Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Hear Here!

Brothatime!! and I love Thamksgiving-centric sitcom episodes; the only problem is there are so few of them. Which, finally, someone else is bitching about:

Thanksgiving’s pop culture footprint is relatively small. The other holiday seasons, both Winter and Spooky, have their own movie genre with enough films to fulfill a month of marathons. It’s even become a regular thing in our TV programming to have holiday themed episodes year after year. While Thanksgiving isn’t likely to produce a robust genre of sorts around it as far as movies go, it’s weirdly ignored on TV as well.There’s even more Halloween-centric cooking shows than Thanksgiving, which makes zero sense. Hollywood can really make up for lost time and rectify this problem with one of its most venerable products: the sitcom.

Obviously there are the classic Cheers and Frasier Thanksgiving episodes, and the WKRP in Cincinatti one should be a museum as the gold standard. I appreciate that Friends was so dedicated to the holiday, but I'll probably never watch a single episode ever again. I have no possible guess as to why no other show has really tried to corner the market on Thanksgiving, much like I've never understood why a cast member on SNL has never decided to "own" the notoriously crappy 12:55pm-1:00am slot of which the expectations are nil.

My hidden gem? Happy Days' season 6 episode, The First Thanksgiving. Fucking laugh-out-loud funny. Overlooked in the canon, which you should remedy immediately - unfortunately it's not streaming anywhere and the best I can do is this clip, but maybe get off your own lazy ass and dig up the whole thing via YuoTube?

You're welcome, Earth!

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