Television and film are tricky mediums. It's incredibly difficult to create a successful TV show or a blockbuster movie, but once you do, maintaining that success is even harder.

Ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the executive producers of Lost; they have been outspoken in their gratitude for a now-definite end date for the show. Up until this point, they've been making the show without knowing if it will run for one more season or four, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to hold the always fickle attention of the audience and maintain their success.

When a television series or a sequence of movies does garner widespread success, the executives in both industries see dollar signs, prompting them to order more episodes or sequels.

This is why we're going to see another Scary Movie (5!) in 2008, and it's why we get horrid spinoffs of long-running television shows like Friends (Joey).

When this happens, there is always an inevitable point where the people making the show or the movie simply run out of good ideas. This happened with Happy Days back in 1977. In their fifth season, the cast and crew of the show were riding high. But, clearly running out of good ideas, the writers of Happy Days authored a scene which would go down in entertainment history.

They had Fonzie strap on a pair of water skis, and jump a shark. Seriously. In the opinion of the show's fans, Happy Days was never as good again as it was in the five seasons leading up to that moment. From there, Arnold's would burn down, the star of the show would take his leave, and Joanie would love Chachi.

With that, the term "jumping the shark" was born in infamy.

Originally, the phrase specifically meant the point at which a television show hits its peak, and the quality goes downhill from that moment on. Since then, it has been adapted into other mediums, including movies and literature, and deservedly so.

Look at the Spider-Man series of films. The original was phenomenal, full of everything a great movie should have: a protagonist who the audience could both sympathize with and look up to, villains who were easy to loathe, just the right amount of action, and a love story to tie it all together. The second film built on that extremely solid base.

But then, we have Spider-Man 3. The acting seemed tired and the action was, almost unbelievably, overdone. Worse, take all that action away from the 2 hour and 20 minute film and you have maybe 30 minutes of an actual plot.

There are a number of scenes in the film which just bugged me, but the jump the shark moment is clear as day:

Emo Spider-Man.

I didn't pay for my ticket so that I could watch Tobey Maguire do his best Gerard Way impression. And, really, the song and dance routine... why? That was as bad as Elton John's scene in "Tommy." The strutting down the street was somewhat entertaining at first, but that managed to get ridiculous as well.

The movie never really recovered, either. Between the overpopulation of villains, the action-interrupting banter between Spider-Man and Harry Osborn during the climactic fight scene, and Flint Marko explaining his villainous acts, it seemed that the first and second halves of the film were directed by two completely different people.

In my opinion, the Spider-Man films have jumped the shark. Unfortunately, the third is not likely to be the last, either. The Hollywood big-wigs are banking on the series, so they won't be backing down anytime soon (even if there are rumors that Tobey Maguire is hesitant to reprise his role).

Remember: next time you're going to have your protagonist in a multi-million dollar production flip his hair down over half of his face, imagine him with water skis on. Ridiculous, you say? Exactly.

I should mention a fairly hilarious coincidence. The character Gwen Stacy is played by Bryce Dallas Howard, the daugher of Ron Howard, who was Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, and the goddaughter of Henry Winkler, who played none other than our shark-jumping pal Fonzie.