5 Fandom Friday: My Favorite Thanksgiving Foods (TV Style)

I’ll be honest, Thanksgiving isn’t one of my favorite holidays. I love getting together with my family, and I like a day devoted to thankfulness, but the holiday itself isn’t on the top of my list–especially with a holiday full of lights, music, gifts, seasonal movies, and general awesomeness looming just around the corner. Still, Thanksgiving often gets ignored, which is too bad. So in this week’s Fandom 5, I’m tipping my hat to Thanksgiving by talking about my favorite seasonal foods with a twist–my favorite Thanksgiving foods from my favorite TV shows. No more pushing Thanksgiving aside for Christmas, let’s get our Thanksgiving on and talk food, you guys.

Squash and Beef, It’s Always Sunny in PHILADELPHIA

After realizing that they have beef with TONS of people, the gang has a “beef squashing” party on Thanksgiving to clear the air with those they’ve wronged. Party planning naturals, the gang decides to offer some themed items to help get everyone in the spirit–naturally serving squash and beef to symbolize their squashing beefs with their neighbors as well as literally burying a hatchet and wiping the slate clean.

That’s what Thanksgiving is all about, you guys. #beautiful.

Nick’s Thanksgiving Fish, New Girl

After being accused of going soft, Nick decides to invite the entire group to do Thanksgiving in the wild, camping-style. Of course, because he’s Nick, he doesn’t bring any food, planning on foraging through the wild. Of course it doesn’t work, as the group has zero survival skills, and Nick ends up nearly killing Jess when she tries to be supportive and eats the rancid fish he caught.  

The eye popping out is most certainly not how you tell it’s good, Nick. I love this episode, and the underlying message is one of the most wonderful and important of all time: camping is awful.

Will’s Cranberry Sauce, Will & Grace

Fans of Will & Grace know that Will Truman is one hell of a cook, so when he decides to cook an entire Thanksgiving meal for his boyfriend’s–Vince–family, he is certain he’ll impress everyone and instantly fall in the good graces of Vince’s mom. That, of course, does not happen. Instead, literally everything goes wrong, and Will ends up freaking out. It’s hilarious, but ultimately heartwarming, and is one of my favorite episodes. The best part? Though Will spends hours making the entire meal from scratch, the one item that gets him a compliment from Vince’s mom is the cranberry sauce–which comes from a can. 

Okay, so that wasn’t a clip of Will’s epic freakout or Vince’s mom complimenting the cranberry sauce. I couldn’t find one anywhere, but watching Jack try to sit on a plastic-covered sofa is a Thanksgiving gift to us all.

Eriksen Family Seven Salad, HIMYM

I absolutely love the Eriksen family seven-layer salad. It’s completely ridiculous, and basically the stuff of legend by now. I love how, in any holiday episode that followed this one, you can almost always catch sight of this beast in the background. I had thought this monster of a side dish was a hyperbolic statement on the way midwesterners do “salad”–and it definitely is, but not as much as I thought it was. Just yesterday I heard my friends talk about their family tradition of having similar “salads” with their Thanksgiving meals–minus stuff like chips and Funyons of course, but still, the fact that I know actual humans who annually eat something even remotely adjacent to the Eriksen’s seven-layer salad stunned me. Want to make your own Eriksen family seven layer salad? I don’t recommend it, but here’s the recipe.

Lance the Turkey, Bob’s Burgers

It’s no secret that Bob loves Thanksgiving, so during a particularly weird Thanksgiving of pretending to be Mr. Fischoeder’s cook and letting his family pose as Fischoeder’s family, Bob discovers and drinks some absinthe in Fischoeder’s kitchen. After that, things…get weird.

Bob always names his Thanksgiving turkeys–this year’s turkey being called Lance–but after the absinthe, Bob imagines Lance coming to life Totoro-style and whisking the family away on a tiny pumpkin to perch on a giant tree made of Thanksgiving vegetables.

Yes, Bob. It is weird. But also the best thing ever.

What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving foods–from TV or your real life? Let me know in the comments, and as always, check out my other Fandom 5 posts, and follow the #Fandom5 hashtag to see what everyone else is talking about today!