Desperately seeking reinvention

The ultimate model for shifting a series' ground rules, of course, is ABC's own "Lost," which has its own two-hour finale on Thursday. Each season, producers have turned the show into a hunt for answers to a different question. And while some of those plot lines have gone astray, there's always hope for a new beginning. By now, we can almost forgive that long, strange season three interlude with the Others. Last year's surprise flash-forward - along with the all-important announcement of an end date - did that much to reinvigorate writers and viewers alike.

The "Desperate Housewives" twist, borrowed from the "Lost" playbook, didn't feel quite so original. In part, that's because a basic skip-ahead has been done before, on such shows as the CW's "One Tree Hill," which recently jumped over the college years, and "Alias," which years ago replaced one convoluted plot line with another one.

But the bigger problem is that the Wisteria Lane of the future doesn't look much more intriguing than, or different from, the Wisteria Lane of today. Lynette's kids are young delinquents? You don't say. Bree as a cookbook mogul? Not outside the realm of possibility. Even the big shocks were fairly telegraphed; Susan winds up with a man who isn't Mike, and Gabrielle finds herself saddled with kids and wearing less-sexy clothes. And there's no promise of a fix for the show's underlying problem - the fact that it can't decide, minute by minute, whether it's soapy melodrama, dark murder mystery, or broad cartoon farce.

"Grey's" has always done a better job of shifting back and forth between comedy and drama, perhaps because the underlying tone is consistent: hyperactive desperation. Besides, the characters, prone to whining as they are, are generally three-dimensional. That's why, as each one has sinned herself out of happiness over the years, most of them have grown so unlikable.