@renkotsuban I thought what you did & The Other Wiki️ seems to believe it, too https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BottleEpisode - sadly, both they & we are set right by Merriam-Webster, who seem to have brought receipts: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bottle%20episode - although while MW claims the term was coined all the way back in -64, they also state that the first use was as recently as 2003, so... what was the phrase doing all that time? I think that may be the real mystery