Thanksgiving TV nostalgia

To this day, we still don't have a go-to Thanksgiving movie that millions of people watch every year...  and it seems like every year, it becomes more of a footnote forced to linger in the shadow of Christmas commercialism.

All of this coming from someone who wrote an essay in 6th grade English against having Thanksgiving...
It was an assignment where we had to write a persuasive essay either supporting or not supporting Thanksgiving. I don't know how it broke down in my class, but I did mine not supporting Thanksgiving because I simply didn't enjoy it. The only food I liked was turkey. Stuffing and cranberry sauce was gross. I didn't like the long car ride to Grandma's. 
I remember very vividly having trouble with this assignment because when we swapped them for peer reviews, my partner essentially ratted me out to my teacher, saying my essay was crap. And I was told my reasoning wasn't good enough and I had to rewrite it. So I instead wrote it on supporting Thanksgiving and I think I aced it.

Now, I won't say I've turned over a new leaf and it's now my favorite holiday of the year. But I certainly don't hate it as much as I did as a kid. I still don't like canned cranberry sauce, but I do like stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce (especially when it's made with some sort of liquor). And of course pie. Gotta love pie.  And long car rides got easier once I got my CD player so I could listen to my own music.

I also don't like being forced to get excited about Christmas before I'm ready for it.
Because believe it or not, there can be such a thing as too much Christmas. I love Christmas, but my impression is that we overdo it, you just get sick of everything to do with it and you won't appreciate it nearly as much as you should. 

***

Enough about me, though. 

The only Thanksgiving movies I'm aware of are "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" (which it ultimately leads to John Candy spending the holiday with Steve Martin and his family after an insane road trip) and "Home for the Holidays" (the Jodie Foster film where Robert Downey Jr. was supposedly high while shooting it and he oddly enough played the most normal person in that dysfunctional family).
The former might be considered a cult classic in some circles, but I don't think either one is enjoyed as a tradition nearly as much as the Macy's parade or the football games. 

But there are some notable Thanksgiving episodes and specials that I could bring up.

A Garfield Thanksgiving

I didn't know this existed until I asked my grandma to get the new DVD set that included the Christmas special. The Christmas special used to be on TV all the time, but in recent years, not so much. 
We've since watched the Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas specials every year.

The one kinda nice thing about this special is that there's not too many songs. I think there's just the one during the opening credits sequence and when everyone's sitting down to dinner. That's one thing that separates it from the other two. 

Garfield has to go to the vet and Dr. Liz tells John that Garfield needs to go on a diet. Something Garfield is definitely not ok with. There's some funny jokes at his expense, like Odie following him with a whistle and blowing it when he's about to blow his diet. And the scale addressing him as Orson Welles. During this scene, Garfield makes a comment like "it's not like I'm that overweight. I can still see my feet." I think I have a comic book called "Garfield can't see his feet" and that's a little reference to that. And of course when Garfield smashes the scale, its final word is "Rosebud."

Meanwhile, John succeeds in asking Dr. Liz out on a date, which will be Thanksgiving dinner. He gets her to agree when he holds his breath during the appointment and passes out. When he asks her, "you mean you will?," she comebacks with "I can't stand to see a dumb animal suffer." That's a sick burn right there!

But John, being the loveable dork that he is, doesn't know the first thing about Thanksgiving. He takes out the frozen turkey the day of, slathers butter all over HIS skin (it's supposed to be the turkey's) and puts it in the oven at 500°. He also gets dressed up and answers the door without wearing pants.

Liz: Nice boxer shorts
John: Thanks for telling me I wasn't wearing pants, Garfield
Garfield: oh sure, blame the pet... 

Liz tells Garfield he can go off the diet because he's acting out of sorts. But then there's a greater urgency to save dinner. So Garfield convinces John to invite Grandma over to make it. She's over there in two seconds and works her magic.

Garfield sums it up perfectly: "Grandma, I love you. Don't ever leave us."

Seriously, the Grandma in Garfield is the coolest Grandma ever. 

