It’s sad when someone who should be an expert on something reveals just how little they know about the genre on which they’re pontificating. Take, for example, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, who on Sunday decided to declare that BIG LOVE had jumped the shark several weeks earlier. Unfortunately, he gets off to something of a rocky start by wrongly stating that everything from a wedding to a birth is an indication that a show has jumped the shark (as opposed to those being examples of, um, actual plot developments). But he then goes on to claim that the January 24th episode of the polygamy-in-suburbia drama jumped the shark by having Sarah take in an Indian woman and her child, Margene kiss stepson Ben, Alby begin an illicit affair and Nicki pull a gun.
Did a lot happen in the episode? You betcha. Was it a “jump-the-shark” moment? Not by a longshot.