quality as Season 7. And the reason it was "too late" is simply because Power Rangers started at the time and would have killed TMNT either way.

If TMNT somehow survived that era, then Pokemon would have been the final deathblow when the Pokemon craze started in 1998.

What about the comics? I don't think Archie ever did, neither did Mirage.

Jim Lawson jumped the shark at one point though lol. His early volume 4 stuff is incredible, but it really starts taking a dip around issue 9 (I think). Of course, it didn't help that they quit using duo-shades, but still.

Not a chance. Writing and animation was leagues better in season 7.

6 did have some gems, but still can't measure up to 7.

Season 6 had good animation, fight scenes and most of the stories were pretty fun.

Why people act like season 6 was like season 5 is beyond me. Season 5 had almost no real fighting at all.

I think with the Fred Wolf series.They jumped the shark when they brought in Carter.I was no a big fan of him.Lord Dregg was OK as a villian but no replacement for Shredder and Krang.Also getting rid of BB and RS was lame as well.They also jumped the shark with the further mutations of the guys.Made them more Jeckel and Hyde like.

Movies:I thought the second movie was a more funner atmosphere then the first(though I wished Casey Jones was in it).I was let down by the 3rd film though.

The cartoon jumped the shark with Red Sky; it became like any other action series, nothing special about it.

The second movie was an all around jumped the shark for me. The first film had been such a successful mixture of humor and darnkess but then the second film was all goofy and incomplete.

With the original series, I think it jumped the shark they stopped using Shredder and company as the main villains in seasons 9 and 10. Dregg just seems like a typical evil villain with no sense of humor.

For the 2003 Series, definitely Back to the Sewers cause of the change of animation style.

Next Mutation? First ep.

I agree with ya there. I remember having an argument (with Zarius, I think) about the lack of action and weak animation of season 5.... he literally said that the battle between the turtles and the Kojima brothers was the best fight in the series lmao

Rewatch that one, they pretty much just move their hands up and down.

I definitly agree with you on that point, especially about how they got rid of Rocksteady and Bebop. I really didn't like the show without them in it.

I believe the 4Kids series jumped the shark with the Cyber Shredder storyarc. That was so lame! I mean if anything they should've just brought back the real Utrom Shredder.

The OT never really jumped the shark to me. A fair bit of the episodes were crap but seasons 7-10 are all full of solid episodes. I really don't get the hate for the Red Sky episodes. They have continuity, story arcs, better characterization, and more action then any of the previous seasons. The main gripe I see is that Shredder, Krang, and everyone's precious Bebop and Rocksteady aren't in every episode. Which is a really stupid complaint given the insane amount of screen time they had in prior seasons. Also Dregg was a better villain. He accomplished more in a few episodes then Shredder and Krang ever did.

You could consider Next Mutation the shark jump because it came out the following year and was obviously trying to compete with Power Rangers.

2K3 went South for me around the time the Ninja Tribunal season came out. Fast Foward had already been released so it came after despite it taking place before storywise. The animation was poorer then the previous seasons and there's some serious issues with pixelated backgrounds in some of the later episodes. I felt like the story wasn't very strong and having the turtles turn into dragons was pretty stupid. There was too much anime crap in there which makes me wonder if they were originally trying to compete with all the anime 4Kids used to show.

The movies derailed with 3. I like 2 a lot, my favorite in fact, but 3 is pure trash. TMNT didn't do much to recover the movie series for me. It was CG, the characters looked stupid, it was CG, the story was poor, oh and did I mention it was CG? I have nothing against CG, for a movie anyways, but if it's not good CG then it's a problem. TMNT's barbie doll humans and stupid proportions along with the bizarre texture choices made it very ugly to look at. It also flowed horribly. You should never get bored during an 80 minute movie.

See I actually really liked the red sky episodes. I think that they were among the best episodes put out during the original series run. The final season might even be my favorite season of the original TMNT cartoon.

I agree. While Fast Forward was a step down from the first five seasons, it was still ok. But when watching the BTTS episodes, it was clear that it was time for the series to come to an end.

:D Hard to argue with that.

People haven't really mentioned the video game series in terms of it's shark moment, but I'd say that shark jump occured after Tournament Fighters. Up until then, it was all about good fighting and eventually trying to defeat the Shredder. Games 1-4 were awesome, and Tournament Fighters while not a platformer/scroller, did continue in more direct fights in a more realistic setting, even though 1993 was clearly the year of the fighter game. Afterwords, there just haven't been as memorable games (the Gamecube games were embaressments!) The Wii game is okay but just can't capture the magic of the original games.

"Better" is kind of hard to prove. I personally liked the earlier characterizations. So it's more of an opinion thing than anything else. And there have been many successful TV shows that didn't have regular story arcs.

My problem with the red Sky was season 9 with it's super-mutations. it seemed ridiculous to me.

But then again, I'd thought the TMNT cartoon was over when I just happened to catch them on Saturday mornings. It was too much for me then.

That was my second biggest gripe. Dregg was just a boring villain.