John keeps Liz distracted by giving her a long history lesson about Thanksgiving. How it came to be a federal holiday. How the Canadians celebrate it on the second Monday in October. After they sit down for dinner and she leaves satisfied, she says next time she'll come by before dinner but after the history lesson. 

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

This is probably the one classic most people watch every year... at least they used to be before Apple+ got the rights to all the Charlie Brown stuff...

Charlie Brown and Sally have plans to go to their grandma's for Thanksgiving. But Peppermint Patty comes along and throws a massive wrench into the works. She kinda invites herself (and a bunch of other people) over to Thanksgiving at his house and because he can't get a word in, he's forced to compensate for that. 

Snoopy makes a dinner of toast, popcorn and jellybeans. He and Woodstock set up a table outside with mismatched chairs. Not bad for something that got thrown together at the last minute. But then Peppermint Patty throws a tantrum, complaining that there's none of the food a normal Thanksgiving dinner would have. Charlie Brown is very upset about this and goes back in the house. Marcie has to convince her that she was wrong to invite herself over and that Charlie Brown did the best he could despite all this. 

In the end, everyone goes to Charlie Brown's grandma's for a real dinner. They sing "To Grandmother's House we go." Charlie Brown then says, "there's only one thing wrong with that... my grandmother lives in a condominum." 
And Snoopy reveals he'd been holding out on the others and he has a proper Thanksgiving with Woodstock. He brings out a turkey big enough for two of them. Which makes us cry out, "Woodstock's a cannibal!"

...ok, canaries and turkeys really aren't relate, but it's still something my sister and I like to joke about every year. 

On the second half hour on TV, they also show the story of the pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower. All of the adults and some of the characters deal with sea sickness while coming over on the ship. And it shows Lucy, Charlie Brown, Linus and the others organizing efforts to get food and shelter once they arrive in the New World. They also meet the Native Americans, including Squanto, who can speaks perfect English and teaches them how to live off the land. 
Some people nowadays will probably agree that this wasn't how the first Thanksgiving came to be, but it's how a lot of kids learned about it. I want to say I was one of them, but I saw this special long after I learned about it in school as a kid.  

This is Us

I'm only gonna talk about the first Pearson Thanksgiving episode here. I'd seen it more than once and it's a pretty cool episode. With a lot of drama, of course, but it's still a big standout in the series for me.

This is the episode where Randall finds out that his mom knew his birthfather, William, and had kept that truth from him for decades. All of this kinda blows up at the dinner table with only a few minutes left in the episode. What makes it even more dramatic is that William has stage four cancer and it's made Randall's time with him even shorter.
The timing's also unfortunate because this is Randall's favorite holiday. It was so fun seeing him in the kitchen, doing all the cooking and getting all the food set up. I think he even uses food to make a replica of the Steelers football stadium. 

We also learn about the Pearson Thanksgiving traditions and how they came to be. 
There's a series of flashbacks where Jack, Rebecca and the kids are driving to Grandma's and they have all kinds of mishaps on the way. Randall's not thrilled about going because Grandma always manages to make him feel left out. While talking pictures, she insists "let's take another, but this time with just the twins." And Rebecca's dreading it because her mom is always judging her food and her parenting skills.
So it's almost lucky for them that they had car trouble and had to bunk out in a motel for a while. The only entertainment available is a VHS of "Policy Academy" and their Thanksgiving dinner involves hot dogs that they roast over the furnace. Then after being away for a hot minute, Jack comes back wearing a pilgrim hat and calls himself Pilgrim Rick and creates a fun adventure for everyone. And Rebecca calls her mom saying that they're not coming, something everyone is absolutely thrilled about. 

So this is why they watch Police Academy every year and Kevin and Randall take turns being Pilgrim Rick. Their new stepdad, Miguel, wants to be part of this tradition and up until the end of the episode, Kevin resists it because this was a Pearson thing and he still considers Miguel an outsider. 

