BOTTLE EPISODE SERIES

BOTTLE EPISODE SERIES

Related: The 15 Best Pilot Episodes of All Time: When TV Series Start Right 10. Here are my picks for the best bottle episodes, which prove that-regardless of budget or scope-great characters, sharp writing, and engaging stories are all you need for quality television. Creators are forced to be more inventive with these episodes-but, funny enough, some of the greatest episodes in TV have been bottle episodes because so much creativity is required to make them work. Of course, these limitations aren't easy to work with. Hence, the importance of bottle episodes.Ī bottle episode takes place entirely in a single location or set, often with simple storylines and limited cast and crew.īy confining an episode to one location, there can be major cost savings and faster production times, allowing chunks of the season's budget to be reserved for other, more gradiose episodes. The budget, the crew, and the production have to be spread across all episodes to ensure the season pans out. It’s about its own complexity.Creating a top-tier television show is not an easy task. That’s what I meant above when I said Community already comments on itself comprehensively. The Cape comes back two or three more times. The answer, as we see from an ensuing series of shots (Tina Turner, Julius Caesar, Scarlett O’Hara …) is at least a half dozen. When the dean comes in dressed as a Carnival dancer, Jeff asks him how many excuses he needs to dress up in dumb costumes. There’s never just one there are four, five, six, often ramping up to some absurdity-a cardboard robot creating panic in the halls of the school-and then deflating down to something nonsensical, like the characters all beaming as they participate in a jump-rope class. Flashbacks have been a droll staple of fast-moving shows like Arrested Development and 30 Rock. If anything, “Paradigms of Human Memory” is about overkill.

What we’re left with is … a brilliantly conceived show about nothing, really, other than how brilliant its conception is. “I know, I wish it had happened sooner, too,” Abed says. The one this year, a two-parter that ended the season, begins as a spaghetti Western, but changes in the second episode, when Abed announces that it will continue as a Star Wars homage. The first one genuflects toward latter-day horror films like 28 Days Later (along with, of course, a dozen other movies). Once each season, there’s a massive school-wide paintball fight. A Christmas fantasy last year had the group go through its motions in Claymation, all taking place inside Abed’s head. An early episode found the group taking control of the school cafeteria in a Goodfellas parody. On top of these the writers dance like Fred Astaire. So Community is not without some conventional constructions. His hook-up with Shirley, an emotionally and physically formidable mother of two, is treated by everyone concerned, with the exception of Chang himself, as an unappetizing liaison. Then there’s a despised Spanish teacher named Chang, who after a fall from grace is now a student and a pathetic group hanger-on. When it’s revealed Jeff has kissed the very young Annie, it produces a remarkably feel-bad episode.

Self-referentiality is its raison d’être. The relationship between the two episodes is just one little example of how wound up this show is. These memories, whether reliable or not, bury the potential bottle episode in a flood of expensive outside sets and ever-more-baroque set-ups. All the craziness (and all the expense) technically takes place in the characters’ minds, as they discuss their memories of their time together. It also takes place in the study room with no outside characters. Secondly, “Paradigms,” it turns out, is a bottle episode itself, after a fashion. “Calligraphy” is mentioned immediately in “Paradigms,” and it’s referenced so many other ways that it’s obvious the producers meant for the episodes to be parallel. For the first, “Paradigms” patterns itself carefully after that earlier episode. And the concept of the bottle episode resonates within it in two ways. Now, as I said, the “Paradigms” episode of Community becomes spectacularly ornate.

Bottle episode