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Bottle Episode: Difference between revisions
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One of the important things to do when planning a series is to consider how the budget should be spent. Rather than spreading it evenly [[Season Fluidity|over the episodes]], most producers allocate more money towards the start, middle and end of the season (and if it's an American production, towards the [[Sweeps]], wherever they may fall).
That way, you can keep the audience's attention by letting big stories (be they huge battle scenes, exciting explosions or just big-name guest stars) flare up every so often, rather than having a run of episodes that are equally flat.
Of course, this means that there's less budget to go around the others. To compensate, the producer will then commission a 'bottle episode', which is designed to take up as little money as possible. The easiest way to go about this is to use only the regular cast (or even just ''part'' of the regular cast) and set it in a single location, especially if you have a main standing set. This keeps production costs down, because no-one needs to scout locations, build new sets, or create fancy CGI graphics of the outside of the spaceship. Bottle episodes are often a chance for a slow, characterization-filled episode after a big, special-effects-laden action ep. Of course, all this doesn't mean the episode ''will'' be cheap, just that it's ''meant'' to be - like any regular episode, unforeseen complications can cause the show to run over the scheduled budget.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' was often made of bottle episodes, especially in the first season where the scenes were shot entirely in the one and only classroom and the hallway immediately outside. Even more common on the single season of Good Morning Miss Bliss as it didnt have the same budget.
* ''[[Night Court]]'' was almost exclusively bottle episodes particularly in the first season when budgets were limited. The vast majority of the content takes place in the aforementioned court room, with only occasional visits to the hallway and Harry's chambers. Later on another hallway and the cafeteria was added. Only rarely did they venture out to a late night restaurant or someone's apartment.
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' uses flashbacks and flashforwards very liberally, but "The Limo" was as a bottle episode. No flashes, and the tale of them hitting up five parties for New Years Eve was told almost entirely from the backseat of a limo (with only a couple shots of street, and one brief phone call to the limo from one of said parties).
* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' was a pioneer of this trope. All the modern ''[[Star Trek]]'' series would frequently resort to series of [[Bottle Episode]] when [[Ratings]] were down (or when the budget was). A notable side effect of bottle episodes is that they are frequently of [[Good Troi Episode|higher quality in terms of writing, direction, character development, and plot]] than their unbottled counterparts.
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** Another notable episode was set entirely in the Interview Room
* ''[[Friends]]'' has done this quite a few times.
** More specifically, ''[[Friends]]'' had to do this in the first season where the entire cast had to stay in one apartment, and it was so well received that bottle episodes became a staple of that program.
** Notably, the season 3 episode 'The One Where No One Is Ready' is often lauded as one of the best episodes ever, and it never even leaves Monica and Rachel's main room (except for a short scene during the credits).
** Interestingly, the episodes featuring all six Friends among themselves are consistently the best episodes of the entire series. This fact is why Thanksgiving episodes are typically bottle episodes.
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** "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S2 E11 Fear Her|Fear Her]]": A nearly FX-free episode. It was a last-minute affair to take the place of a planned episode by [[Stephen Fry]] which fell through.
** "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S3 E10 Blink|Blink]]": Almost entirely FX-free and the Doctor and Martha are mostly absent.
** "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E10 Midnight|Midnight]]": Nearly all of the episode takes place in a single location with minimal effects. Donna is almost entirely absent from it, because she was filming "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E11 Turn Left|Turn Left]]", in which the Doctor was likewise mostly absent. It's basically one continuous scene: Of a sixty-six page script, there are thirteen scenes. Two are effects shots and one is wordless. Scene 9 is the longest one, starting on page 17 and ending on page 65. Rusty wrote it on the hoof in about three days. Like "Blink," this episode is considered remarkably good and scary in its weirdness.
*** And despite all this, it wasn't a money-saving episode. They had to build that one set to meet a lot of requirements, pay a whole cast for two weeks instead of a few days each, and spend a day on rehearsal, since it had to be performed basically like a play. It's a bottle episode done for its own sake. It's a bit surprising it ever got made.
** "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 E07 Amys Choice|Amy's Choice]]": Which uses only the TARDIS set and the same sleepy country town utilized for "The Eleventh Hour."
