Best Bottle Episodes

One set, no guest stars, and a budget meeting that went better than expected.

Entries
10
Category
TV
Updated
  1. A starship hearing room with a long table, a gavel and a single empty witness chair under bright lights.

    10. The Drumhead

    Star Trek: The Next Generation · 1991

    An engine-room explosion brings retired admiral Norah Satie, played by Jean Simmons, aboard to root out conspirators, and the inquiry becomes a witch hunt. Jonathan Frakes directs a hearing room full of talk. The cheapest possible episode about McCarthyism, and one of the best.

  2. A tiny plasma TV smashed on a condo floor beside a golden bowling-trophy-style award, scented candles burning on every surface.

    09. Dinner Party

    The Office · 2008

    The first episode after the writers' strike, almost entirely in Michael and Jan's condo, where Michael sleeps on a bench, owns a $200 plasma TV and has had three vasectomies. Jan plays Hunter's song. The cast broke constantly. So does anyone who watches it.

  3. A purple-walled apartment with a recliner stripped of its cushions, a glass of yellowish fat in the fridge door and a Christmas bow on a dress.

    08. The One Where No One's Ready

    Friends · 1996

    Ross has 22 minutes to get everyone to a museum benefit, in real time, almost entirely in one living room. Chicken fat, hummus on Phoebe's dress, a war over a chair, and Joey wearing every item of clothing Chandler owns. Three speaking guest roles, a good budget day.

  4. The interior of a small luxury shuttle bus with blacked-out windows and empty seats facing each other, a single knock mark dented into the wall.

    07. Midnight

    Doctor Who · 2008

    Russell T Davies wrote it to replace a dropped script: the Doctor stuck on a tourist shuttle while something possesses a passenger and starts repeating everyone's words. Companion Donna is barely in it. The scariest thing in the episode turns out to be the other passengers.

  5. A police interrogation room with a dental mirror and a glass trophy on the table, a coffee cup going cold.

    06. The Box

    Brooklyn Nine-Nine · 2018

    Jake and Holt spend a night interrogating a dentist played by Sterling K. Brown, who earned an Emmy nomination for it. It's a deliberate homage to Three Men and Adena, which also starred Andre Braugher. Twenty-five years later he got to sit on the same side of the table, funnier.

  6. A ransacked community-college study room with a purple gel pen sitting in an air vent beside a pile of stolen trinkets.

    05. Cooperative Calligraphy

    Community · 2010

    Annie's purple gel pen goes missing and Jeff declares a lockdown, out loud calling it a bottle episode. Strip-searches, religion fights and Pierce's leg casts cut open follow. The group misses the puppy parade. The culprit was the monkey, which is how all mysteries should end.

  7. A 1960s ad agency office at dawn with a Samsonite suitcase on the desk, a transistor radio and an empty birthday cake box.

    04. The Suitcase

    Mad Men · 2010

    Don keeps Peggy at the office on her birthday to crack a Samsonite pitch while everyone else goes to Ali vs. Liston. They talk all night, he gets terrible news, and the halfway point of the series becomes its most cited best episode. The pitch is not the point.

  8. A small gray interrogation room with a metal table, three chairs and a single overhead light, a clock on the wall.

    03. Three Men and Adena

    Homicide: Life on the Street · 1993

    Two detectives and one suspect in the interrogation room for an hour, with twelve hours to get a confession. Barry Levinson suggested a whole episode in the Box after watching Braugher and Secor in the pilot. Tom Fontana won the writing Emmy. It ends unresolved, on purpose.

  9. A Chinese restaurant waiting area with a red lacquer podium, a pay phone off the hook and a stack of menus nobody has been given.

    02. The Chinese Restaurant

    Seinfeld · 1991

    Larry David's pitch: they wait 23 minutes for a table in real time. NBC objected that nothing happens. David threatened to quit, NBC relented and buried it late in the season. No Kramer, no scene breaks, no table. It shot in half the usual time and taught TV how to waste it.

  10. An industrial meth-lab-style laboratory of steel vats and catwalks, a single housefly resting on a blinking smoke detector.

    01. Fly

    Breaking Bad · 2010

    The show was so over budget it could not spend $25,000 to $35,000 moving the trucks, so Rian Johnson locked Walt and Jesse in the lab with a housefly. Alan Sepinwall wondered if it was the best bottle show ever; an A.V. Club writer hated it. The fly has no comment.

Honorable mentions

  • A snowbound Arctic research station at night with a glass specimen jar containing a single small worm on the lab bench.

    Ice

    The X-Files · 1993

    Mulder, Scully and a research team trapped at an Alaskan outpost with parasitic worms, borrowed openly from The Thing. The producers picked a single location to save money. It went over budget anyway. Still one of the tensest hours of season one. It's the thought that counts.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A sickbay bed with a medical device hovering over its headrest, surrounded by a stack of old film reels.

    Shades of Gray

    Star Trek: The Next Generation · 1989

    The bottle episode's evil twin: a clip show made because the season ran over budget. Riker is poisoned by a vine and relives 21 old clips. Shot in three days. Head writer Maurice Hurley, who came up with it, called it terrible. It is widely regarded as the show's worst episode.

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