Inspired by all the Gavin and Stacey and Outnumbered threads, I have been thinking about specific moments in film and television history when a particular series or film franchise lost it. Happy Days was finished after an ill judged stunt involving Fonzie on waterskis jumping over a shark, hence the original expression. The term "Nuking The Fridge" was coined to decribe the moment a film franchise runs out of steam. It was inspired by a scene in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Sculls in which Indy survives an atomic bomb by hiding in a fridge.
The reverse effect - when an unpromising first series of a programme miraculously comes together in the second season when following all logic it should have cancelled - is known as "Growing The Beard" after the second series of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Riker has a beard. The first series, featuring a beardless Riker was dire.
Here are my examples, with my own coinages:
"Fell Through The Bar." Only Fools And Horses became unfunny thirty seconds after Del Boy fell through the bar.
"Wearing The Codpiece." This is the British sitcom equivalent of "Growing The Beard." It refers to Blackadder II when Rowan Atkinson's character changed from snivelling wreck to sexy beast with the cunning use of a codpiece.
I can't think of my own version of "Nuking The Fridge" to describe when a film franchise lost it because I have seen approximately ten films in my entire life.
Here's the wikipedia article that I shamelessly plundered to get my thought processes going for this thread. The Falling Through The Bar and Codpiece Wearing bits was all mine though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark#:~:text=The%20idiom%20%22jumping%20the%20shark,exaggeration%20of%2C%20its%20original%20purpose.