Fifteen Years at the Same Table: Thanksgiving Television, Ranked

Halloween is a genre, so it gets films. Thanksgiving is the same people at the same table every November, which is the premise of a sitcom. A film gets one evening with a family. A series gets fifteen years at the table, and sooner or later it sets a place for the holiday. Seasons, networks and air dates here are from each episode’s encyclopedia entry, checked against a second episode guide.

The ten

1. 1

   Turkeys Away 1978

   WKRP in Cincinnati · CBS · season 1, episode 7

   Why did the station’s Thanksgiving promotion go so badly? It was a plan that never really took off.

2. 2

   Thanksgiving Orphans 1986

   Cheers · NBC · season 5, episode 9

   Why did dinner at Carla’s end in a food fight? Orphans, every one of them, and nobody there to tell them to stop.

3. 3

   A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving 1973

   Peanuts · CBS · special

   Who invited Peppermint Patty? Peppermint Patty. Dinner was toast, popcorn, pretzels and jelly beans, and so, for a while, was Charlie Brown.

4. 4

   Bart vs. Thanksgiving 1990

   The Simpsons · Fox · season 2, episode 7

   Lisa made a centrepiece to honour every guest; Bart put it in the fireplace, and the fire did the rest.

5. 5

   Shibboleth 2000

   The West Wing · NBC · season 2, episode 8

   Why did the President have to choose between two turkeys? Because the White House always brings an understudy.

6. 6

   The Mom & Pop Store 1994

   Seinfeld · NBC · season 6, episode 8

   Did the convertible really belong to Jon Voight? George says so, and George has never once been wrong about George.

7. 7

   Thanksgiving 2017

   Master of None · Netflix · season 2, episode 8

   When did Netflix release its Thanksgiving episode? The twelfth of May, which is either very late or very early, depending on your relatives.

8. 8

   The One with All the Thanksgivings 1998

   Friends · NBC · season 5, episode 8

   How do you win back a man who has just learned what you did to his toe? Wear the turkey. It works once.

9. 9

   Slapsgiving 2007

   How I Met Your Mother · CBS · season 3, episode 9

   Why did Marshall count down to the slap all day? Revenge is a dish best served on a public holiday.

10. 10

    Pangs 1999

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer · The WB · season 4, episode 8

    Why was Spike tied to a chair for dinner? He was the one guest everyone agreed should stay.

For the table

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Two series could have filled the ten alone. Friends made nine Thanksgiving episodes, or ten if you count the one about Mockolate, which I do not. Bob’s Burgers has come back to the holiday most Novembers since its third season. How I Met Your Mother turned Slapsgiving into a trilogy, and the third part aired in January, which is a long time to hold a slap.

The films, all of them

Thanksgiving’s cinema fits on one page, so here is the page. Ratings are the Motion Picture Association’s, from its register at filmratings.com.

The four

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). R. The certificate gives no reason. Anyone who has stood at the rental-car desk with Steve Martin can supply one. New York to Chicago by Thursday, using everything in the title.

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). PG-13. Two years in one family, told from one Thanksgiving dinner to another, which is how most families keep time anyway.

Home for the Holidays (1995). PG-13, “for thematic material, language and brief drug use.” Jodie Foster directs a Thanksgiving in Baltimore. The turkey ends up on a sister.

The Ice Storm (1997). R. Thanksgiving weekend, 1973, in Connecticut. The weather is the warmest thing in it.

Set at Thanksgiving, and staying there

Pieces of April (2003). PG-13. April invites the family she does not speak to, and her oven breaks. The neighbours help, which is more than the family was planning to.

What’s Cooking? (2000). PG-13. Gurinder Chadha’s four families in Los Angeles, one holiday, four ways to cook it. Each household is certain its way is the way.

Scent of a Woman (1992). R, “for language.” A scholarship student takes a job over Thanksgiving weekend to pay for his flight home at Christmas. The job is Al Pacino.

Krisha (2015). R. A woman comes back to her family for Thanksgiving after years away. Trey Edward Shults shot it in nine days in his parents’ house, with his aunt in the title role, which is one way to get everyone round.

The House of Yes (1997). R. Thanksgiving, 1983, outside Washington. A son brings his fiancée home to meet the family. She should have asked to meet them first.

Dutch (1991). PG-13. John Hughes’s second Thanksgiving film about getting someone home to Chicago. This time the passenger is a boy from a school in Georgia, and he does not want to go.

Son in Law (1993). PG-13, “for elements of sensuality.” A student brings her residence adviser home to a South Dakota farm for the holiday. The board found elements of sensuality. I found Pauly Shore.

For the youngest at the table

Free Birds (2013). PG, “for some action/peril and rude humor.” A pardoned turkey goes back to the first Thanksgiving to get turkey off the menu. The board’s record also carries it as “Time Turkeys.” The real pardoned turkeys have their own notices, and none of them got a time machine.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973). Television, so unrated, and already in the ten. It is the only title on both lists.

A good scene, filed elsewhere

Each of these has a Thanksgiving in it and belongs to another jurisdiction.

Addams Family Values (1993). PG-13, “for macabre humor.” The summer-camp pageant of the first Thanksgiving, in which Wednesday is cast as Pocahontas and departs from the script. Jurisdiction: the coven register.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Unrated. The board began in 1968, and the PG on its register belongs to the 1994 remake. It opens at the Macy’s parade, shot at the real one in 1946 with nine cameras and no second takes. Jurisdiction: Christmas, which begins where the parade ends.

Alice’s Restaurant (1969). GP, a rating the board has since retired. Thanksgiving dinner, then a trip to the town dump, which is closed for the holiday. Jurisdiction: littering.

Rocky (1976). PG. Paulie throws the turkey into the alley, and Rocky takes Adrian to an ice rink that has already closed. He never puts on skates. He knows what he is good at. Jurisdiction: boxing.

Spider-Man (2002). PG-13, “for stylized violence and action.” Aunt May’s Thanksgiving dinner, at which Norman Osborn notices a fresh wound on Peter and works out who he is. Jurisdiction: the rest of the trilogy.

Excluded

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving (2023) is rated R “for strong bloody horror violence and gore, pervasive language and some sexual material.” It carves the wrong thing.