Across decades of history, TV has amassed a pretty solid repertoire of interesting Thanksgiving episodes. Not every TV show has tackled the holiday, and even fewer have tackled it well. Even so, if you’re looking for great episodes of TV to get you in the mood for the holiday, or to help you wind down after celebrating, you’ve come to exactly the right place.
This list has everything from wholesome reminders of why we give thanks to slightly more bittersweet outings about how complicated family can be.
10. Thanksgiving (New Girl)
Many of the entries on this list are heartwarming odes to the power of friendship and family, but Thanksgiving earned its spot on this list simply because it was too funny to leave off of it.
Following Jess as she attempts to woo Paul, the music teacher at her school, over the friend group’s Thanksgiving dinner, Thanksgiving was one of the first episodes to show us what this show could be at its very best. New Girl was always deeply silly, and Thanksgiving may be one of its very silliest episodes.
9. A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving (Gilmore Girls)
Gilmore Girls at its best effortlessly combined witty banter with compelling family drama, and rarely have they pulled that off better than in this season 3 Thanksgiving episode. In the episode, the girls have to attend four separate Thanksgiving meals, and each one comes rife with so many complications that actually eating the food becomes the least of their problems. The whole affair culminates with the reveal that Rory applied to Yale without telling her mother, a revelation that creates a rift between the two of them that will have ramifications on the rest of the season.
8. I Went to Market (Succession)
Succession knew better than any show on TV how to turn a family gathering into an all-out bloodbath, and it used that skill to effect in I Went to Market. In the episode, we see Logan back at full strength, and the confrontation between him and Kendall appears to begin inevitable.
Arguably, this was the episode where the show most firmly found its footing, allowing us to understand how terrible this family really was. Most Thanksgiving episodes at least resolve in some sort of reconciliation, but that was never really Succession‘s vibe.
7. Shibboleth (The West Wing)
As is the case in the real world, the business of running a country doesn’t really slow down all that much during the holidays. In Shibboleth, the president and his staff debate the merits of allowing Chinese Christian refugees to enter the country, even as preparations are made for many of the dumber Thanksgiving traditions.
At its very best, The West Wing was a show about the power and stupidity of being president, and Shibboleth gets that balance perfect, and also provides a neat metaphor for what the holiday was all about to begin with.
6. Lowkey Thankful (Insecure)
One of the very best episodes of Insecure, Lowkey Thankful follows all of the show’s central characters as they celebrate the holiday. Ultimately, the episode is about facing the world’s expectations for you and deciding to go your own way in spite of them.
Lawrence, a character who was often deeply unpopular with the show’s fans, is deployed perfectly here, as are the entire rest of the cast. Lowkey Thankful is a compassionate, compelling episode, and that’s what earned it this spot on our list.
5. The One With All the Thanksgivings (Friends)
Friends‘ Thanksgiving episodes were always memorable, and The One With All the Thanksgiving may be the show’s very best. Instead of focusing on the events of a single Thanksgiving, the episode allows the gang to reminisce about the worst Thanksgiving each of them had.
This gives us everything from Joey getting his head stuck in a raw turkey to Monica accidentally cutting Chandler’s toe off after he called her fat when they first met. It’s an episode jam-packed with jokes and one of the show’s very best episodes.
4. Thanksgiving Orphans (Cheers)
Like every great sitcom, Cheers was often about the meaning of found family. Thanksgiving Orphans drives that point home exceptionally well, following the show’s core cast as they all go to Carla’s house for Thanksgiving. What everyone remembers about this episode, though, is the way it eventually devolves into a food fight after the turkey thaws too slowly.
The joyous mess of the food fight is one of the quintessential Cheers images, and it also embodies everything the show was at its very best. Wild, hilarious, but somehow wholesome at the same time.
3. Turkeys Away (WKRP in Cincinnati)
Perhaps the single funniest episode of TV ever made, WKRP in Cincinnati may not be a show that many younger audiences are acquainted with, which is a real shame. The show was a sitcom following a local radio station, and the episode’s main plot involves a promotional stunt gone horribly wrong.
We’ll leave the specifics of what happens in the episode for viewers to discover, but suffice it to say that the episode’s final line, “God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly,” is an all-time great punchline.
2. Thanksgiving (Master of None)
Master of None was far from perfect, but Thanksgiving may be its very best episode. The episode follows Dev throughout the years as he celebrates the holiday with Denise’s family because his doesn’t celebrate it.
Although Dev is our way into the episode, its focus is squarely on Denise, specifically on her struggle to come out to her family, and their gradual acceptance of her for who she is. It’s a moving, thoughtful episode that doesn’t offer any easy answers, and is all the better for its complexity.
1. The Wheel (Mad Men)
One of the hallmarks of Mad Men was that, at its best, it was the most quietly devastating show on TV. The Wheel was the pinnacle of that approach and the culmination of the show’s extraordinary first season.
What everyone remembers from The Wheel is the pitch that Don gives near the end of the episode about a photo carousel in which he discusses the way the past shapes our present, and The Wheel is really about what that means. It’s an episode in which major revelations are made, but what really makes it great is the way the characters seek, whenever possible, to run from their past almost as soon as it’s gone by.
