I won’t put any spoilers here, but let’s just say that one of my favorite shows, “24,” has officially jumped the shark. I mean, I get it. “24” is all about, “we’ll show you that nobody is safe on ’24’!!!” Ooooo. I figured that out in Season One. But give me a break. In past seasons, when a primary character was killed, it was done for a reason. The past two episodes of “24,” though, were just irritating. If I hadn’t commited 4-and-a-half seasons of my life to this show, I’d stop watching. It had already established itself as the weakest season yet (I’m pretty sure that key cards don’t work that way, and having a bad guy who seems to be improvising the entire time isn’t scary like last season’s Marwan, and, did we really need to see Kim again? ever?, and we’re supposed to believe that somebody as by-the-book as Lynn McGill wouldn’t tell anybody he’d lost his keycard? and what the hell does Jack still see in Audrey? and… oh, never mind.) — but as I was saying, if I hadn’t already become committed to the show, I’d walk away. The writers had better do something really, really good in the next episode or two to win me back, and to erase my current view that they’re writing things that are stupidly executed, lazy, and a bit desperate.

In other news, the host of my favorite game show of all time, “Press Your Luck,” Peter Tomarken, died in a small plane crash just off the coast of Santa Monica this morning. (Wow, somebody updated that Wikipedia entry fast.) The craziest thing about this is that in Googling “Press Your Luck,” I came across the story of Michael Larsen, a man who, in 1983, memorized the patterns of the Big Board on Press Your Luck, went on the show, and won over $110,000. This on a game where a big win would typically be closer to $10,000. And Larsen only quit playing after over an hour of filming — and he chose to stop. Crazy story. This link has a great detailed story of the episode, and this link has video of it.

And let me add this: At least “Press Your Luck” never jumped the shark. Well, except when they did that typically desperate 1980’s cross-over episode with Knight Rider, “The Knight of 1000 Whammys.”