Bottle episodes are episodes in which the action and setting is reserved for a small fraction of the cast and the settings are minimal. These are generally seen as ways for the show to cut costs and can sometimes lead to great character moments where it is basically a one to three characters just talking to each other in one room.
By far my favorite bottle episode is The Box (Season 5 Episode 14 of Brooklyn Nine Nine) Sterling K. Brown’s performance was outstanding and he sold that role amazingly and many other roles I saw. The episode also had a great relationship bond between Jake and Holt and how they saw each other.
Overall, Criminal (UK, France, Germany and Spain) is a great TV series of this concept. It is basically a season-long bottle episode going on in the interrogation room and sometimes, in a waiting area outside of it. It is not technically a bottle episode/series, since it has a diverse cast of investigators and doers/witnesses and their lawyers, but it is a wonderful example of how sometimes less is more.
What are some of your favorites bottle episodes? Do you like them, why or why not?
Bottle Episodes
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Prof. Maxim Trevelyan
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Bottle Episodes
...also a platonic soulmate and a hot mess of a human being.
Re: Bottle Episodes
My favorite bottle episode is The Fly on Breaking Bad. They had spent so much money on the set of the new lab that they had to follow with a bottle episode. Its is set almost entirely in the new lab, and it centers around a fly that somehow got into the lab. Walter is convinced the fly will contaminate the product so he spends the episode attempting to kill it. It was very artistically done. It does end with Walt at home in bed, staring at the blinking light on his smoke detector. Suddenly, we see the image of a fly in the flashing red light and that is the moment Walt realized the lab had been "bugged".