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It is not, however, a bottle episode, as two characters’ story lines move notably forward; it’s just an episode that, apart from those characters, goes essentially nowhere.

Few shows are as experimental with their tone and even fewer are as successful with that experimentation; a great episode of “Atlanta” could be a hilarious and pointed style parody, or it could be a sensitive family-portrait bottle episode.

“Atlanta” mastered the art of the bottle episode, with some stand-alone installments featuring the core cast and others focusing on characters who had never been part of the main story.

Her testimony was the hearing equivalent of a bottle episode — the episode deep into a series’s run that breaks form to focus on a single character or incident.

The bottle episode that divided fans and created critical applause appeared as Episode 9 in “Ted Lasso’s” second season and came at a critical narrative juncture: the Greyhounds had just lost a heartbreaking game to Manchester United, romances were being rekindled and team members were having an identity crisis.