Index of the Week - TV Tropes
- ️Tue Feb 23 2010
Writing for TV ain't easy— coming up with fresh plots on a weekly basis can be tough. Fortunately for writers, most shows follow the same basic format week-to-week, so they don't have to come up with radically different plots every seven days. One of the most popular show types is the "Of The Week" format, in which a core cast of Regular Characters deals with a new problem every week. This combines the stability of a template show with the possibility of new, exciting stories.
Most of the time, the problem the cast encounters disappears by the end of the episode, never to be mentioned again. It's becoming increasingly common for a show to have an overreaching seasonal Story Arc as well, but writers of the past generally preferred to stay low on continuity; less continuity means it's easier to re-air the show in syndication.
In script terms, the One-Shot Character who comes in with a problem and disappears after is called a client.
Tropes:
- Girl of the Week: One of the main characters gains a love interest who is never seen beyond the love interest's debut episode.
- Monster of the Week: Every episode or most of the episodes have the heroes fight a one-shot antagonist.
- Monster of the Aesop: The episode's villain also fits with the episode's moral.
- Mystery of the Week
- Patient of the Week
- Subculture of the Week
- Town of the Week
- Victim of the Week: An unlucky individual, innocent or otherwise, who serves as the first person in the episode to be attacked by the antagonist of the week.
- Body of the Week: If they end up dead, then they become a murder mystery for the protagonists to solve.
- Monster Munch: Their only purpose in the plot amounts to being preyed upon by he Monster of the Week.
- Villain-Possessed Bystander: When the victim gets mind-controlled by (and/or transformed into) the Villain of the Week.
- Woobie of the Week