English - The Real Deal

Will & Grace即将于5月18日走到尽头。心情很复杂。一方面，它曾经带给我那么多快乐，真的舍不得。另一方面，它的确已经过了高峰期，甚至一度让人觉得“惨不忍睹”，是时候结束了。

和Friends一样，Will & Grace也曾经是NBC的王牌节目，有过收视率和口碑双丰收的辉煌年代。虽然已经江河日下，它在我心里始终还是有很特殊的地位。所以，借着全剧大结局之际，再向大家推荐一次：如果你还没看过Will & Grace的话，一定要去买碟片来看看。前四季是绝对的经典。同时，作为学英语的材料，它比Friends要更上一层楼。演员的语速更快，台词更难，文化背景更多。如果你能不借助字幕轻松地听懂所有的内容，那恭喜你，你的英语水平已经到了足够高的境界，去学二外吧。

四位主角前两天一起上了Oprah的脱口秀，和观众说再见。找到一个可下载的视频：http://www.malcontent.biz/video/willandgrace-oprah-hi.wmv （Courtsey of The Malcontent, NSFW）

这是提供下载者的原话：

Still, it is worth remembering what the television climate was like when Will & Grace premiered. Ellen had gone off the air because of the concentration on her sexuality. We were living in the age before Queer As Folk and the L-Word.

If Will & Grace is stale and has run its course, the cast and crew still deserve to take their bows. When people are looking back at the age of the gay rights movement and how open gay culture finally entered the mainstream of American society, this is a show that will rightly belong on our little pink wall of fame.

I couldn’t have said it better.

顺便提一句，由于美国的电视剧都是按季播的，所以受欢迎的剧集往往会年复一年、季复一季拍下去。到了一定的时候，剧集的水平自然会到达顶峰，然后开始走下坡路。这种情况有个专门的短语来描述：jump the shark。

When a television show jumps the shark, it has reached a tipping point and will steadily decline ever after. Jumping the shark is the defining moment when you know your favorite TV show will never be the same again.

The phrase is a reference to the 1970s television show Happy Days. On 20 September 1977, the show aired an episode where the character Fonzie jumps a shark tank on water skis. A cliffhanger episode, many fans of the show consider this episode to be the moment when they realized the show had become shameless in its self-promotion.

The phrase jump the shark, however, appears some years later. On 24 December 1997 the website www.jumptheshark.com went up on the net. It listed TV shows and the episodes where they jumped the shark. The site gives credit for the phrase to a Sean J. Connelly, who allegedly coined it in 1985. Connelly was the college roommate of site’s creator, Jon Hein.

As far as I’m concerned, Will & Grace jumped the shark in season 5 when Grace got married. But like I said, it still is and always will be one of my favorite TV shows!

Bonus video: Imogen Heap - Good Night and Go

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Culture, Idiom, Slang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.