Thanksgiving is a glut of food, pie, and more food. It’s a wonderful day where you can unleash your inner fat kid and just eat until you need to pass out. But when all that eating is done, the best thing you can do is book it away from your family gathering and watch some TV. Because nothing can help you get past the terribleness of your uncle’s politics, your sister’s drama, and your parents’ nosy questions you didn’t want to answer last year, either, like a full day of TV.
Gilmore Girls
If there’s one thing we know about the Hollow, the town loves a celebration. While season one sees Rory donning the pilgrim outfit to help the needy, it’s season 3’s “Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving” that gets all the turkey day love. The girls are booked to go to four separate Thanksgiving dinners, and even though they can put it away, that’s a lot of food. Highlights include Jackson’s friends deep frying everything they can get their hands on and a silly-drunk Sookie.
Friends
Like a lot of sitcoms, Friends genuinely enjoys the holiday-themed episode. Across the run of the show, Friends aired 10 Thanksgiving specials — that’s more episodes than all the kinds of pumpkin-based dessert in an extended family Thanksgiving potluck. Add in Chandler’s hatred of Thanksgiving, the ground beef trifle, Monica with a turkey on her head, Jennifer Aniston’s then-husband Brad Pitt making an appearance as a devout Rachel-hater, and all the wacky hijinks Friends was known for, and you’ve got a good chunk of your Thanksgiving binge already scheduled.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
What better way to explore the meaning of Thanksgiving than giving Xander mystical syphilis? Or watching Anya describe the holiday as a ritual sacrifice with pie? While most traditional Thanksgiving episodes are more prone to discussing the importance of gratitude and giving than the symptoms of syphilis, Buffy has always been anything but normal. “Pangs” features a guest appearance from Angel, a Spike whose bite is confined to his brand of snark, and a whole lot of Buffy stress-baking.
The West Wing
Look for a list of the smartest shows on television and you’ll find The West Wing every time. The West Wing gave us two Thanksgivings in its tenure, which include touching moments like President Bartlett gifting his family’s carving knife to Charlie, CJ trying to decide which turkey to give the presidential pardon and which to kill, and President Bartlett repeatedly calling the Butterball turkey helpline. Amid all that humor and silliness, we get a heart dose of Bartlett telling us what Thanksgiving truly means in his signature poignant and dignified way.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
If you like the kind of humor that’s full of silliness and wholesome stupidity, chances are you faithfully watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Jake may not enjoy turkey day, but the rest of the 99 do, and that leads to a lot of goofiness. Whether Amy is hosting Thanksgiving dinner (season one) or the entire crew is on lockdown due to a suspicious package (season two), you can count on the 99 to teach us a little something about togetherness.
How I Met Your Mother
HIMYM gave us a lot of gifts throughout its run, including a series finale we can all collectively hate more than Osama bin Laden. “Slapsgiving” follows one of the best plotlines across the series: the slap bet. While the episode also takes us through the fallout of the Ted/Robin breakup, let’s be honest: No one cares. The episode belongs to Barney and Marshall, as it should.
This Is Us
Is the only thing missing from your Thanksgiving a good cry? This is Us has you covered. The show is a tearjerker, and it’s no wonder they did a Thanksgiving episode; gratitude is one of the show’s themes. Flashback Pearson family has a disaster of a Thanksgiving, which Papa Jack, in all his grand-gesture wisdom, turns into the kind of day that reaffirms this family is one that genuinely cares about each other. Like a good parent, he’s always trying to teach his kids to be grateful for each other; he uses this unplanned disaster as a strategy for instilling thankfulness and family closeness in the kids. Present-day Pearsons may have their family drama, but they can always look back on their former selves and remember the emotionally mushy and tear-jerking lessons of being good to each other.
Simpsons
The first family of cartoons have an episode for just about every occasion, and Thanksgiving is no different. “Bart vs. Thanksgiving” is arguably the best episode in the group, and a relic of the time when the show was more about Bart than Homer. The premise is simple: Bart acts out on Thanksgiving, gets yelled at, and runs away. Throughout his adventures with homelessness over his day of being a runaway, he learns how much he loves his family. It’s a sweet episode and a good watch.
New Girl
It’s the height of awkward comedy: Jess hardly knows how to be a human, and she definitely doesn’t know how to cook. Evidence: thawing a turkey in the dryer. The good news is her date, Paul, is just as weird as her. And everybody knows the best Thanksgivings end with a dead body in the next room, followed by a trip to Best Buy for Black Friday.
Grey’s Anatomy
The crew of Grey-Sloan have taken on turkey day before, but the most iconic Thanksgiving is the first. Season 2’s “Thanks for the Memories” shows the gang in their early days, before they were brilliant surgeons, back when they were messy interns. Izzy tries to host Thanksgiving dinner despite everyone bailing on her; Burke teaches Izzy how to cook; Shephard struggles to be apart from Meredith; and George is the most awkward human on the planet. It’s classic Grey’s, and it’s the stuff that built the Shondaland empire.
The O.C.
What could be better than Thanksgiving with Sandy and Kirsten Cohen? How about moving stolen goods for your incarcerated brother? Or visiting the train wreck of your family with your incredible headcase of a girlfriend in tow? Welcome to a very Ryan Atwood Thanksgiving. The O.C. might be known as one of the most hilariously bad shows ever to grace TV, but we did get one of the best Andy Samberg SNL sketches of all time out of it. Protip: Want to enjoy The O.C.? Just skip all the scenes that don’t involve Seth or Sandy Cohen.