165 Quiz Answer

Here’s the answer to our weekly quiz.  Happy Days was an American television sitcom that aired first-run from 1974 to 1984 on the ABC network.

In one episode, the character named the Fonz, on water skis, literally jumped a shark, leading to an idiom that has entered our language.  If you’ve “jumped the shark,” you’ve reached your peak and now you’re on your way down, or out.  The phrase is now often used in other areas besides entertainment: politics, business, sports, etc.

(Also for Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "O" is for "Orv")
Here is this week's Berownial quiz.
The following little piece of fiction I wrote might suggest to you a certain highly successful TV series of a few decades back.  In its eleven seasons on the air, it was one of the longest-running prime-time sitcoms in television history.  Your assignment, should you agree to accept it, is: name the series.

The way this came about was that we all went down to the beach to watch Orv.

We weren't really surfer dudes; it's just that Orv - we called him Orv because his name was Orville - was bragging about how great he had become with water skis.
 
Since he was always telling us how great he was at something, we decided to call him out on it.  Some of us even put up some money, five bucks each, as a bet that he would screw up as a water-skier.

(That doesn't seem like a huge amount these days, but at that time - keep in mind that we were just a bunch of kids with what you might call little in the way of ready funds - five clams represented money.) 

Well, we were all a little embarrassed because we had to wake up; the guy was not only not putrid, he was good.  I don't mean Olympic Gold Medal-type good, but good enough.

To see him zipping about out there on the water on his skis, wearing his famous leather jacket, was a blast. 

And then something happened, something incredible.  Right smack in front of him a shark rose up, a huge son of a gun as big as he was.  I was doing nothing but watch but still I shuddered a bit when I saw it.  But Orv, believe it or not, handled it. 

He crouched down and then just leaped with his skis over the big fish.  Holy guacamole!  We could hardly believe our eyes.  Instead of cracking wise about it we were cheering Orv.  We could understand why he craved water-skiing.

Later, we could also hardly believe how this event got talked about by so many people and even how it worked its way into common everyday speech.

But perhaps by now you know the name of theTV series?
(Submitted also to Sunday Scribblings)