Thanksgiving. Let’s see. Eat way too much, expect that every word out of your mouth is going to be judged by the fam you only see a few times a year, and pretend nonetheless that you are actually normal and truly belong.
Oh, wait, maybe that’s just me.
Good thing I’m a writer. Good thing other people are writers, too. Because they tell the stories of non-normalcy out of principal. And then I laugh and relax and am truly grateful.
Here are my top five favorite Thanksgiving scenes where things just don’t go as planned.
Smallville, Season 10, “Ambush”
“You live in your mother’s house and you work in a basement, is that correct?”
Nothing like a righteous takedown by your potential father-in-law.
Lois and Clark are trying to have a nice quiet steamy lovey-dovey Thanksgiving at the farmhouse and then they get ambushed by Lois’ domineering father and pesky and overly flirtatious younger sister. Between the sister trying to get Clark into a compromising situation, the overbearing General Lane getting all up in Clark’s business, and other plot complications such as the Vigilante Registration Act and Rick Flagg with the Suicide Squad busting into town, this is not a nice quiet Thanksgiving.
The Carrie Diaries, Season 1, “Endgame”
“How was dinner at Walt’s?”
“The food inedible and the mood repressed. How was here?”
“Definitely not repressed.”
Before she was to become the woman who used her oven for storage, Carrie Bradshaw was a teenager trying to make the perfect Thanksgiving dinner for her family. But after her bratty, goth-posing younger sister destroys all the recipe cards, Carrie has to wing it, and the results are not pretty. The epic gross-out over having to remove the neck and giblets is all too relatable–my co-workers were just lamenting this aspect of turkey prep the other day. And the rapid-fire mishaps that culminate in Carrie spewing a verbal meltdown to the guests, right before the lights go out, are hilarious and truly get at the hysteria that exists under the surface when it comes to the holidays.
Supergirl, Season 1, “Livewire”
“I always work on Thanksgivings, thank you very much. I know it probably seems sad to you, but I love it. Carter is with his dad. My mother won’t eat a flightless bird, and I am not pulled in 400 different directions by employees who need constant wet nursing.” Media mogul and pretty much all around awesome boss woman Cat Grant is the only one who’s got the right idea for Thanksgiving.
Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl, kindly invites her orphaned friend Winn (and by orphaned, I mean his dad is in prison, which is not a whole lot better) over for Thanksgiving with her mom and her sister. But after her sister gets too drunk, fights with the mom at the dinner table, and storms out the door, I’m pretty sure Winn was kind of wishing that he’d just stuck to his original plan, which was to get Thai food and binge-watch Orphan Black.
Lipstick Jungle, Season 2, “Thanksgiving”
“No, you don’t understand. I would have to miss Wendy’s Thanksgiving dinner. It’s fantastic, I’ll do it.” That’s what Victory Ford tells a prospective new client who’s in a rush to get a wedding dress custom designed for his fiancée.
Victory has good reason to not want to go to the aforementioned dinner–she’s just been dumped by the love of her life and she will be the only single woman at the gathering. Enough to make you want to drown yourself in the spiced rum. When the big TDay comes around, though, things don’t turn out so great for Victory’s best friends Wendy and Nico, either. Nico gets stuck taking care of the baby born by her ex-husband’s mistress, and Wendy has to prepare the big dinner solo after her husband takes off to comfort his very pretty agent whose dog has died. By the time the coconut milk and rum “coquitos” show up, everyone’s holding out a big glass.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Book
“First, I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other. Second, the fights are always the same.”
Thanksgivings are all the same for Charlie. The grandfather insults everyone and everything, including the aunt’s cooking. The aunt locks herself in the bathroom to cry and then everyone else has to go outside to the bushes to take a piss.
The one Thanksgiving that is actually different is the one where the grandfather cries.
Shannon Yvonne Moreau 