I am of the humble opinion that one of the greatest gifts television has given us is the tradition of the Thanksgiving episode. Nothing makes a TV fan feel more seen—or, alternately, more grateful to not feel seen at all—than witnessing the various calamities, misunderstandings, hijinks, and disasters that befall the characters on their favorite shows as they attempt to pull off a memorable holiday dinner. These episodes are therapy by way of the small screen. That the gut-busting laughs are often accompanied by a few tears? Well, that’s Thanksgiving for you.
In attempting to make a TV guide to the best Thanksgiving episodes, I realized that there are too many of them to choose from—more options than there are pies at my family’s dessert table. You can’t have them all in one sitting (trust me, I’ve tried), so instead I curated my favorite selections. There are definitely more out there that I love, and I’m sure there’s more that you love that I didn’t include. But this is a list of 10 of my favorites, the ones that I try to revisit every year.
Friends - “The One With All the Thanksgivings”
Streaming on Max
For a certain generation, “Thanksgiving episode” is synonymous with Friends, which turned its annual Turkey Day-themed outing into a pop-culture tradition. It’s hard to pick a favorite outing. “The One With Rachel’s Other Sister” featured Christina Applegate, giving one of the series’ best guest-acting performances. “The One With the Rumor” featured Brad Pitt…giving one of the series’ best guest-acting performances. Jennifer Aniston’s line delivery while describing how she made her dessert trifle—beef sauteed with peas and onions—kills me in “The One Where Ross Got High,” and “The One With the Football” is the episode that made me fall in love with Friends. But, c’mon. “The One With All the Thanksgivings” takes the prize (the Geller Cup?) for the image of Monica dancing with a turkey on her head. Hang it in the Louvre.
Will & Grace - “Homo for the Holidays”
Streaming on Hulu
The Will & Grace Season 1 episode “Homo for the Holidays” manages to pack all the disparate, supercharged emotions of a family holiday into one frenzied half hour. Will and Grace invite Jack’s mother to Thanksgiving dinner, only to learn that Jack never came out to her. What ensues is Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, and Megan Mullally at the top of their comedic games while their characters tease Jack, and Sean Hayes getting to reveal the tenderness and insecurity beneath Jack’s hilarious preening and clowning. Messing and Mullally doing a bit where they argue over who was Jack’s better fake girlfriend is golden, while McCormack and Hayes’ heart-to-heart will make you cry.
The West Wing - “Shibboleth”
Streaming on Max
The best episodes of The West Wing turned the White House into a playground for the show’s cast to let their respectives quirks fly, set against a backdrop of provocative policy crises that typically have an undercurrent of stirring emotion to them. In Season 2, “Shibboleth” found President Bartlett navigating a delicate situation when Chinese refugees arrive in California seeking asylum on the eve of Thanksgiving, while C.J. is tortured over the decision of which of two turkeys will receive the presidential pardon. The dance between comedy and pathos continues as Josh and Sam assert their masculinity by insisting on watching football, Toby and Bartlett engage in a conversation about prayer in school, and Charlie is sent on a mission to find the perfect carving knife.
Gilmore Girls - “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving”
Streaming on Netflix
“Main characters are forced to go to multiple Thanksgivings and joke about pacing themselves through how much food they’re going to eat” is a tried-and-true TV holiday episode formula. Gilmore Girls perfected it in the Season 3 episode “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” where even the notoriously insatiable lead Gilmores’ appetites are tested when they travel to four Thanksgiving dinners. The supporting cast’s comedy bonafides are on proud display—Melissa McCarthy’s Sookie drinking to distract from her horror that her husband is deep-frying their turkey is classic—but relationship-testing emotional truths are also revealed. In this case, Lorelai learns that Rory has applied to other colleges, not just Rory’s dream school, Harvard. (In the context of the series, this is huge! I swear!)
Master of None - “Thanksgiving”
Streaming on Netflix
With “Thanksgiving,” from Season 2 of Master of None, Lena Waithe became the first Black woman to win the Emmy Award for comedy writing. But it made history in other ways, too: It will go down not only as one of the best episodes of Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series, but one of the greatest episodes of any series in the last 10 years. “Thanksgiving” follows Ansari’s Dev, who has been a fly on the wall at Thanksgivings with Denise (Waithe) over the years. This sets the stage for a brutal, funny, and moving time lapse of Denise and her family coping with sexuality, race, and identity over the course of decades. Angela Bassett is phenomenal (duh) playing Denise’s mom, giving nuance and dignity to her own journey.
Gossip Girl - “Blair Waldorf Must Pie!”
Streaming on Roku
A revisit of Gossip Girl’s Season 1 Thanksgiving episode, “Blair Waldorf Must Pie!,” is a healthy tradition: a sobering reminder that, as much drama as you might think goes down at your family holiday, things could always be wilder. The episode embraces all meanings of the word “delicious,” with the series at its peak soap-opera powers. Romantic feuds lead to a carousel of dinner invites, disinvites, grand gestures, and, eventually, the reveal of shocking family secrets.
Hey Arnold! - “Arnold’s Thanksgiving”
Streaming on Paramount+
We’re not saying that our emotions are especially heightened and brittle during the holidays; however, a special Thanksgiving episode of a late-’90s Nickelodeon cartoon does make us misty-eyed. In Season 3’s “Arnold’s Thanksgiving,” typical adversaries Arnold and Helga both are exasperated by their respective families’ quirky, hard-to-deal with holiday traditions, each yearning for the utopian version of Thanksgiving that they keep hearing about. When they both run away from home during dinner, they have a rude awakening to the fact that their family’s strange habits could be much worse. Moreover, they realize that those traditions are born out of love. It’s really so sweet—and eye-opening, no matter what age you are when you watch.
Cheers - “Thanksgiving Orphans”
Streaming on Paramount+
Because they have no one else to spend the holiday with, the Cheers bar patrons and workers opt to have dinner with each other. As Diane, wearing a pilgrim costume, busies herself in the kitchen, the “Thanksgiving Orphans,” as the episode’s title calls them, grow impatient waiting for their food—which is taking forever to cook. The makeshift family’s crankiness devolves into a full-on foodfight. Just as Diane is about to blow a gasket at the juvenile behavior—would you look at that?—the turkey’s ready. It’s Cheers at its best.
Orange Is the New Black - “Fucksgiving”
Streaming on Netflix
While TV’s Thanksgiving episode tradition is dominated by comedies, some of TV’s best drama series have given them a go; Succession, The Sopranos, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer all have memorable outings, as does, obviously The West Wing, as mentioned above. But my favorite is Orange Is the New Black’s Season 1 standout, “Fucksgiving.” It was one of the series’ most thrilling episodes: Piper, quite harrowingly, gets sent to the SHU, missing her dinner with her husband, Larry; Mendez and Red have an epic showdown; and Piper and Alex finally (re)consummate their relationship. Having all this go down against the backdrop of our most relatable holiday was a clever way to drive home the extreme circumstances these characters are living under.
Seinfeld - “The Mom and Pop Store”
Streaming on Hulu
Season 6’s “The Mom and Pop Store” is one of the most densely plotted episodes of Seinfeld. When the various threads all coalesce in disaster by the half hour’s end, the calamity elicits pure, hysterical delight. It involves stolen sneakers, a pair of cowboy boots, Jon Voight’s car, the scarcity of dentists on holidays, and the Woody Woodpecker balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That it all comes together is quintessential Seinfeld; that it is all so overly complicated and ludicrous is quintessential Thanksgiving.
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