But in the end, he lets Miguel take on the role and this officially makes him a part of the family. 
In the series as a whole, that's also a big step because the in-laws and boyfriend/girlfriends get together at a bar in one episode and they talk about how they still feel like outsiders. That there are Pearson family things they're still not a part of. They were a solid family unit when Jack was still alive, but once he passed away, there was a special bond Rebecca had with the three kids where they didn't want to let their walls down for anyone outside of the family. 

Hey Arnold Thanksgiving

I think this is the only Nicktoon that got a proper Thanksgiving special... so it's worth going back to it just for that... and the Christmas special, but that'll be another time with many others. 

Mr. Simmons directs a little pageant where Arnold, Helga, Stinky, Harold and Rhonda all play the perfect holiday family and have a nice dinner. 
Arnold and Helga both go home for the long weekend and are dreading spending the holiday with their own families. 

Because Arnold's Grandma is... well, Grandma... she thinks that Thanksgiving is the 4th of the July, so they also play different patriotic figures and have none of the food and pageantry to go along with Thanksgiving. 

And with Helga's family, her dad only wants to watch football, Olga takes over dinner and wants everyone involved and Helga wants no part of it. They sit down to dinner and go around to say what they're thankful for. They get to Helga and she says "I'm thankful for... absolutely nothing." Everyone is completely skeptical and Big Bob sends her to her room until she can think of a proper answer. What they all fail to notice is that she just walks out of the house to be on her own.
She and Arnold kinda bump into each other, go over their various holiday woes, and he suggests they go to Mr. Simmons' because he's sure to be having a good Thanksgiving.

Except it's nowhere near as perfect as they expected. All of the characters in the play were named after his family members, but all they do is fight and argue. And he's going through all of the effort to make a good dinner for them and they don't even care.

As sad as this all is, it helps the two of them realizethey can put up with their families if Mr. Simmons can put up with his. 
Arnold walks Helga home. And when she does, everyone is in a flurry because they discovered she's missing. Olga is beside herself, making dozens of flyers (which hilariously have her smiling in the foreground and Helga sulking in the background). And when they discover she's back, they're super happy and everything seems to be back to normal.

Through the window, Arnold sees how this all comes together and he smiles "Happy Thanksgiving, Helga."

Meanwhile, he returns home and everyone finally decide to do Thanksgiving his way. But for one final fun moment, he asks his grandma, "can we still have the fireworks?"
And she says "Oh, Arnold, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without fireworks." Then she laughs like a crazy person and sets off a bunch of fireworks off the roof of the boarding house. 

Nicktoons: Halloween Edition

 As promised, I wanted to talk about a few Halloween episodes from some of the Nickelodeon shows I grew up with.

Rugrats: Candy Bar Creep Show

I had to look through the wiki for a refresher. The only thing I really remembered was Angelica telling the babies about the Reptar candy bars and how they turn your tongue green.

There's a haunted house at the Pickles house and the trick or treaters are being taken through there. The babies think that screaming will get them Reptar bars and decide they need to go inside the haunted house to do so. When they do, they get into the decorations and wind up scaring the group of kids Angelica is with. And they are able to get Reptar bars because the kids are scared so badly they drop their bags of candy. 

Doug's Halloween Adventure

YouTube had this posted and it was fun getting to see this one again. I think I'd only seen it a handful of times.

The episode begins with a commerical promoting the new ride in Funky Town- Bloodstone Manor. Doug and Skeeter both get tickets to go to it on opening night. But after hearing about the story it was based on, Doug chickens out. He instead suggests to Skeeter they go trick or treating. 

Skeeter is dressed as a spaceship from the Space Munks video game (the same one from "Doug's Lost Weekend") and when he pushes a button, it comes apart- the pieces are attached by springs. 

Doug is Race Canyon, which is a character based off Indiana Jones. 
I also find it a little strange that his Race Canyon persona gets to sit at the round table in the Christmas episode with Smash Adams and Quailman... but he's only appeared this one time. (It's all part of a daydream sequence where Doug talks with his alter egos to figure out how to save Porkchop).