** "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 E11 The Lodger|The Lodger]]": An episode set mostly in a Colchester flat. Amy's scenes are limited to a handful in the TARDIS control room.
** "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S32 E10 The Girl Who Waited|The Girl Who Waited]]": Almost everything is white rooms; Karen Gillan [[Acting for Two|Acts For Two]] and the TARDIS fizzes a bit, plus there are robots and a quick shot of a garden, but there is nothing beyond that.
** The specials for Red Nose Day 2011 are set within the TARDIS control room, which is ''also'' within the TARDIS control room. It's a Klein Bottle episode!
** The original series had ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S1 E3 The Edge of Destruction|The Edge of Destruction]]'', which was set entirely in the TARDIS, and the first episode of ''The Mind Robber'', which was added at the last moment to extend the story to five episodes and took place only in the TARDIS and on an empty stage.
* In ''[[Torchwood]]'' the vast majority of "[[Torchwood/Recap/S1 E6 Countrycide|Countrycide]]" was filmed entirely around a few buildings in rural Wales and had no CGI at all. And as with ''Doctor Who'''s "Blink", the episode is pant-soilingly scary.
* Several episodes of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' were either filmed in a small space ("Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" was filmed in a single room with a minimal cast), filmed with a minimal cast (the [[Pilot Episode]] had Earl Holliman walking around a deserted town asking "[[Title Drop|Where Is Everybody?]]" for nearly the entire duration), or filmed only with two people (in "Two", Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery are the only two soldiers at war after [[World War III]] has vaporized everyone else). "The Last Night of a Jockey" takes all honours, however - set entirely in one room, with a cast of ''one'' (Mickey Rooney).
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** Not to mention the fact that a ''lot'' of the action happens in the eponymous battlestar, especially the CIC. Ron Moore mentioned at one point that it was a shame that they could not have shot more scenes aboard the civilian ships in the fleet.
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' both have their fair share of episodes taking place almost entirely within the SGC or Atlantis, respectively. Including, for each series, the second ever episode.
** They even reference each other a bit: One SG-1 episode was called "Grace" and most of the episode was Carter, alone, on the starship, 'hallucinating' a little girl named Grace, as well as some of the other members of SG-1 and her father, with those hallucinations bidding her to deal with her [[UST]]. For Atlantis they had Rodney stuck in a jumper under the ocean. The name of the episode was "Grace Under Pressure", which was a rather clever pun - the episode was essentially "Grace" under pressure. In this episode Rodney hallucinates ''Carter'', who not only helps him cope with his situation but advises him on his relations with the rest of the Atlantis expedition.
* During the second season of ''[[The West Wing]]'', [[Aaron Sorkin]] was told that money was tight, and to make up for budget overruns, he'd have to write an episode with "no guest cast, no locations, no new sets, no extras and no film. In other words, [he] got to write a play." The resulting episode, "17 People," is probably one of his best.
* ''[[Eureka]]'' episodes "H.O.U.S.E. Rules" (automated house S.A.R.A.H. locks the cast inside) and "A Night In Global Dynamics" (self-explanatory).
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** Perhaps in a nod to the aforementioned ''Homicide'', ''The Shield'' had, in its fourth season, an entire episode set in the Farmington police headquarters' interrogation room, where Vic Mackey and Monica Rawlings spend 42 minutes grilling a suspect. Notably, the episode was an extended 90 minute (with commercials) episode as opposed to the usual 60 minute (again, with commercials) episodes.
* An episode of ''[[Bottom]]'' took place solely on top of a ferris wheel {{spoiler|[[It Makes Sense in Context|and God's palm.]] }}
* A episode of ''[[Hancock's Half Hour]]'', 'The Bedsitter', was not only just set on the one set (Tony Hancock's bedsit flat) but also featured no other actors other than Tony Hancock himself. The plot, such as it was, just featured Hancock trying to amuse himself for 20 minutes. It was justly acclaimed as one of the funniest episodes he'd done.
* Many episodes of ''[[The Sandbaggers]]'' come close to this - the majority of each plot unfolds in the offices of SIS, with the occasional exterior shot set in London or a [[California Doubling|stand-in for an Eastern Bloc country]].
