In order from best to least-best:
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deem_bastille — 10 years ago(February 13, 2016 06:45 AM)
I think it is fine. throughout the seasons the show went through changes some good and needed, some needed but not good. Christine marrying/getting together with that guido cop is one of the not good ones. yeah, markie was pregnant but really, him????
Oh God. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more.
Edmund Blackadder. -
Besmircher — 11 years ago(July 16, 2014 11:37 AM)
For the past few weeks I've been catching up on NC via Encore Classic also. However, while I have yet to come across the episode(s) where they jumped the shark, it did start to go a bit downhill. While a show's decline is a result of jumping-the-shark, normally there's an outrageous, gimmicky episode or arc that begins this decent. I haven't really found that particular point of ridiculousness yet, but yeah it began slipping around 89 or 90. Stunt-casting Mel Torme didn't help either.
Regarding Christine's pregnancy, fact is Markie Post was pregnant in real life at that time and they decided to work it into the show. So it's not like they just made it up. They did quite well with it IMO; the lamaze class with her, Dan, Harry and Bull was a very funny example that you'd expect from classic NC. Because her pregnancy was real I have a difficult time declaring that as the shark-jumping moment. But specifically her relationship with Tony just didn't work. Zero chemistry. If they would have written, say, her one-night-stand with that street artist she defended a year prior or so to when they did, they could have written her resulting pregnancy around that. -
TMC-4 — 11 years ago(July 17, 2014 12:54 AM)
http://catholicskywalker.blogspot.com/2014/05/sunday-best-tv-sitcoms-o f-all-time-25.html
JUMPING THE SHARK
The show took its downturn in quality with "Wedding Blues" (7x15-16).
Most sitcoms from the 80's kept their main romantic leads apart because bringing them together let a lot of the excitement die (see Moonlighting). The same was true of Night Court. In this episode, Christine impulsively married a man and became pregnant with his baby.
What changed about the show was that they could never capture the romantic spark between Harry and Christine again. Both characters would have relationships with other people, but it always rang hollow and felt like pointless filler. But even after this, it took all the wind out of the sails of this relationship.
Of course the series was not focused only on them. The other characters had wonderfully fun story arcs. And by the middle of the series, Night Court found a fantastic balance between the silly and the sappy. But from this episode on, the humor continued to broaden and make further and further breaks from reality. The story lines became more nonsensical.
This can especially be seen in the final season, which was tacked on at the last second instead of cancellation. What had been zany wit devolved into bland mugging for the camera.
http://www.manic-expression.com/apps/blog/show/36383652
Night Court-Season 7 & 8!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, I have been waiting to go on this rant for a long time. Night Court was a fun little slapstick show. I fell in love with the re-runs and became a real fan.
But somewhere around the 6th or 7th season, the show started to lose focus. Suddenly the show became more about the people and less about the courtroom. For some reason, the show got serious.
Harry fell in love with a woman who causes him to stop being silly and fun. He becomes boring and she ends up breaking his heart when she leaves him to enter the witness protection program. Later he gets stuck teaching a night class which was boring and made no sense. Christine gets pregnant after a one night stand with a guy she barely knows. When the guy goes off on assignment she goes through the year worrying about how she will be a single mother and it's boring. Christine tries to marry Tony but ends up divorcing him and raising the child alone while going through a depression. Meanwhile, Dan goes through a HORRIBLE arc after another character named Phil gets killed. Dan becomes a happy person, totally unlikable by the way, and after he gets taken advantage of he ends up a bum on the street.
This is a little hard to summarize, I realize. Thankfully, the next and last season brought the show back to form. For the most part. It was funny again, and these dramatic stories were done away with. Mostly. Dan was returned to his lecherous ways in a hilarious scene. A woman slaps him, and suddenly his old self emerges. If I could find a clip I would share it because it is a fantastic moment! To bad the show was basically DOA by that point. -
mistersparkle — 11 years ago(July 16, 2014 02:43 PM)
I don't really think it ever jumped the shark.
Maybe the Christine pregnant thing, but even then, I think her splitting with Tony was more of a jump than just that alone.
