"Jumping the shark is a slang term used by television critics in the 1990s. The phrase, popularized at the web site www.jumptheshark.com, is used to describe the moment when a long-running television show is generally judged to have passed its "peak" and shows a noticeable decline in quality. A show in decline is said to have "jumped the shark" when it deploys certain maneuvers (see below) in an attempt to revive flagging audience share. These are usually gimmicks seen as odd and unnecessary, relative to the program's usual run." - wikipedia
This is precisely what happened to ER. ER began as an excellent quality drama. But years later, after rating began to sag, it became almost a parody of itself in the way that it betrayed its character development and created the most outrageous and ridiculous story lines and a desperate attempt to get ratings.
With the departure of Aaron Sorkin at the end of Season four of the west wing, loyal views knew that the show was in for a hard fight to maintain its same level of amazing quality. Season five was a fantastic disappointment to long time fans of Sorkin's creative vision for the characters and his unique and brilliant scripting style. Season five was almost like watching a completely different west wing with a completely different cast of characters, and the writing was mediocre at its best, and downright dreadful at its worst.
But this season marks the cataclysmic end to what used to be one of the best shows ever put on television. Producers and NBC executives have chosen to make their focus doing whatever it takes to get better ratings - total viewership for west wing dropped by over a third in season five. For those of us who have gotten spoiler information on the first half of the season episodes, it is not a pretty sight. The phrase about deploying "gimmicks that seem unusually odd and unnecessary" pretty much hits the nail on the head.
In addition to totally undoing the close and almost family bond that had been such a hallmark of the staff in the first four seasons, especially between Leo and the president, CJ and Toby and Sam and Toby , the only thing that seems to have survived is a half-assed, poorly executed embarrassingly sophomoric attempt at a romance between Josh and Donna. Almost all of what made the show so fantastic in its first four seasons is absent now. And judging from upcoming plots, it looks to only further betray the wonder and glory of Sorkin's original vision in increasingly more desperate ratings ploys.
Selwynn Goodspeed is not a columnist for the New York Times. He has not received the Pulitzer prize for media and film criticism in 1998. His reviews can not be found daily at http://www.filmcritic.com. 
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