I found one online review calling this a bottle episode. Does make a point though at HBO this would have been done more for creative reasons than financial ones.
Quote:
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If you’re a longtime television fanatic like I am (and who isn’t?), you’re probably familiar with the term “bottle episode.” These self-contained hours of a series usually attempt to tell a very specific part of the show’s story, usually semi-detached from the main plot of the season. Think “Fly” from “Breaking Bad” or “Pine Barrens” from “The Sopranos.” Bottle episodes are sometimes limited in their setting, and they have a small cast of characters. In the past, a bottle episode’s purpose would be mostly financial: showrunners would have to scale their story down a significant margin for the week so as to not run over the network’s requested budget. In the streaming era, especially on a powerhouse platform like HBO max, a bottle episode is more of a creative endeavor, an opportunity to step away and smell the flowers (or, in this case, the strawberries).
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https://www.themanual.com/culture/th...isode-3-recap/