* ''[[One Foot in the Grave]]'' episode "The Beast in the Cage" is set entirely in a car stuck in a traffic jam.
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* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' has (almost) always handled its bottle episodes brilliantly. Examples include "Marooned", "The Last Day", "Quarantine", and "Out of Time", all of which are widely considered among the show's finest.
** Though there's also Duct Soup, which frequently tops worst episode polls.
* Episode 4 of ''[[Psychoville]]'' features only David and his mother attempting to avoid getting caught by a police inspector in a flat in Hammersmith, London. It's an homage to [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Rope]]'' (with nods to ''[[Psycho]]'' and ''[[Frenzy]]'') and mostly consists of two long continuous shots joined by a concealed edit.
* The ''[[M*A*S*H|Mash]]'' episode "Hawkeye" has that character confined to a Korean family's hut after having crashed his jeep and gotten a concussion. Alan Alda is the only one of the main cast to appear in the episode.
** "O.R." was shot entirely in the operating room. And since the [[Laugh Track]] wasn't used for any shot taking place in the O.R., this is the first ''M*A*S*H'' episode to omit the laugh track completely (although when ''M*A*S*H'' was shown in Britain initially the ''series'' omitted the laugh track - this is not the case nowadays).
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* ''[[Breaking Bad]]'' had a fantastic episode- with only Walt and Jesse appearing- set almost entirely in one room - {{spoiler|the lab}} - which saw Jesse and Walt chasing a fly for the full forty-something minutes. Better than it sounds thanks to the extraordinary levels of tension present throughout, coming to a peak when Jesse is balanced precariously at the top of a ladder while at least three potentially relationship-destroying secrets are on the brink of being revealed during the course of an absolute [[Tear Jerker]] of a monologue by Walt.
** To a lesser extent "...And the Bag's in the River" in season 1 which takes place mostly in Jesse's house and "4 Days Out" which mostly takes place in an RV in the desert with Walt and Jesse stranded but is sort of a subversion as far as cost lowering goes as it was intended to take place entirely in the RV but the plot endeded up requiring more and more scenes outside and ended up becoming one of the season's most expensive episodes.
* The season six Christmas episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'' was this; the other episodes were getting so expensive that Fox was getting antsy. Therefore, "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" takes place almost entirely in one room and has only four cast members.
* The aptly titled ''[[Regenesis]]'' episode "Unbottled". The lab is deserted except for the main cast and the terrorists holding them captive, and the protagonists spend most of the episode locked in a storage room.
* In the ''[[Adam-12]]'' episode "Light Duty", the whole episode takes place entirely inside the police station, as Malloy (sporting an injured wrist) and Reed man the front desk and listen to the day's action through the radio while dealing with assorted people who come in for assistance.
* The ''[[Dragnet]]'' episode "B.O.D.-DR-27" also had Friday and Gannon manning the front desk.
* ''[[Community]]'' has a lot. The most notable being the episode "Cooperative Calligraphy", which takes place entirely in the study room that the main characters meet for their study group. Abed and Jeff even refer to the "Bottle Episode" concept by name. (It's also the only one actually referred to as being "The [[Bottle Episode]]" by fans and crew alike.)
** Also, the second season episode "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" took place almost entirely in the study room with the group playing D&D. Like, dice-rolls-and-described-actions D&D, not elaborate-dream-sequence D&D.
** And Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts, the entire episode was shot in the anthropology room, due to the two/three expensive episodes it was between.
** Season 3 has "Remedial Chaos Theory" which takes place entirely in Troy and Abed's apartment (save for one scene in the study room at the end) that involves Jeff rolling a dice to decide who has to go downstairs to let the pizza delivery man in the building and each way that it lands creates an alternate timeline.
** Stunningly [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] (and quite possibly the only example to date) in the season two episode [[Community/Recap/S2 E21 Paradigms of Human Memory|''Paradigms of Human Memory'']] . Most [[Clip Show|Clip Shows]] are employed so as to save production money and time, with very little money spent on taping and writing new material, the [[Clip Show]] is usually a type of [[Bottle Episode]]. This episode spoofs the very nature of a [[Clip Show]] by having the acutual clips be a bunch of [[Noodle Incident|Noodle Incidents]] to a variety of locations and situations never actually seen in the series. Financially, this episode was expensive, even to the point that [[Word of God|DanHarmon himself paid for the Sara Bareilles song]] to be used in the [[Shipping Goggles]] portion of the episode. Interestingly the episodes before and after this one are true [[Bottle Episode|Bottle Episodes]] because of the expensiveness of this episode as well as the season finale.
