nuke the fridge
v. phr.— Note: The short life of this term is ably covered by Jason Kottke. «In TV land, this phenomenon is known as “jumping the shark”: the moment when a once proud series swan-dives into putridity. It’s a reference to a dreadful, late-era episode of “Happy Days” in which a water-skiing Fonz lofts himself over the fin of a great white. But Indy fans were so demoralized, they coined a new phrase just for movie-franchise meltdowns. Ergo: “nuking the fridge.”» —“’Jump the Shark,’ Meet ’Nuke the Fridge'” by Sarah Ball Newsweek July 7-14, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...