“Monster of the Week”, a term that rings bells for many that everyone who grew up in front of a television set is familiar with. A show typically composed of two components: the monster of said week, and the overarching storyline of the show, or “myth arc”. Though it’s not always the case, the most famous examples typically follow this formula. The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, are all loved and lauded for their structure.
Still, in the modern landscape, these shows have found themselves, and their relevance, broadly relegated to the annals of history. Fond memories in the public consciousness, left back in the silver screen’s adolescence, but what for? What exactly has the medium of television grown out of that has the monster of the week dying on the ground?
To start with, it bears to first interrogate the strengths of the format through the use of examples that predate, or don’t make use of the myth arc. Not quite monsters, the detectives in shows like Columbo and Law and Order (or its many spin offs) showcase the strength of the monster of the week’s natural inclination towards the episodic. Sit down, and watch as the ever circuitous, but attentive, Lieutenant Columbo cracks the case.
Ambling around in his iconic beige raincoat, letting you inhabit the world of the wicked, often well off, suspects whom he brings down. Law and Order’s atmosphere is similarly easy to sink into; a New York City even seedier than its real life counterpart, only clean in the offices of the lawyers and cops we follow. They embody the comfort of standards, you needn’t be familiar with the characters, the setting or even their job when an episode begins.
By the end of an episode, you know what a monster of the week show is about, the soap opera that eschews the need for continuity, and thus recap. The dime novel for a modern United States. Still, that doesn’t explain the critical success that came with the introduction to the myth arc into the formula. Columbo works by skillfully fusing intrigue into a story whose conclusion you already know, and Law and Order for its sensationalism, but what of the myth?
An intoxicating taste of equivalent exchange, the myth arc is to the monster of the week as the pill is to a dollop of peanut butter for the dog. It’s what’s good for them, hidden in an irresistible shell, but that begs the question, in this case, who the dog is. Not the audience, the dog was, for quite a long time, the television networks. Your CWs, your UPNs, your WBs, the works, tricked into making classics for the re-run value of their non-myth arc episodes.
The myth arc, or serialized story within a monster of the week show, is a beloved component of all of the names listed at the top of the article. Mulder and Scully’s eternal battle with the secrecy of the FBI, Buffy’s “Big Bads” who define the primary threat of each season, and Mystery Incorporated’s mounting supernatural aura. All components of what hook viewers for season after season; opportunities to break from the omnipresence of drop in points.
An opportunity to showcase the development of your plot and characters in ways that could shift that status quo enough to keep long time viewers engaged without being so continuity locked as to scare off newcomers. The hints, and payoffs that would reward repeat viewership, taping of episodes, buying box sets and seasons on DVD. A model perfect for its chosen medium that could hook an audience eager for something apart from sitcoms who also couldn’t buy HBO.
Still, that hint of the television landscape to come, the prestige dramas that make “Best of All Time” lists, like The Sopranos, or Oz, shows whose influence would spawn Breaking Bad and Mad Men. They ushered forth an age of “must watch” high continuity television that filled the space the myth arc once did and even still, in the current era, the true death knell for the format lay.
In spite of the cult classic status of a Hannibal (2013), or the relatively positive reception of the Charmed reboot, the monster of the week died for the same reason it once lived: being perfect for network TV. Once, it’s lasting strength and now, in the streaming age, its curse. A format only suited for the current binge model of business only in retrospect, something left behind with weekly schedules and tapings.
A forebear for a landscape we enjoyed for decades, dying to the same force killing off the golden age of television itself. A kind of proof that the monster of the week was killed not by a hero, come to save us, but that which seeks to destroy all joy for the bottom line.