I’ll go first.
Winner:
Breaking Bad, season 3 episode 10, “Fly”
Honorable mention:
Community, season 3 episode 10, “Cooperative Calligraphy”
PS: I’m having a hard time categorizing these as real bottle episodes since they don’t feel cheap or “fillery” at all, but they are at least specially and plot wise confined.
Ever seen Man From Earth? Technically it’s a movie but the whole thing happens in one location.
Best friends forever from South Park.
At the end, there is a battle happening off screen that is supposedly more epic than the battles of lord of the rings.
When they pan to it, it’s like 3 soldiers with a few pools of blood.
Seinfeld “The Chinese Restaurant” S02E11
what is a “bottle episode”?
When a show ran out of money or wanted to spend extra on other episodes they’d either do a clip show or a bottle episode. A bottle episode traditionally uses only standing sets and existing cast under contract, with no special props or costumes.
Usually called a “bottleneck episodes” because the characters are trapped in a room together. So much of the episode is dialogue based.
Never heard about this term before, so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_episode
Thanks! I was wondering too.
Alternative tvtropes link, since that’s where I thought to look: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BottleEpisode
Nooooo! You just caused me another hour lost at that site!
It’s never too late 😊
OZ: every episode was a bottle episode.
I love how this became an actual artistic niche, instead of simply being a means to cut costs.
Archer - Vision Quest
Red Dwarf - Marooned
Only because OP took my 2 favourites already.
TWELVE? Twelve years old? You lost your virginity when you were twelve?
Yeah.
Twelve? You can’t have been a full member of the golf club then!
Ren and Stimpy: “Rubber Nipple Salesmen”
Stargate - Window of Opportunity
Fantastic episode 🩷
Doctor Who reboot, season 3 episode 10: Blink. Minimal Doctor action, great villain and introduced Carey Mulligan to mainstream audiences.
Midnight, from a few seasons later, is my personal pick. The Doctor is there the whole time, but he’s just stranded on a bus with a few strangers. Great example of that “nothing is scarier” type of horror.
Blink is great, but it is not a bottle episode.
Edit: I stand corrected. Abed led me to believe a bottle episode happens in one place, but it’s any episode designed around minimizing cost.
Which was still not Blink. Blink was designed to allow two episodes to be shot simultaneously but it is not a bottle episode. It uses new locations and new characters (almost exclusively, even)
Reading the Wikipedia page for Blink, I can’t see any justification whatsoever for calling it a bottle episode. I assumed from the upvotes, people knew something I didn’t, but, no, they just liked the episode so they upvoted the comment.
Inside No. 9
Every episode is a bottle episode.
Star Trek:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drumhead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meld_(Star_Trek:_Voyager
So many good ones. They’re often done to save budget, but if written well they can be some of the best in their series.
First thing that popped into my head though was Twilight Zone, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”.
