Lost: Continually Jumping the Shark

Ever since the writers of "Happy Days" had Fonzie jump over a shark while he was waterskiing, the term "jump the shark" has been a tagline for all TV shows that make some poor plot, writing or casting decisions that directly affect the quality and ratings of a show. Another famous "jump the shark" technique is the "add a kid," where a character has a baby and then a short time later the kid is magically aged several years. My personal favorite JTS move is the "instantly evil" writing technique, where a character makes one false move and is from then on written as a mustache twirling villain. Most shows that start to use these tactics and many other JTS techniques, fall to the fate of cancellation shortly after the network realizes the show is losing viewers because the writers lost their minds. This formula used to be tried and true, you could set your watch by shows trying to gain viewers using wacky techniques and then quickly getting the axe. Until now.

Now ABC's huge hit show "Lost" employs very bizarre plots and writing techniques, doing things like introducing Polar Bears into tropical environments and creating huge conspiracy theories that often confuse the viewer. Lost has jumped the shark quite a few times (in my opinion) and it still maintains a huge audience of very dedicated fans. Fans that spend hours of every day (not just Wednesday nights) dedicated to researching and analyzing and discussing this show. No one ran away in horror when in the season 2 finale 3 characters in a sail boat discovered a large, cartoonish looking three toed statue. What? I could have sworn it looked like it was a foot that could belong to Homer Simpson. Strange, definitely a JTS moment, right? You would think so, but Lost's viewership and devoted fans disagree.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty avid "Lost" viewer myself. I've never missed an episode and I've been know to talk about it a lot at work and even visit a message board or two and listen to podcasts about the show. That's avid, and slightly obsessive and yet I can't help but marvel at the strange plot twists that are very JTS and yet this show thrives instead of flounders.

Wacky "Jump the Shark" moments in Lost (not in chronological order):
1) The interconnectedness of each character. Anna Lucia and Sawyer knew Jack's dad. Libby and Desmond met before the island, Sayid's lady love gets her house inspected by Locke, etc. This technique isn't working for the new show "Six Degrees," I tried to watch that show but the hokey ways they connected the characters felt very JTS to me, yet it works for Lost.

2) The perpetually doomed guy. Sometimes the character that can never have anything good happen to them becomes a JTS tactic because the bad things that continue to happen just get worse and worse to the point where it becomes completely unbelievable. Locke is the perpetually doomed guy in Lost as this past Wednesday's episode attests. I must admit that I am a little frustrated with the stupidity of Locke and how gullible he still is, but I'm still watching!

3) The very evil bad guys. The Others are the very evil bad guys, they are hell bent on controlling the Losties and controlling all of their actions on the island and so far their intentions are unknown but they seem like they are up to no good. The close-ups of Henry Gale/ Ben Linus are so overdone and obvious, he's always giving the evil eye. Yet instead of being mustache-twirling evil, he's google-eyed evil and it seems to work. We hate him, don't know why and continue to listen to what he has to say. But now with the introduction of the cages, torture and fish biscuits, the evilness of The Others is being heightened and still they haven't jumped the shark.

4) The stupidly stubborn guy. This is the character that gets an idea in his head and each of the plot points involving him move in a cyclical pattern because stubborn guy keeps on getting stuck on the same issues over and over and over again. It's frustrating to watch and the over usage of such a character usually results in frustrated viewers leaving the show. Jack Shepard is Lost's stubborn guy, and man is he stubborn. He obsesses about being in control and people betraying him, and each story line involving him revolves around those issues. We're frustrated watching him because we know his actions will result in nothing good, yet it's still compelling.

5) Convoluted conspiracies. The Dharma Initiative, the hatch, the numbers, the power of the island, miraculous healing, all the characters did something bad, made a bad decision that seems to be the reason they are on the island. The idea that every detail of the plot is based on there being a Big Bad vibe that is out there plaguing our Losties seems like a quick fix. It's probably what had a lot of Lost devotees theorizing that the characters were actually in purgatory and not in a physical place. There are a million and one theories out there generated by fans on the internet and the creators of the show never answer very many questions as the plot unfolds. Actually the plot never unfolds it just uncrumples only to get crumpled up again!

There are many others things about Lost that seem too outlandish to actually work in the mainstream and yet they do work. It's an interesting phenomenon.

Verdict: Don those waterskis and jump the shark along with Fonzie because Lost is definitely worth watching and getting confounded by.