[Loved Trope] The one random episode that doesn't follow the main characters

[u/BagOfSmallerBags]

Heated Rivalry Episode 3 "Hunter": The show stops following Hollander and Rozanov's love story to follow another hockey player, Scott Hunter, and his romance with a smoothie store employee.

The Last of Us S1E3 "Long Long Time": Joel and Ellie need a car. So to explain why there's a car waiting around for them to use, they show us an incredibly heartbreaking love story lasting 20 years between two men Joel knows. They have a car.

Doctor Who S3E10 "Blink": With no explanation given, this episode begins with a character we've never met, one Sally Sparrow, poking around an abandoned building. Our lead character, The Doctor, is glimpsed seemingly randomly on TVs. What is going on? Did that statue just move!?

MythicQuest S1E5 "A Dark Quiet Death": Rather than continuing to follow our lead characters as they develop an MMORPG, we flash back many years to witness the history of a couple who start a videogame company, and how over the years the pressure to drive sales causes them to give up on their artistic integrity.

[u/RainbowTardigrade]

“Teddy Perkins” episode of Atlanta. The show breaks its usual formula a few times but this was the first big one and by far one of the show’s best.

https://giphy.com/gifs/9xm2P9nmh3STKiqoIm

[u/ChunkHardcheese → u/RainbowTardigrade]

Atlanta had a lot of bottle episodes. From memory there's the foster kid who is adopted by white lesbians and the episode where white people can be sued because their ancestors owned slaves.

[u/old_skyguy → u/ChunkHardcheese]

The one about the foster kids is especially tragic because it's loosely based on an actual case, iirc.

[u/Tyranis_Hex → u/ChunkHardcheese]

The episode about the making of A Goofy Movie, amazing.

[u/Sway_404 → u/Tyranis_Hex]

"The blackest movie of all time"

[u/xxxsweetberrywinexxx → u/ChunkHardcheese]

The later seasons turned into mostly episodes like that. Donald Glover was really flexing his creativity, and it was pretty awesome

[u/negative-sid-nancy → u/ChunkHardcheese]

And the one where the nanny died and the parents kept hearing weird knocks in middle of night after. Absolutely love this show and all the directions it took

[u/DangerZone69 → u/ChunkHardcheese]

Typically, bottle episodes, heavily feature the main cast, because they are under contract already and the point of bottle episodes is to save money. Breaking Bad “fly” has become the classic example

[u/biweed666 → u/RainbowTardigrade]

this episode has haunted me since it aired

[u/RainbowTardigrade → u/biweed666]

Legit could’ve been a movie unto itself. So damn good.

[u/FyouinyourA → u/biweed666]

I got stoned af and binged that season and by the time I got to that episode I was so high and my gf was sleeping and I thought I was having a fever dream I almost had to wake her up like what the fuck is going on lol that episode is an eerie thriller out of the left field

[u/Emptyspace227 → u/RainbowTardigrade]

I'll throw in the immediately preceding episode "Barbershop". Yeah, Al's in the episode, but he tagging along with his barber, so it kind of counts. And it is one of the funniest episodes of TV I've ever seen.

[u/theVice → u/Emptyspace227]

Come on Bibby mannnnnn

[u/negative-sid-nancy → u/RainbowTardigrade]

And the 3 or 4 anthology episodes are absolutely fantastic

[u/Proper-Ingenuity8274 → u/RainbowTardigrade]

Made the horrible mistake of watching this after taking an obscene amount of edibles with a partner and I got so terrified I couldn’t even look at another human the rest of the night. Thanks Atlanta!!!!