Shark Bytes

to the guest who asks " when did artie sleep with beverly". It is not exposed, but rather inferred when at the end of an episode, larry and the rest of the staff are on their way to a weekend retreat. the joke is that everyone there has a romantic problem with someone else on the trip. Artie and beverly discuss cabins, and beverly reveals that she has arranged one with artie, but artie says he thought they'd all have separate cabins... and cue the cheesey pseudo blues music that you love so well.

always funny never jumped

Dumb people. So a straight guy found out he had a thing for guys? And thats bad? People of colour? Didn't they have a whole episode addressing that topic exactly? They let a few bands play whole songs? Those are weak, weak reasons. A show jumps the shark when it starts doing things that signal a lack of creativity, not when they make an episode you don't like. Duh. LSS never stopped being creative, and didn't even jump when they replaced Hanks assistant. Any show with a character as awesome as Hank instantly makes any top ten list, except the jump the shark one. HEY NOW!

The Larry Sanders show Jumped the Shark on their season 6, episode 10 show - Putting the gay back in litigation.

This is the show were you see Phil (a heterosexual) in an intense makeout session with Brian (a homosexual). After watching this - I just felt embarrassed for the actors and the show itself. To this day, the show remains an embarassment because it had all the elements of being one of the greats.

There was no viable reason for this contrived scene. Had it been Brian involved in a homosexual relationship with another homosexual within the context of this comedy, it would have been fine.

Instead we witness a scene that is more similar to a homosexual jail rape scene - where a character must appease another in order to save his life/career - despite his sexual preferences.

Nothing but sadness remains at what Phil was forced to do in order to save his career against what the show termed the Homosexual Jewish Power Brokers in Hollywood.

It IS possible to Jump the Shark at the end of a series run. The Larry Sanders show did just that with this forced gay male-whore fantasy scene written to exact revenge against all heterosexuals who have ever insulted a homosexual male.

It was petty, vulgar and insulting to the fans of the show. It served only to demonstrate the lack of creative writing the show suffered in it's last few years.

NEVER JUMPED! How could this not be an option? There is no rival, as far as I'm concerned when in comes to the trio of Larry, Rip, and Tambor. The best acting triumvirate in the history of TV sitcoms.

"Jumped when the people behind this show failed to add any more people of color to the show in any meaningful way." - lol. So a show can't be any good unless it has more than one black person? What a sad little world you inhabit. I'm open to correction on this, but when did Beverley sleep with Artie?

It jumped day one. I will give this show some credit - it IS a show where you will laugh out loud at least once per episode. BUT the show is just not for me. I need my comedy to be either very expressive (Seinfeld) or very subversive (Beavis and Butthead, The Kids in the Hall). The Larry Sanders Show is neither of those things. It's too "establishment" for my tastes.

This used to be a mainstay in your "never jumped" catagory!!! Clearly you need to improve your ratings system.

This is a disgusting travesty. You could put this show on TODAY and it would seem like the most edgy, revolutionary thing out there.

Seriously...I can't BELIEVE it's out of the never jumped catagory!

When Larry and his asst slept together. Give me a break. Could they think of nothing else? In real life, bosses don't sleep with their assistants. This isn't cinemax, folks.

Jumped when the people behind this show failed to add any more people of color to the show in any meaningful way. And needless to say the one woman of color who was a regular went to bed with two sexist white males like Larry and Arte. Give us all a break!

Thank God for premium cable television.
At once crude, crass, sophisticated and utterly brilliant - this consistently hilarious show has me thinking about it days after watching an episode. Garry Shandling, Jeffrey Tambor and Rip Torn are all extraodinarily talented guys. Just look at their resumes. Having such diverse stars in the same cast is amazing. Plus, this venue allows guest stars to just 'let it all hang out'. Where else are you going to see the likes of Peter Falk swearing up a blue streak? I love it! Hey;
if you want to be tight-assed, and preach how this assaults your delicate sensibilities and wholesome values, go back to network television and the reality shows frequented by mental slugs.

You wash your mouth out with HANK!

Sheer genius.

The Larry Sanders Show is exquisite. There is not a single duff episode. The characters are superb and always consistant. It's now being shown again most nights in Britain which is a joy.

I have always loved Garry Shandling and dammit, I think he's sorta sexy too, so what. And oh my god, FUNNY??? Hell, yes. It's Garry Shandling's Show's theme song was wittier than the content of half the crap that passes for comedy on sitcoms today. Then The Larry Sanders Show came out and thank god for HBO... it may even have pre-redeemed itself for Sex and the Boring-Ass City I Wouldn't Live In If It Were Filled With Bitter Old Hags Like That If I Had A SoHo Loft For Goddammed FREE. I rememeber the episode where Hank gets to host for a while and becomes this driven monster of a man, and I remember HATING Jeffrey Tambor for a while, he was so convincing a ****-head. I agree with a previous poster who said no one says the F-word like Rip Torn. Favorite line: "I said have some fucking cheese!" Remember the look on Larry's face when Carol Burnett told him she could see his balls? Anyone who didn't like this show didn't get it, and how sad for them. Come back Garry!!!

I put this under "singing," because the show jumped when they started giving the bands full-length musical segments in order to get them on the show; this made no sense plot-wise, since none Larry's OTHER guests got full-length segments-- which would have at least been more entertaining than showing Larry and Hank etc. just sitting there nodding like idiots or whispering a few lines among themselves during the whole damned drawn-out musical-segment. I don't know why they couldn't make the bands realize that it was just a SPOOF, rather than a venue to let them play their WHOLE DAMNED SONG; I guess the show just cut the budget, and couldn't pay the top-bands enough to just do a cameo-spot-- and so the producers had to BRIBE the bands by letting them do a whole full-length song. That's like 3-5 minutes of a band that you DON'T care about, since you didn't tune in to watch a real talk-show with a real musical guest, but to watch a SPOOF of a talk show with a real musical guest. This skimping and corner-cutting also showed in other ways such as shoddy and repetitive writing-- Larry dates a celebrity-guest, Larry meets his ex-wife, Larry pokes fun at Hank's stupidity behind his back while talking with Artie, etc.--- it simply stopped being a realistic spoof of a talk-show, and became purely ass-kissing fiction. The LSS started out as probably the most intelligent, well-written tragicomedic piece of work ever seen; but it went the way of Fonzie in California, and you could literally hear the bass-fiddle playing the theme from "Jaws--" as well as the bloody aftermath of that movie.