It’s Thanksgiving week and, for some of us, that means stressing out over making the biggest meal of the year and/or trying not to fret about what might happen when you mix an unpredictable group of friends and family members, plus adult beverages, with discussions about the Occupy Wall Street protests or the collapse of the Super Committee, together over a Thanksgiving meal.
Tick . . . Tick . . . Boom.
In honor of screwed up American Thanksgiving get-togethers everywhere, I decided to feature some of my favorite TV show families in my Pop Culture column this week.
Among the Thanksgiving episodes that are highlighted:
The awkwardness of Parenthood’s Thanksgiving gathering when Adam and Sarah’s boss (Billy Baldwin) -- who’d forced Adam to fire people then sold the company -- showed up at the big, holiday dinner.
The first Party of Five Thanksgiving that the Salinger orphans had without their parents after they were killed by a drunk driver. Said drunk driver happened to be released from prison a week before Thanksgiving.
The Middle’s forced “happy family” Thanksgiving dinner where Frankie wanted everyone to be loving and emotionally close to one another, even though her husband Mike didn’t even know that his father had just had hip surgery and didn’t tell anyone, or that his brother’s house had burned down. (This week’s new Thanksgiving episode promises another satirical look at the “traditional” family holiday.)
Michael and Hope Steadman’s lousy first Thanksgiving as parents on thirtysomething when Hope wanted to skip the festivities in order to spend a quiet weekend but Michael wanted the whole gang to gather at the Steadman homestead.
Once and Again’s three Thanksgiving episodes, where nothing ever went quite right, despite the valiant efforts of the main character Lily Manning (Sela Ward).
Image credit: AMC
Mad Men’s dreadful scene last year when Betty, while trying to impress her new mother-in-law, shoved a forkful of sweet potato into her daughter’s mouth to prove that Sally liked them, only to have Sally spit them back onto her plate in dramatic fashion.
(Speaking of Mad Men, the show’s creator has revealed to Grantland how he plans to conclude this amazing series: In present day with Don Draper in his 80s. Poor Jon Hamm. He’s going to be J. Edgar-ized like Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar.)
In addition to the new Middle Thanksgiving episode on Wednesday night, watch for Modern Family’s first stab at Thanksgiving humor.
What are your favorite, family-centric Thanksgiving episodes?
Two weeks from now, most of us will be attending or hosting Thanksgiving dinners, mixing all manner of family and friends, including some folks who shouldn't be combined regardless of how much wine is served with dinner. In anticipation of this uniquely American holiday, my mind, of course, turned to TV and some of the Thanksgiving episodes from my favorite TV shows.
For me, THE quintessential Thanksgiving TV episode has to be the Cheers one which ended in a messy food fight with cranberry sauce dripping off of Diane Chambers’ face and splattered across her over-the-top, Pilgrim outfit. Later, just as viewers were about to see what Norm’s wife Vera looked like, she got clobbered in the face with a pie thrown, ironically, by Diane. Who isn’t tempted to start a food fight on Thanksgiving from time to time?
WKRP: The other “classic” Thanksgiving episode is, without question, the WKRP turkey drop one. Even though I was a kid when I saw this in repeats, I still remember practically every detail:
The location was the Pine Dale Shopping Center. Les Nesman was on the scene declaring that “the greatest turkey event in Thanksgiving Day history” was about to happen. Then the people and cars in the shopping plaza's parking lot were bombarded via helicopter with non-flying live turkeys. The episode was capped by a rumpled, traumatized Mr. Carlson saying, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Mad About You: Jamie and Paul Buchman hosted their first Thanksgiving dinner for their parents, family and friends as they were assaulted with an array of pointed darts of passive aggression coming at them from all angles as they tried to awkwardly blend the styles and traditions of the two families. For example, when Jamie and Paul said the dinner would be “buffet style,” their parents scoffed and opted to go “another way” when they weren't in the room, setting the table more traditionally. Paul's father insisted that there be canned cranberry sauce (as opposed to the homemade sauce Jamie was making). Paul's mother brought a sweet potato dish and said the one that Jamie made -- the one without the marshmallows -- could be stowed away in the freezer. The clincher was when the dog had hopped up on the counter and ate the turkey they'd prepared.
Image credit: AMC via Best Television Shows
Once and Again: This show, starring Sela Ward, focused on the impact of divorce on families with children. In its first season, Ward’s not-quite-divorced-yet Lily had Thanksgiving dinner at her house with her kids, her sister and her parents, who brought with them her estranged husband Jake -- whom Lily had explicitly NOT invited -- while her boyfriend Rick was lurking outside the house on the sidewalk waiting for her to come out. Rick appeared miserably lonely while his own children were spending the day at his ex-wife’s house, where she'd invited colleagues from work and her current boyfriend to spend the day. There was fighting and screaming and some lies were tossed about . . . just your garden variety American Thanksgiving.
Mad Men: The first episode of the fourth season, which recently concluded, contained what’s soon to be a classic Thanksgiving scene: Betty Draper Francis forced her daughter Sally to eat some of Betty's new mother-in-law’s sweet potatoes, which Sally promptly spat out onto her plate (gagged on them, really). Betty dragged Sally out of the room while Sally yelled from off camera for her mother to stop pinching her. Meanwhile the deeply depressed Don was in his darkened apartment insisting that the prostitute he hired repeatedly hit him in the face. (Jezebel has a good video clip – second video down -- of the scene in question.)
Gilmore Girls: Remember the year when Lorelai and Rory just could not say, “No” to Luke, the Kims, Sookie or Richard and Emily and wound up attending four Thanksgiving dinners in one day? The odd collection of dinners included one tofurkey, one deep fried turkey, an argument about vases and flowers followed by stilted conversation and an openly hostile shouting match held across a well appointed table.
thirtysomething: In season one, Hope was reluctant to host Thanksgiving dinner for all their friends. She wanted to spend a quiet holiday with just her, Michael and their baby. But Michael persisted and whined that they should have a Thanksgiving dinner. The compromise was that Hope would allow him to have the dinner, but she was going to do something else, like sort through photos. Then Michael and the baby got sick, quickly followed by Hope. However their friends pulled together, something, kind of -- Elliot and Nancy took their kids out for fast food -- and wound up piling into Hope’s bed at the end of the night, one big, happy, messy, sick family.
Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving TV episode? Image credit: AMC via Best Television Shows.
