10 Best TV Episodes Set In Just One Room

Dan Harmon's inventive sitcom Community is well-known for playing with popular media tropes and genre trappings, evolving each episode to examine a new narrative device or storytelling concept. It's no surprise, then, that the show soon spoofed the idea of a bottle episode, ingeniously deconstructing and analysing the format in the process.

When Annie loses her pen, she suspects that it has been stolen by a member of the study group, but she isn't sure who. She demands that everyone stay behind and help her search for the pen until the culprit is found. Everyone is dismayed at having to stay behind for the sake of a pen (particularly Abed, who recognises the situation they're getting into and announces that he despises bottle episode, saying, "They're wall-to-wall facial expressions and emotional nuance. I might as well sit in the corner with a bucket on my head.") and initially they all suspect each other of having stolen it.

This ridiculous-yet-believable situation is a brilliant catalyst for character development, as the study group comb through each others' belongings revealing a number of personal secrets. After hours of fruitless searching, they decide to band together and conclude that a ghost did it, finally realising they're such close friends that a ghost is the more likely explanation than one of them still harbouring the pen after all this tedium, and can finally leave the bottle episode behind, more tightly bound than ever before.