Mutant of the week?
 

I've only been here little over a year, but I've been visiting occasionally since 2003 for news and whatnot. Anyways, I remember when people refered to the OT's later (yet pre-Red Sky) days they said the show resorted to a
'mutant of the week' theme. I never gave it much thought because it did seem like the show had a ton of mutants, but now that I've seen almost every episode I know it never got like that.

Any explanation for why this was a popular phrase?

I don't know why people said things like that either. I guess its because Season 7 has "Night of the Rogues" where there's tons of good and bad mutants in the same episode, but even then most of Season 7 did not introduce a new mutant every week.

Honestly, I always through it was the Archie series that went overboard with the mutants. I remember Peter Laird said in one of the Vol. 4 letters pages that in the old toon, "You couldn't throw a stick without finding a mutant" yet most eps of the old toon either focused on the usual Shredder/Krang eps, the normal gangsters, or aliens. Whereas in the Archie series new mutants were introduced every couple of issues.

Yeah, yet another one of the inaccurate generalizations that people throw out at the Old Toon. The more eps I watch, the more I respect the show and the writers.

For the record, though, I don't think you can ever have enough mutants!

Yeah, I think the term originated with Peter Laird, either directly or indirectly, as part of the reasoning for why mutants aren't allowed in the new series.

Maybe Laird was thinking of the Konami games where you would fight a mutant boss literally around every other corner!

Or the old Playmates toy line, which introduced a lot of mutants that never appeared in the show.

Like Sergeant Bananas, Doctor El (the elephant), Half Court, Sandstorm, Scale Tail, Scratch, etc.

There were a lot of mutants in the old toyline, but most of them never appeared in the show so it doesn't matter.

The generalization is just that; a generalization. Its not literal. Similar to "Mad Scientist of the Week." Its just a generalization.

If you wanted to be a bit more literal, they at least traded back and forth between scientists and mutants.

Have to add "Gangster of the Week" to that bunch.

Right. Forgot about the gangsters. So, then, it was gangsters, mutant, and mad scientists. Occasionally, the Shredder would show up.

At least that was the case during the CBS run. I think Shredder was in every syndicated episode before season 4.

Nah, off the top of my head I know that he was absent from:
Enter The Rat King
Leatherhead Meets the Ratking
The Great Boldini

And probably a couple (atleast one) others.

Hmm, what characters appeared in every ep besides the Turtles? I think April was in every ep. Was Splinter?

Hmm... I'm taking this one to the episode list.

If were talking pre Season 4, April wasn't in:
The Fifth Turtle
Take me to your Leader
Corporate Raiders from Dimension X (she was mentioned tho)
Blast from the Past

Plus there were some episodes where she just appeared on the TV but wasn't involved in the plot.

Splinter:
Leatherhead: Terror of the Swamp
Pizza by the Shred
Usagi come home (I think)
Burne's Blues

Shredder was also absent from "Case of the Hot Kimono"

April was in "The Fifth Turtle," and "Blast from the Past (first, on the TV report, I believe. And secondly in the flashbacks, if you count that.) I can't remember in the other two episodes, I'll have to go back and check for curiosity's sake.

In "Burne's Blues" and "Pizza by the Shred," April did play some key roles (getting kidnapped and delivering pizza for Mikey respectively).

Also the Channel 6 crew, April's boss, Irma and Vernon were in almost every episode after season 1.

Actually the CBS eps were 2 episodes, making it an hour. The first ep would always be a Shredder ep involving the regular cast. The second would be an ep about one of the turtles facing some random gangster or mad scientist. That's why the newer DVD sets have so many 'mad scientist episodes.

Damn, you're right. Silly me

I know she was in those two, I listed them as episodes that Splinter wasn't in.

I would try to make a list of eps they weren't in but, sometimes Irma would be there but not the others, same thing with Vernon.

How will this list appear and where?

Yeah, I was surprised by the lack of mutants in the OT. Growing up with mostly the toys I always assumed there a bunch of mutants were in the show. I wouldn't mind mutants either I mean in a world were mutagen/aliens/future weapons exist, is a bunch of mutants really all that unbeilivable?

Isn't it general term watchers of genre shows apply?

Star Trek's "Alien of the Week", Buffy/Angel's "Demon of the Week" and X-Files "Monster of the Week". The list could go on.

It's to describe a trend in these shows of introducing some new menace that would be the main focus and touted as importnant in that episode, the viewers knowing full well they'll never or hardly be used again, thus fans put it into the category of an "x of the week" episode.

Archie did introduce many mutants during it's run and during some of the early original stories it did feel like we were getting new mutants every issue but as the series went on we saw the same mutants come back and play more important roles (heck even Chameleon came back in a pretty good single issue story).