You're right about the shifting in Lost, but I still feel like characters like Hurley, Sun, Jin, Desmond, etc. etc are pushing way into the background and only have their moment one episode per season.

I groaned too. It was really like "WTF?!" I understand that they wanted to show us how Echo took control briefly rather than letting Terry run the entire show, but still! Not that necessary! (But it did give us Kiki!Victor so I guess I should be grateful because I laughed SO HARD when I watched that, I thought I was going to implode! XD)