10 TV Episodes That Broke All The Rules
6. The Chinese Restaurant - Seinfeld
A bottle episode is one that is produced cheaply and easily, usually with a limited cast and in one location.
The format is commonplace in TV nowadays, but one of the shows that helped pioneer it was Seinfeld with an episode entitled "The Chinese Restaurant".
Jerry, Elaine, and George are all out to dinner at, you guessed it, a Chinese restaurant. The episode takes place in real time as the three friends all deal with various issues whilst waiting for a table - Jerry thinks he recognises a woman, Elaine is starving, and George keeps trying to use the phone.
On paper, this doesn't sound terribly exciting and executives at the show's network, NBC, seemed to agree with this. They hated the script when they first read it, even asking co-creator Larry David if it had pages missing. In the end, the episode got made, and thank God it did.
The Chinese Restaurant is lauded as one of the first "classic" episodes of Seinfeld. One reviewer called it "real life, but with better dialogue" and it helped to define the genre of TV shows about real people doing real things.
Bet those execs feel dumb now.