Steph and I were watching this week’s episode of Lost on the DVR last night when I turned to her and said “has this show jumped the shark and we don’t even know it?” Every week we are captivated by each episiode. And every week the story line gets more convoluted and confusing and sometimes just plain silly. Yet we NEVER miss an episode. There is a phenomenon going on here, because I truly believe that if this were any other show, it would have been abandoned and cast aside by now. What keeps us watching?

I’m wondering if years down the road I’ll look back the same way I look back on Twin Peaks? Twin Peaks started in April of my senior year of high school and that first season ranks among the best first seasons of any show in history. Both my dad and I wouldn’t miss an episode for anything. Anything! By the fall, when I was in college, a whole group of friends would convene in the common section of our dorm (oh, Terrace Hall, how I don’t miss you much) to watch each episode and dissect it to no end. Who killed Laura Freaking Palmer?!? And how did that Sherilyn Fenn chick tie the cherry stem in her mouth like that?

However, as most shows are fated, Twin Peaks, uh, peaked in its first season. There were still some great moments after that, but the longer the show went, the harder those moments were to find. I mean, at one point there were dancing dwarves. See? Now, Lost has gone on much longer than Twin Peaks. But will we look back on Lost in fifteen years and remember a show that had it going on from start to finish? Maybe. Or will we say that a great idea initially got turned into time travel, inexplicable survival and general confusion about everything. We shall see.

For what it’s worth, we determined that right now, we’re feeling that no shark has been jumped……