You have many question, Mr Sparkle. I send you premium answer question, hundred percent! -
Besmircher — 11 years ago(July 17, 2014 06:38 AM)
I don't think it did either. It went downhill for sure but going downhill and jumping the shark are two different things.
JTS is always marked by a particular incident in the story that is very implausible to it, a character, what have you. Christine getting married quickly, getting pregnant, etc doesn't constitute jumping the shark. I know a lot of people believe it does but the character of Christine was conservative, prudish even, so getting married and pregnant isn't out of the question. Not really. If it was Dan suddenly getting married and getting a respectable woman pregnant, I could easily agree. But not Christine.
Christine's marriage and pregnancy are nowhere near as implausible for her character as water skiing over a shark was for Fonzie, or when a lot of the family sitcoms back then suddenly added a young kid to their family toward the show's end (Diff'rent Strokes & Danny Cooksey, Growing Pains & DiCaprio, etc). Unless there's another tacky moment that I've yet to see. -
morecowbell2004 — 11 years ago(July 17, 2014 04:39 PM)
I basically ignore seasons 8 and 9, and most of 7. Mostly because of what they did to Dan. The complex ass with a heart of gold deep underneath became this unredeemable half-insane idiot that childishly goes slinking after Christine? Screw them for ruining one of my all-time favorite characters. After Weege left, it is worthless except to see Larroquette chew up the scenery like a boss.
Watson! This is no time for Humbugs -
hnt_dnl — 11 years ago(July 27, 2014 12:15 AM)
I agree that Season 5 is the pinnacle of the show's comedy. It really toned down on the sentimentality in that season and just went all out nuts on the physical humor. I agree that introducing a baby jumped the shark. But I always wanted Christine and Harry to get together, so I hated the whole getting married to the cop, having a baby storyline. And that cop wasn't funny at all. Don't see the reason for introducing this dull, recurring character to the mix.
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MichaelMovieLoft — 10 years ago(February 11, 2016 08:38 PM)
I have to agree with the consensus that the show jumped the shark after season 6 when Reinhold Weege left. For the first six seasons, the show was funny, the writing was on target and Weege could get the best out of his cast and crew. After Season 6, there was season 7 which was touch and go, and then then dreaded seasons 8 & 9 where the writing was mediocre. There were some funny moments but it didn't feel like Night Court especially with the contrived storylines like Christine/Tony, The Phil Foundation, Nice Dan, Lisette the Ditzy Court Stenographer, and the Harry/Margaret romance. It just stopped becoming Must See TV. Watching the series finale was like being in The Twilight Zone as well. It's like they lost interest and just phoned it in. It is probably one of the worst series finales I have ever watched.
MM -
!!!deleted!!! (49761343) — 10 years ago(March 28, 2016 05:20 PM)
I literally haven't seen Night Court since its first run, but to this day I remember that it was Christine's pregnancy that pretty much signaled the beginning of the end of the show.
Emojis=
Emoticons= -
stargazer24 — 9 years ago(April 22, 2016 11:45 PM)
Whenever Lisette showed up. Worst character ever, and then they hook her up with the most annoying actor in the world. I can take Dan being anything, Christine/Tony, and the general decline in humor, but those two characters? No way.
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Cool Nerd — 3 years ago(February 10, 2023 04:03 PM)
Seasons 2-4 were the peak.
To me the Season 5 episode with Red Rider was when I started to roll my eyes at the show.
Then Dan was in a plane crash, survives, lives with Eskimos and performs life saving surgery at the start of season 6.
The show is still fine but it wasn’t what 2-4 were.
And while just a one off line, somewhere in season 5 Art fixes the elevator before striking a pose and delivers a “that’s a work of Art” line that feels completely out of place.
“I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me.” - Selma -
WarrenPeace — 1 year ago(February 20, 2025 12:39 AM)
I’m catching repeats and it jumped somewhere between 2-4.
Or after Billie left and soon after Christine came in.
Then it just got stupid and retarded based more on comedy, stunts and other dumb **** instead of meaningful story lines as before.
Where I am with the repeats the skies are getting waxed.
"Please vote to preserve the unique character of Warren…" - Robert Duvall