Commercial commentary: "A moment I’ll never forget" and "jumping the shark"

(By Erik)

Tonight’s episode of ER was OK. I like to consult Jeanie as we watch to see if what the doctors are doing is right.

I’ve been watching the show since its first episode, and I think that almost all of its original cast members are gone (same thing’s true of Law & Order).

But what’s up with the recent spate of TV promos that build up each show like it’s the Titanic?

I realize that the mark of successful TV show (or a commercial) is that, if it airs on Thursday night, it’s all that’s being talked about around the water cooler the next day. But that doesn’t mean your advertisement should literally say, “This is the episode you’ll be talking about around the water cooler tomorrow.”

There’s actually a Law & Order promo that says, “This is the episode you’ll be talking about all week,” for example.

But the ER promos are worse. Here’s a show that everybody seems to know is not as good as the days when Anthony Edwards and George Clooney were on the roster. So all the recent promos have contained phrases such as, “In a season that critics are calling ‘as powerful as ever’ …”

They might as well say “In a season that’s not nearly as bad as people are saying it is …”

Tonight’s promo featured a shot of Kovac (Goran Visnjic) kissing Abby (Maura Tierney). The promo referred to it as “a moment you’ll never forget.” Come on! This is a recycled plotline from several seasons back, if memory serves.

I’ll decide if I forget this “moment” or not., thank you very much.

Next week they’re going to crash an airplane into downtown Chicago in an attempt to help their ratings. I suppose I won’t be forgetting that moment either.

The only real “moment” I remember from ER in recent years is when a helicopter blade chopped off the arm of Dr. Romano (Paul McCrane). For me, that was the moment when the show “jumped the shark.”

If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to the moment when a TV show hits the “point of no return,” doing something so outlandish that the program itself slips outside the realm of plausibility. Usually “jumping the shark” signals a show’s demise.

There’s a great Web site that details when TV shows of all kinds jumped the shark. Appropriately enough, it’s www.jumptheshark.com.

I just checked it, and the episode when Romano loses his arm is the 10th-ranked incident of shark jumping in the series’ history.

The incident that’s in second place happened a few episodes later — when they dropped a helicopter on Romano and killed him.

Maybe that’s what the show’s new promos should say, “Next week on ER, it’s the biggest moment since we dropped that helicopter on Romano.”

“You’ll never forget it. Run to your water coolers now!”