At precisely 2.12pm on Thursday in Canberra, there was a spike in Google searches for the phrase "jumped the shark".
For the unfamiliar, the phrase means the beginning of the end - the start of the sharp decline into mediocrity once something has reached its peak.
For Happy Days, it was when the Fonz went sailing over a tiger shark in waterskies and a leather jacket.
In the final question time of the year, that peak came 10 minutes in, when the most senior law officer in the land uttered the phrase "vroom vroom motorcycle".
"The question really, Mr Speaker, is why are the members for Watson [Tony Burke] and Grayndler [Anthony Albanese] on their motorcycles ... seeing who can jump the biggest shark?" Christian Porter asked, defying both the laws of physics and the ocean.
2020 is a year that has demanded too much of all of us.
In the year of the bushfires, the bog roll shortage, the baboon harem escape and the bloody pandemic, the final sparring session of 2020 was always going to be a bit bananas.
But who could have foreseen it would involve a point of order pointing out "a motorbike can't jump a shark"?
"For accuracy," Labor leader Anthony Albanese opined.
"There are kids listening."
[Speaker Tony Smith did rule it was disorderly to compare other MPs to a fictional character.]
In a way, the final question time of 2020 was just as messy and bizarre as the ludicrous as the year preceded it.
But it also marked a return to politics as we know it, after a disquieting period of detente.
After a year struggling to find their stride as the nation was derailed by the pandemic, Porter's ill-timed industrial relations omnibus bill gave Labor a rod with which to strike him - which they did with renewed vigour.
"Can the Prime Minister confirm under his new workplace laws workers who stack supermarket shelves five nights a week from 6pm to 10pm could lose up to $5500 a year? Why is the Prime Minister's Christmas 'thank you' to front-line workers a cut in their take-home pay?" Nick Champion battered.
"A cleaner working part-time could lose $6600 a year from their take-home pay. Why is the Prime Minister punishing front-line workers with a cut to their take-home pay?" Anne Aly hammered.
Porter for his part tried to exploit the rumours of leadership tension within the Labor Party.
Not content with mangling TV tropes, the Attorney-General went on to verbal Master Yoda.
"If Yoda were here, he would remind us that fear of leadership tensions leads to the dark side, Mr Speaker. Fear of leadership tensions leads to the dark side. Leadership fear leads to anger. Anger leads to wildly untrue assertions in question time. That is the path to the dark side, Mr Speaker, and that's the path that the opposition is on," Porter said.
It was only when long-serving Labor MP Warren Snowdon stood up that you remembered there were adults in the room.
Announcing his retirement after 31 years in parliament, he looked Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the eyes and repeated words he first said in 1987 in Old Parliament House during his first speech.
"It is time the politics of division in this country are put aside so at last the injustice of the Aboriginal dispossession is recognised and dealt with in a way which is satisfactory to Aboriginal Australians," he pleaded.
But as politics resumes normal programming, it's unclear if anyone in Parliament House is listening.
