39,327
edits
Bottle Episode: Difference between revisions
m
update links
m (update links) |
m (update links) |
||
Line 38:
* ''[[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.
** A perfect example of this is "[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Recap/S01
** Subverted with the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "The Next Phase". It was ''meant'' to be a bottle show and was written with saving money in mind...but they somehow didn't account for the many complicated special effects required, which made it one of the most expensive episodes of the season.
** ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'' is sort of a bottle episode, at least as much as a movie can be. After ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture|Star Trek the Motion Picture]]'', with its huge budget and expensive special effects, got a "meh" reaction, the studio gave the next film a considerably lower budget. In fact, it got less than a third of the budget of the first movie. ''Khan'' was thus filmed mostly on existing sets with recycled props, models, and [[Stock Footage|footage]]. This resulted in what is still typically considered the best ''Trek'' film.
Line 64:
* ''[[The Dead Zone]]'' had a [[Bottle Episode]] ("Cabin Pressure") that took place entirely on a flying airplane (which, admittedly, was not one of the show's normal sets). Interestingly, this episode was also an example of [[Real Time]].
* The [[Revival]] of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has done this [[Once a Season]] since the second series, having to squeeze fourteen episodes into a budget (and shooting schedule) of thirteen. Often the limitation is not in set construction, but in special effects or actors:
** "[[Doctor Who
** "[[Doctor Who
** "[[Doctor Who
** "[[Doctor Who
*** 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
** "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
** "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
** 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
* In ''[[Torchwood]]'' the vast majority of "[[Torchwood/Recap/S1
* 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).
* ''[[The 4400]]'' had an episode that took place entirely inside NTAC HQ.
Line 109:
** 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 (television)|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).
** "A Night at Rosie's" takes place entirely at [[Local Hangout|Rosie's Bar]].
Line 133:
** 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
* "The Suitcase" from ''[[Mad Men]]'', in which Don and Peggy spend a whole night trying to come up with an idea for a suitcase commercial. It was pretty much immediately hailed as one of the show's best single episodes.
* "Pixelspix" and "[[LazyTown]]'s Greatest Hits" are two examples from ''[[LazyTown]]''.
Line 183:
*** Brian and Stewie are both voiced by series creator [[Seth MacFarlane]], so it's basically MacFarlane [[Talking to Himself]] -- no Alex Borstein playing Lois, no Seth Green as Chris, not even Mila Kunis as the [[Designated Monkey]] Meg. It's about as minimal as an episode can get.
*** And it was [[Tear Jerker|pretty]] [[Crowning Moment of Funny|good]] [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|too.]]
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' has "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S1
* ''[[Adventure Time]]'' has several, with the most notable being "Marceline's Closet", where Finn and Jake spend 90% of the episode [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|trapped in Marceline's closet.]]
** "Still" is also one, as evident by the fact that Finn and Jake are frozen the entire episode. One of the workers on the show even ''called'' it a Bottle Episode.
| |||