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* "Pixelspix" and "[[LazyTown]]'s Greatest Hits" are two examples from ''[[LazyTown]]''.
* "Just Act Normal", episode 5 of series 2 of ''[[Miranda]]'', is set entirely in a psychiatrist's office.
* In ''[[The Monkees]]'', "Monkee Mother" and "A Coffin Too Frequent" both take place entirely in the Monkees' apartment. There's also the episode "Fairy Tale", which takes place on a minimalist cardboard set.
* The Season 6 episode of ''[[Bones]]'' "Blackout in the Blizzard" has an abridged cast of the main characters; 2 of which spend the majority episode stuck in an elevator with a 3rd overlooking. The remaining 4 characters in the episode solve the entire crime in the standard "Jeffersonian" set...in the dark.
* In one of the few childrens' show examples, season 1 ''[[Victorious]]'' episode "Wifi in the Sky" takes place entirely on an airplane--though subverts the idea a little with webcam interaction with her friends.
* While ranging quite a bit through various Seattle locales, episode #11 "The Missing" from ''[[The Killing]]'''s first season strikes many as being a bottle episode in spirit. It features only the two main characters, with generous helpings of heretofore basically absent character development. While some dismissed the episode for venting whatever narrative urgency the main murder plotline still had going, others were grateful for a reprieve from those most frustrating elements of the show.
* The classic sitcom ''[[Barney Miller]]'' was nothing BUT bottle episodes. Every episode took place in the same squad office at the police station, which consisted of three small rooms: the main office, the holding cell, and Barney's office. That's it. Characters would come and go, but their interactions with the world outside the office were almost always implied and not shown. About once a year they would do an episode where characters actually went outside, but after a few seasons, even this was dropped. The show was never a big ratings hit but managed to last eight seasons because it was incredibly inexpensive to make.
** [[Word of God]] says that the whole philosophy behind ''[[Barney Miller]]'' was to make a show that resembled a classic stage play. The economic benefits were just a happy side effect.
* Most episodes of the Mexican sitcom ''[[El Chavo
* The [[Britcom]] ''[[Dinnerladies]]''. ''Every'' episode took place entirely on a single set. (The only time a character appeared elsewhere was in two short inserts of film (one a home video, one an in-universe TV show) that the other characters were watching)
* The eighth season of ''[[Scrubs]]'' had to bring down its budget, in part by setting most of its 18 episodes in the hospital, and giving each cast member (including the main character, Zach Braff's J.D.) at least two episodes off. Thus, a lot of the episodes come off a little bottle-y, but a few episodes especially so. "My Full Moon", for example, only features cast members Sarah Chalke & Donald Faison, as well as a few recurring characters, and takes place over one night on one floor of the hospital.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* Staycations, vacations that take place withing driving distance of home, are done for much the same reasons, and can have the same benefits/drawbacks.
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* ''[[SpongeBob]]'''s "Gary Takes A Bath". 8-minute season 2 finale with one voice actor and only three characters. Mr. Krabs doesn't even talk.
* The ''[[Sealab 2021]]'' episode "Fusebox" consists almost entirely of one exterior shot of Sealab while the power is out.
* According to [[Word of God]], ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' episode "Tag Sale...You're It!" was ''meant'' to be one of these by keeping the action on the Venture compound. Then the plot of the episode called for [[Loads and Loads of Characters|Loads and Loads of Background Characters]], and the amount of work for the animators didn't really diminish.
* The 150th ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "Brian & Stewie", which is about Brian and Stewie getting locked into a bank vault.
** It was <s>more</s> even less than that; the entire episode was free of FG's normal cutaway gags and recurring characters. The whole thing is ''literally'', nothing but Brian and Stewie. There isn't even any ''music''. And it was an extended 40-minute (28 without commercials) episode too!
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