The holidays have a tendency to bring family together, which can be either a blessing or a curse depending on the family in question. Television shows play with the comfort and drama that comes from such a charged concept as “getting together with friends and family over a large meal”.
As a result of this inherent tension some find in the season, these episodes of television tend to involve some great moments and can be catalysts for character development. Below are some of the best Thanksgiving episodes.
Master of None always featured characters struggling to find their place in adult society, full of humor while also not being afraid to be genuine and honest about feelings and emotion. Season 2’s Thanksgiving episode is an intimate portrayal of a girl dealing with her sexual-orientation and her family’s acceptance of it through the lens of Thanksgiving dinners throughout the years. The episode is based somewhat on co-writer Lena Waithe’s own experiences, and significantly, the episode won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, making Lena Waithe the first black woman to win the award.
The episode starts by establishing that the show’s main character, Dev, is a guest at Denise’s family Thanksgiving meal every year since his parents don’t celebrate the holiday. As Denise grows older, she comes to the realization that she is attracted to women, telling Dev who is accepting right away, and mustering the courage to tell her family. Her mother and aunt try to be supportive but also find the revelation hard to swallow, making the first Thanksgiving dinner Denise brings a girlfriend home awkward, despite Dev and Denise’s attempts to keep the conversation light and friendly. Slowly, with each passing year, the family learns to accept Denise and who she loves.
The episode is significant because, rather than focusing on the sadness that the rejection of Denise and who she is, the episode is more about the happiness that acceptance brings. Viewers are also given a view into what topics of conversation happen at a family meal, covering important topics like police violence against people of color and how the characters feel connected to these stories. Some don’t have the privilege for topics of conversation at Thanksgiving dinner to be all hunky-dory and about how good the mashed potatoes are. Despite these serious topics being brought up, there are moments of levity throughout the episode, and the whole episode never strays far from its central theme: love.
The West Wing brings its tidings to Thanksgiving season by featuring a storyline to help remind viewers that not everybody was treated well between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. Along with a poignant plot involving the statistics of poverty, another storyline running through the episode show Martin Sheen as a president who relishes the opportunity to discuss his preparation methods for the holiday that is disarmingly hilarious.
Fictional president Josiah Bartlet starts the episode playing the father figure to his staff that he feels he embodies for the nation as president, being sure to have a conversation with each one of them about his preparation plans for Thanksgiving turkey. After his confidence falters when he learns he didn’t take his stuffing prep into account, it’s endearing to watch as he learns about a hotline to help with cooking prep, and the plot wraps up nicely with a funny scene as the president attempts to improvise his way through a conversation with said hotline. In the meantime, vastly out-of-date statistical models are updating which will consider 4 million more Americans as being in poverty when there is an upcoming election season. It’s small and mostly played as light political procedural fare, but in juxtaposition with a time of the season that involves having a large decadent meal, its relevance is worth noting.
As for the episode-naming plotline, Native Americans of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community take a literal stand in the lobby, refusing to leave in order to finally have a meeting about aiding their community and honoring promises made to them. The storyline serves as a stark reminder of the grim reality of the holiday and the repercussions from the United States’ history in how it has treated Native American groups. The problems these communities deal with are still as much a problem today as they were when the episode aired in 2001, if not more so.
Like Bob’s Burgers, The New Girl had a Thanksgiving episode for most of its seasons, each one putting the group of New York friends in strange and uncomfortable situations as they tried to make whatever zany schemes they had in mind for the holiday come to fruition.
The New Girl is usually at its best when there’s friction between Zooey Deschanel’s character Jessica’s idyllic worldview and reality of the actual world and the pragmatism of her friends. Season 2’s Thanksgiving episode is a good exemplar of this when Jessica tries to get her parents back together, taking a page out of The Parent Trap, which is something her character has done many times since their split when she was a kid. In the meantime, Schmidt invites his cousin over and their egos collide into a competition of manliness, which Winston is more than happy to exploit for entertainment.
There are plenty of hilarious moments throughout the episode, like Nick realizing the story he’s writing is basically Twilight, and Jessica’s newest iteration of her parent trap plan yields some interesting results. In the end, though, the episode has its moments of tenderness and some life lessons that make their way into Jessica’s bubble of saccharine optimism. Like a nice Thanksgiving dish, it’s got all the right ingredients.
Bob’s Burgers has been going on for 11 seasons now and 9 of those episodes have had Thanksgiving episodes despite the characters never aging, which is troubling temporally if one things too much on it. This episode has everything that makes for a good Thanksgiving episode of Bob’s Burgers – humor, intrigue, and heart.
Bob’s weird obsession with Thanksgiving is on full display in this episode, once again, as seems to happen most years, placing his love for cooking the signature meal in dire straits. As Bob struggles to keep his beloved turkeys unspoiled long enough to be prepared for the holiday, a mystery is afoot as someone keeps putting them in the toilet overnight. As he purchases turkey after turkey, his rapport with the deli worker takes a turn as assumptions are made and we learn about a side of Bob that viewers were not previously aware of. In the meantime, Tina feels that she’s grown enough to sit at the adults’ table, but finds herself still in exile at the kids’ table. Between these two main plotlines in the story, viewers are treated to plenty of humorous moments with rest of the family as they play out their roles as agents of chaos.
In the end, though, the mystery is a vehicle for a heartwarming moment with Bob and Tina, taking the episode beyond simply being funny into one that has something tangibly human going on. It’s a remind that the holidays are a chance to appreciate loved ones, and that there’s room for vulnerability, even in a ridiculous and goofy cartoon.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is how the gang’s antics have utterly demolished the lives of those who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in their entropic gravitational pull. For what is currently their only Thanksgiving episode, It’s Always Sunny focuses on these side characters and the ways in which their lives have been corrupted by Sweet Dee and the gang.
Finding that their penchant for ruining peoples’ lives is preventing them from being able to participate normally in civilized society, the gang proposes inviting a group of people to Thanksgiving dinner who they have wronged and stand to benefit from being on better terms with. However, not being totally aware of that caveat, several other people whose lives the gang have negatively impacted are invited as well. Now, Dennis, Sweet Dee, Frank, Mac, and Charlie are in an apartment full of people who demand penance from them. Dennis acts in traditional Dennis fashion and tries to get a contract questionable in its legal binding signed by everybody while the rest of the gang acts in a fashion traditional with themselves and completely overblow metaphors and plan a series of weird rituals that involve wiping slates clean and burying hatchets.
Things turn predictably sour and the episode ends with the gang locking everybody in the apartment while it burns down. Once again another plan is squandered with no lessons learned and life just being a little worse for anyone involved, the classic structure for an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
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