"Just Throw the Thumb!"

Remember the classic TV comedy "Happy Days?" It was very highly rated in the 1970s, and generated its share of popular lexicon of the day: "Ayyyyyyyyee," courtesy of "The Fonz," "Sit on it," courtesy of Potsie Weber, and "Pinky Tuscadero" (one of the Fonz's many girls).

But there's one that lives on today and has outlasted the rest: "jumping the shark." According to jumptheshark.com, it means: "It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on ... it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it "Jumping the Shark." From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same."

What does all of this have to do with Happy Days? According to Wikipedia.com, "The most famous of these plots involved Fonzie performing a water ski jump over a shark in an episode aired on September 20, 1977, during the show's fifth season. In later years, this episode has often been cited as the point where the series had passed its peak of quality and popularity. The phrase jumping the shark was later applied to popular culture phenomena in general."

Jumping the shark came immediately to mind while viewing the second of two parts of A&E Network's remake of the motion picture thriller "The Andromeda Strain." Part one, airing Memorial Day 2008, was an edge-of-the-seat thriller that drew upon the multiple themes of extraterrestrial attacks, germ warfare, group intelligence by cell-sized entities, government-military conspiracies and terrorist threats.

A group of doctors and scientists stationed several stories underground in a super-secure facility feverishly tried to understand how to defeat an unknown spore that killed humans almost instantly, and other life forms a bit more slowly. It was all sailing along to what promised to be a thrilling end when, with about 30 minutes left, the show jumped the shark.

As a sequence to destroy the underground research facility counted down, two of the scientists were climbing piping of the building's inner core to reach a cut-off level where they would be able to disarm the device together: one with a key card, and one with his distinct thumbprint, in sequence.

So the guy whose unique thumbprint was needed to disarm the device slips and falls several stories into a concrete-bottomed pool of water, where he is killed instantly. Another of the scientists, understanding the urgency of the situation, climbed down to his fallen, deceased colleague and amputates his thumb. Then, with the clock ticking down, said scientist throws the severed thumb up several stories, where the remaining scientist catches it. And, of course, after he is nearly blinded by a scalding flow of steam and nearly killed after falling through a ceiling grate, he manages to insert the key card and blindly press the severed digit against the computer screen, saving the day with seven seconds to spare.

Until the hero scientist severed his colleague's thumb, the plot and movie promised a sensational climax. But there was something about a scientist accurately hurling a severed digit several stories in the air to a winded, afraid-of-heights colleague who makes the catch that reminded this viewer of something at Sea World. Or maybe of a Happy Days scene:

"Hey, Fonzie, go to the tree, take four steps left, and take off running for the goal line, and I'll hit you on the fly with my grandmother's right foot!"