Tag: Act III

How Many Times Did Funky Winkerbean Jump The Shark?

I didn’t mean for that last post to be a poll, but it’s revealing how many individual Jump The Shark moments posters were able to identify in Funky Winkerbean. Here’s a compiled list, in roughly chronological order (because, as you know, Timemop).

Act I (1972-1992, ends with the original class’ graduation)

Act II (1992-2007, ends with Lisa’s death)

  • Lisa’s first detection of cancer (1998)
  • Wally dies in the minesweeping simulator
  • Becky loses her arm
  • The first class reunion
  • Susan Smith’s suicide attempt
  • Wally’s first homecoming (2003)
  • John Byrne’s guest stint permanently alters the artwork (2003)
  • Sadie Summers – not because she was a bad character as Tom Batiuk thinks, but because she was under- and mis-utilized
  • The post office bombing (USA!)
  • Lisa’s cancer returns in 2006, because of a hospital error
  • Lisa’s death (October 4, 2007)

Act III (2007-2022, ends when Funky Winkerbean ends and its characters move to Crankshaft)

  • Tom Batiuk skips ten years after Lisa’s death, throwing away a gold mine of story ideas. Which also prevents Les Moore (and Batiuk) from ever moving past Lisa’s death, when that was the stated reason for the time jump
  • Les screaming at Summer over a dress for the winter dance he was pushing her to attend
  • Les saying “yes you did” and getting pissy with Funky over a mild joke about Les attracting two women at once
  • Wally’s second homecoming, which destroyed the likeable Wally-Becky relationship, and needlessly added to Wally’s suffering
  • Lisa’s Story becomes a thing
  • Starbuck Jones become a thing
  • The emergence of Cayla as a character
  • Funky’s car crash and time-altering coma (2010)
  • casting Susan Smith as the antagonist in the Les-Cayla-Susan love triangle
  • the gay prom story where the gay teens never seen or talked about again
  • Morton Winkerbean’s remarkable but never-addressed recovery from dementia
  • Wally hooking up with Rachel and turning his life around
  • Cayla’s appearance changes
  • Lisa calls in a bomb threat from beyond the grave
  • Darin and Pete become major characters
  • The rise of Atomik Komix as a central location
  • “Where’s father?” – the resolution of the Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp story
  • The death of Bull Bushka, which was ultimately insurance fraud
  • Les walking back his earlier forgiveness of Bull
  • Darin makes a toy for his son, out of a handgun that was used to murder his grandfather
  • The entire finale, featuring a long -forgotten janitor who is revealed to be a time-traveling agent, tasked with ensuring Summer’s book gets written
  • “behavior-patterned algorithms that will let us define humanity as our nation” or whatever that drivel was

Act IV (Crankshaft, 2023-)

  • The Funky Winkerbean characters invade Crankshaft
  • The alleged Burnings
  • The Batton Thomas interview arc

And must be a lot more candidates than that… because that list doesn’t mention Dinkle even once.