Shark Jumping

I've blogged in the past about the lazy writing on many tv shows; when they can't think of anything else to do they kill of a major character. Then I blogged how many shows have brought back characters they either wrote off the show (CSI) or killed off and were somehow alive (24). Now there is a new trend on television, shape shifters. A shape shifter is one character on the show who transforms into another character and pretends they are this new character and no one knows it. It basically is like "jumping the shark" times 10.

Beware spoilers for the following shows will follow: Fringe, Lost, Heroes, and Desperate Housewives.

Last season with about 4 episodes remaining in the season for Heroes they gave the main bad guy the ability to shape shift and turn into any character he touches. They then had the creative freedom to do anything on the show. You never knew what was occuring on the show because you never knew if it was the real character, or this main bad guy. They decided that this would get out of hand so in the last episode of the season they made another character get into his head and stop this transforming. It ended with the main bad guy killing one of the main good guys and then transforming into him, but now his brain and memories of that old good guy. Basically the main bad guy now looks and acts like the main good guy. This is the plot they are going to follow this season.

Then on Lost you found out in the season finale that one of the main characters died a while ago and who you were actually watching was this presence on the island that transformed themself into this main character. (WTF?) So here you didn't even have any real clues to it, they explained it many episodes later what happened awhile ago off camera.

Then in the season premiere of Fringe they had one of the main FBI characters killed by this alien type creature and the alien turned into him but no one knows. They think the FBI guy killed the alien type thing, when it was the other way around. When showing previews of the season, they showed that most of the plot this season is going to revovle around this fact.

I am guess that this season on Desperate Housewives will we will find out that one of the lonely housewives is actually the pool boy who shape shifted into a 40 year old soccer mom to get closer to the other women.

It's as if all these Hollywood writers went to the same seminar on how to write for television. This year's topic: "Shape shifters: how to use a simple plot twist to confuse the audience and be able to write whatever you want."

Why can't tv stick to basic writing and character development. On the other hand I watched the season premiere of House and it was outstanding. It didn't even take place in the hospital and House was the only main character in it. It was still outstanding. It had character development, comedy, suspense, drama, sex, and you actually became engaged in the plot and could understand what was going on.