Eventually Doug and Skeeter get to Funky Town, but they just miss the cut-off to get inside before the park closes. 
But they decide to go in anyway. Roger is there as well. Despite his prior attempts to scare them, he's the one who's the most afraid of the ride. They have to first cross the threshold of death, which looks like a floor opening to a bottomless pit. But it turns out to be an illusion- it's all glass. 

Then they get into a cart and run through various scary attractions. But then the ride stops midway through because the park closes at 10 o'clock. Despite Roger's insistences, they get out of the cart and try to find someone that'll help them leave.

Then Roger disappears out of nowhere... Doug and Skeeter run into the spooky host of the place and he orders them to leave. But Doug decides that they can't leave without Roger or he'd never be able to live with himself. He'd played chicken one time too many that night already.

So the guy shows them his control room downstairs... and they find out that Roger tricked them in an effort to scare them. But they get him back big time. Thanks to the host's special effects, they masquerade as ghosts and frighten him into leaving the park. 

Hey Arnold's Halloween

Two stories are going on simultaneously: Helga, Harold and a bunch of the kids coordinate their costumes and decide to dress up as aliens for Halloween. 
Meanwhile, Arnold and Gerald are fully aware of this fact and decide to do a "War of the Worlds" broadcast to coincide with this. Unfortunately, they make their narrative a little too convincing...  one thing that helped their cause was that the anchor of a local alien conspiracy channel picks it up and broacasts it to a wider audience. (He's memorable in my head because he sounds exactly like The Brain from Pinky & The Brain from Animaniacs- Maurice LaMarche is the voice actor's name...clearly I'm a huge nerd cuz I knew that and I also spelled his name perfectly without having to try)

To top it all off, Harold had the bright idea to use permanent paint for their costumes. I forget the exact quote, but it's something like: "yeah, the paint I got had something called 'permanent' because I thought we'd be out all night."
And Helga's dad is one of those types that isn't afraid of aliens and actually takes matters into his own hands to "exterminate" them. 

Stinky is also in the broadcast prank. He'd rigged the watertower with lights so it would look like a spaceship. When he crosses paths with the other kids, he makes a comment about Arnold's idea. 
Helga is [obviously] not pleased. 

"ARNOLD!!"

...

Arnold: Did you hear something just now?
Gerald: Nope...

...

Things escalate so much that the climax happens at the watertower and Big Bob Pataki is about to strangle Helga to death... then the watertower bursts when someone throws a projectile at it to attack the "aliens" and the water washes the makeup off, prompting him to stop. 

Yikes... 
A brilliant prank for sure, but not one Arnold wants to repeat in the future. 

Hey Arnold!: The Headless Cabbie

Arnold is hosting a sleepover with Gerald, Harold, Stinky and Sid. They swap scary stories before bedtime and Arnold tells one he heard from Grandpa.

The story goes that a woman goes to the park, looking for her lost Scottie dog, and she gets a ride from a horse and carriage. As the ride progresses, she gets more and more manic, urging the cabbie to go after the dog she sees ahead of them. But he's so caught up in the action, he's unaware of the low branch of a nearby tree. His scarf wraps around it and the force is so strong that he winds up decapitated. 
And legend has it you'll go through the park at night and still hear the barking Scottie dog and the manic laugh of the lady. 

It's still early in the evening and the guys all agree to get ice cream. But Harold is still freaked out about the story and doesn't want them to take the shortcut through the park. A series of concidences makes him edgier. This includes what sounds like carriage wheels against cobblestones, but it turns out to be Eugene who is clogging... clogging in the middle of the night in the park... yeah, I don't get it either. And they also come across a Scottie dog and Stinky decides they should take it with them.

All of this leads up to them coming across a carriage that looks like it's being driven by a headless cabbie and there's someone laughing manically next to him. Everyone starts to run away, but then the driver calls after them.
"Hey, wait, it's me, Ernie!"

Yeah, Ernie Potts is driving carriages for a little extra cash. And the creepy laugh wound up being Mr. Hyunh. 

But then at the end, after the kids and Ernie part ways, he picks up another customer.
A lady that's looking for her Scottie dog. And she hands Ernie a scarf before they go into the park. 

