Shark Bytes

Angel jumped the shark with the whole Cordy sleeping with Connor having that grown-up baby evil thing and my heart was broken. I loved Cordy and when they took her off the show just kinda lost its best part. I kept watching it and it was okay, but nothing could match the onscreen bantering between Cordy and Angel.

Jumped the first show when it was revealed Angel would be a corporate Do-Gooder.

It's absolutely disgusting that I see a lot of people dissing on Season 4. Oh no! It had a consistent story arc, instead of shallow serial plots! Me hate thinky thinky! Angel never jumped the shark.

Watching the end of season 5 with the Fred Illyria change is a little depressing.

When I watch the reruns on TNT I usually only like to watch the beginning of season 2 and 5, Season 1 I can get at fancast.com

A very tricky one to diagnose but I'd go with the Pylea as the JTS moment. The show b4 the Pylea arc was constantly improving but had an significant deterioration. The episodes were designed to give a somewhat gloomy show a more upbeat, fun season finale so it would contrast amicably with the depressingly dull and dark ending to Buffy S5 that preceded it. In this it succeeded Cordy being refered to as "cow" was a great moment as was the "dance of joy", but it also wasted an oppertunity to do something interesting with the characters especially after the impact of the Darla story arc and the continuing plot with Wolfram and Hart. It also introduced the reprehensible character of Fred who was pointless and annoying who was eventually reconstituted as Illyria after wasting everybodys time for more than two seasons. Something any show, even one as strong as ATS could well done to have avoided.

Season 5 was brilliant, but i think that so many people left after season four that it was too late to save. Cordelia always helped to keep the show light during times of great darkness and that was really missed when she became the evil one. The show worked best when it combined comedy and tragedy and in season four the comedy was lost. I think the worst thing that ever happened was connor and cordelia sleeping together as it just came so out of the blue, although it was explained later when we found out the truth of cordy.

But season 5 went back to its best again, and became my favourite season after season 1. The additions of spike and harmony was brilliant, adding back the comedy. And the petty relationship between Angel and Spike has always been Joss and co at their best. And the death of Fred was one of the most heartbreaking things to watch, second only to the death of Doyle.

Loyal fan forever, but wish Season 4 didnt get so bad.

Thanks to season five, I must vote that it never jumped the shark. Had it not been for season five, my vote would have been season four. So much went wrong during season four, the worst of which were Conner and what they did to Cordy. Season Five, on the other hand, showed that there remained much life in Angel.

I don't feel the "irrevocable"standard makes it impossible to jump the shark. Many shows have gotten worse and stayed bad right up until they were canceled.

The whole ridiculous 2 vamps having a kid plot ruined the show. And season 4 was terrible, they basically assassinated Cordy's character. Charisma deserved more than that considering her role on both shows since the beginning

"A show can't get more refreshing and interesting after it jumps the shark."

Art can always become interesting and refreshing again, it just sometimes takes efforts at the height of human ability.

If "irrevocable" was some hard standard, nothing could ever jump the shark.

Angel got awful in season four, but then got interesting again. Switching the role of Angel and Spike in 5 was a really interesting twist on the characters, and lead back to good storytelling raising the sort of tough ethical questions Whedon's vampire series are more famous for.

Ok, we can call this "taking a running start towards the shark, then suddenly backing away," if you want to be a lexical tightwad. But I'm gonna stick to "jumping the shark," and you can figure out whatever I really mean.

JTS for me when he became a father. It was all downhill from there.

It obvisouly fell apart when angel investigations moved to Wolfram and Heart.

One thing I never got about this series is if Wolfram and Hart could subdue Angel with those electric tasers, during the trial episode, why didn't they do that every episode?

Also why didn't Angel have gypsies put curses on other vampires? I feel like that comic book guy on the Simpsons, who looks at the earth destroying meteor and says ("I've wasted my life").

The show was at an all-time high when Angel went dark and let Dru and Darla have a massacre in Holland Manner's wine-cellar.

...Unfortunately, the show's highest point led to the show's lowest point. Angel going dark led to Angel sleeping with Darla, which led to Angel becoming a daddy.

After that, things just got worse and worse; and practically all the stories revolving around Connor led to this show jumping the shark big time.