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"Villain of the week" (or, depending on genre, "monster of the week") is a term that describes the nature of one-use antagonists in episodic fiction, specifically ongoing American genre-based television series. As many shows of this type air episodes weekly at a rate of one or two dozen new episodes per year, there is often a new antagonist to forward the plot of each week's episode. The main characters usually confront and vanquish these characters, often leaving them never to be seen again. Some series alternate between using such antagonists and furthering the series' ongoing plotlines (as in The X-Files, where fandom is often divided over preference for one type of episode versus the other). Others use these one-time foes as pawns of the recurring adversaries (as in Power Rangers).

Sometimes the villain will return later in the series but now having a larger role in the story (such as in the Japanese Full Metal Alchemist manga).

There are two different uses for this plot gimmick. American television series are designed to be purely episodic so that they can be "stripped", that is, after the initial broadcasting as a network series, usually one day a week, the film or tape is leased to independent stations to be shown five or six days a week in any order. Hence, there is no plot development, although interesting villains may appear several times (e.g., Jonny Quest's Doctor Zin appears three times). Japanese television series are designed to have an overall plot, even if it's just an initial episode and one or two concluding episodes. Sometimes most of the intervening episodes have no plot or character advancement (e.g., the early "Planet Boy Popi," called Prince Planet in America), but other shows like Mobile Suit Gundam have their plot based on a journey and even have character development. These cannot really be shown in any order, which American distributors find irksome. Sometimes American distributors gut an existing Japanese cartoon series to force it into the desired pattern; often the concluding shows are left out, and certainly character deaths are.

Series that make frequent (or, in some cases, near-constant) use of such antagonists include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Jackie Chan Adventures, Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Smallville, Ultraman, Teen Titans, Xena: Warrior Princess, and The X-Files.

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