For the past several years, my favorite TV show has been The West Wing. It’s fast-paced, well written, timely, circumspect. As with Northern Exposure before it, I’ve become bonded, in a sense, with the characters; the way you relate to and care about the people in a good book. A book you don’t want to end.

I don’t want West Wing to end either, but I do believe it has jumped the shark. This cool idiom dates back to Happy Days, and an episode in which Fonzy jumps his motorcycle over a shark in a tank. And everybody knew the producers had run out of ideas. The show was dead.

A show often jumps the shark when its characters become diluted, drift apart, lose their dramatic bonds. Northern Exposure jumped when Dr Joel left the show, and they brought in a new Doc from LA. Right? Right. I thought West Wing jumped last season, when Leo had a heart attack; that character lost his bond with the president and the other characters. Can anybody deny the show hasn’t been the same since?

Now we have a bunch of new people – Jimmy Smits, Alan Alda – and the old characters like Josh and Donna have new jobs for campaigns outside the White House. They don’t work for Pres Bartlett anymore. West Wing has jumped, people. Remember you read it here, and saw me say that the merciful, creative thing to do is let it die, at least by the new president’s inauguration. Don’t drag it our for another wheezing, twitching season. Let me remember it as it was.

Did you get the title? It’s Brody from Jaws … shark, get it? Ha! I gotta million of ‘em.