... yeah, it just ends there... and we never find out whether the story winds up happening for real or not. 

***

Rocko's Modern Life: Sugar Frosted Frights

I haven't talked about Rocko yet, but that'll be coming soon enough.

I kinda forgot this episode existed until I got the season 3 DVD set for Christmas last year. 

Rocko is dressed as Really Really Big Man and Heffer just has a glow-in-the-dark Jack-o-Lantern pattern on his stomach. They go over to Filbert's house to find it decked out with toilet paper and dozens of "No Trespassing" signs. 
They go inside to get him to come out of his shell... literally. And he tells them about why he's afraid of Halloween. When he was a kid, his parents alway went to parties on Halloween and left him with his Crazy Aunt Gretchen. (Supposedly she was born in an aquarium and never wanted to leave so she literally lives inside of a life-sized fish tank with only her legs sticking out of it).
But her story was that candy is poison and if you touch a single piece, you'll die. 
Filbert, who is pretty much afraid of everything, takes this to heart and just never knew any better.

Ultimately, he goes with Rocko and Heffer to go trick or treating. He eats his first piece of candy and goes completely mental. Not quite as bad as Beavis turning into Cornholio when he overdoses on sugar and caffeine, but he does kinda terrorize the neighborhood for a few minutes of the segment. There's even a scene that parodies "Night on Bald Mountain" where he towers over the town and munches on all of the candy he can get his hands on.

In the background, there's also the legend of the Hopping Hessian. The trio, during their gallivanting, wind up in a part of town associated with him. There's a bridge and "the old photo booth". They come face to face with the Hopping Hessian and it looks like he'd caught up to them.

The episode then fast-forwards to next year's Halloween. Filbert comes over to Rocko's and finds the ghost, Gordon the foot, and Heffer all viewing a slideshow of photos from the previous Halloween. And they're all hanging out like they're best friends... yeah, random and weird.

Then at the end, Filbert says, "wait just a gosh darn minute... who took all of those photos?" 
...because there's a photo with all of them in it. 

Ed's Dead: A Thriller

Part two of the same episode.

Rocko notices that his neighbors, the Bigheads, had been arguing more than usual. 

The next thing he knows, he overhears a terrifying skuffle where Mr. Bighead is begging for mercy. The next morning, it's eerily quiet nextdoor. Mr. Bighead is nowhere to be found and Mrs. Bighead is doing some things that look suspicious. Like burying something in an Ed-shaped hole in the ground. And the hedges she'd clipped the other day read "Kill Ed" when lighning flashes. 

As it turns out, she'd been doing a meat sculpture of his likeness for art class. And Ed was missing because he'd gone to the hospital to get a wart removed. 

But for a while, it was looking like another Alfred Hitchcock movie. 

Fortune Cookie

This isn't Halloween-related, but it's close enough... it has to do with bad luck.

Filbert gets chosen to be the next Mr. Lucky for this show, Mega-Spin. Where he will spin a wheel and have a chance at winning a new trailer home.

Before that, though, he goes to a Chinese restaurant with Rocko and Heffer. At the end of the meal, they all have fortune cookies. 

Filbert's reads: Bad luck and misfortune will haunt your pathetic soul for all eternity

The next thing he knows, he runs into every unlucky thing you can imagine. A bunch of black cats start following him. He goes under ladders. Mirrors break. And Really Really Big Man's attempt to talk an irate pigeon off a ledge goes completely array.

Filbert tells Rocko what happens and Rocko tries his best to convince him that it's all in his head. The trio goes back to the Chinese restaurant and get more fortune cookies. For some reason, Filbert keeps getting the same fortune over and over and over and over again... 

But then another brilliant idea comes to light: there happens to be a gift shop full of good luck charms. So when Filbert goes on Mega-Spin, he is decked out on all of the good luck stuff he could fit on his person. The wheel goes off its hinges and causes untold havoc. But in the end, it falls back into position and it lands on the one lucky space on the entire wheel. 

Rocko's such a great series. Can't wait to talk about that one too. But this last episode, it's always been one of the most memorable for me.