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The success of Mork also illustrates the unusual flexibility Happy Days developed as it evolved. The program began primarily as a comparatively gentle family comedy centered on Richie, his parents Howard and Marion, his sister Joanie and his friends. As Fonzie’s popularity grew, the series increasingly emphasized broader comedy and more unusual situations. Eventually, a program originally grounded in nostalgic stories about teenagers, dating and family life could introduce an alien from another planet without losing its audience. That change has sometimes been criticized by viewers who preferred the more realistic early seasons, while others remember the later episodes just as affectionately. Either way, the show’s willingness to experiment helped create several characters and ideas that took on lives of their own.
Nothing demonstrates that evolution more famously than the episode that gave television criticism one of its most enduring expressions. In a 1977 episode set in California, Fonzie accepts a challenge that requires him to waterski over a confined shark while wearing his trademark leather jacket. The sequence was deliberately spectacular, and it later inspired the expression “jump the shark.” The phrase came to describe a point at which a television series supposedly resorts to increasingly extravagant ideas after moving beyond its strongest creative period. Interestingly, the expression itself was coined years after the episode originally aired, and the show continued for several more seasons afterward. Winkler has also pointed out that Happy Days remained highly successful after the famous stunt, making the real history more complicated than the phrase suggests.
There is another twist to the shark story that many viewers may not know. Winkler really could waterski. He has explained that he had worked as a waterskiing instructor when he was younger, which helped inspire the production to use the skill in an episode. He performed the waterskiing portions of the sequence himself, something that seems almost ironic given his discomfort with motorcycles. The one part he did not perform was the dangerous jump directly over the shark enclosure. That stunt was handled professionally rather than asking the star of a successful television show to attempt an unnecessary risk. As a result, one of television’s most frequently mocked moments actually showcased a genuine ability that Winkler possessed.