Thanksgiving is a weird holiday. I think we can admit that at this point. Aside from the fact that the “backstory” for the holiday is essentially mythical and downright offensive, Thanksgiving is situated just after election day and right at the start of the Seasonal Affective Disorder months, elements that come together to form a perfect storm of family drama and existential dread. I would argue — and I think many people would agree with me — that the only reason Thanksgiving is still a thing is because of the food. The food can stay.
This year, when so many of us are not able to travel to see our families for Thanksgiving (a blessing in disguise?), I thought it would be fun to do what several other people on the internet have already done and put together a list of my favorite Thanksgiving episodes from the TV show that does it best. Why spend Thanksgiving with your real family when you can spend it with the Belchers? If The Simpsons has mastered the Halloween Special, Bob’s Burgers takes the Thanksgiving Special crown. So without further ado, here are my personal five favorites, ranked in descending order. Watch them on Thanksgiving while you spatchcock a turkey or make fresh cranberry sauce for one—because this is a fresh cranberry sauce house, damn it, it’s who we are!
5. Season 9: I Bob Your Pardon
Aside from my number four, all of my favorite Thanksgiving episodes of Bob’s Burgers feature the whole family together for the majority of the episode, because I think this show is at its best when the Belchers are working as a team. In “I Bob Your Pardon,” the Belchers attend the town’s “pardoning” of a turkey, but when they overhear the Deputy Mayor’s plans to have his assistant deliver the turkey to a slaughterhouse instead of the promised farm sanctuary, the family sets out on a rescue mission/car chase with a reluctant Bob at the wheel.
My favorite thing about this episode is the fact that the entire time, all Bob can think about is how important it is that they get to the store so that he can buy cranberries for his fresh cranberry sauce. This is a theme that runs throughout all of this show’s Thanksgiving specials, and what makes them unique to Bob’s Burgers in particular — the food itself is almost always at the center of the plot. Bob is a cook, so his obsession with the Thanksgiving meal makes sense, and while the episodes usually roll back around to reminding us that Thanksgiving is “really” about the importance of family… Bob will never stop caring about the meal. Even at the end of this episode, which is mostly dedicated to rescuing a turkey and to Louise’s realization that she no longer despises the species… they still eat a turkey.
Additionally, the pardoned turkey featured in this episode is named Drew P. Neck, and I think that’s pretty special.
4. Season 6: Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled
Bob’s Burgers has many wonderful recurring characters, but the best is objectively Gayle, Linda’s younger sister. Voiced by the inimitable Megan Mullally, Gayle is formed in the image of the stereotypical cat lady—but from her first appearance in one of my favorite episodes, “Art Crawl,” in which she turns the restaurant into an art gallery for her paintings of animal buttholes, Gayle has proven to be a truly unique flavor of bizarre.
In “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled,” Bob is tasked with picking up Gayle for Thanksgiving dinner during a blizzard because she has sprained her ankle and can’t drive herself. After a series of uncomfortable interactions inside Gayle’s tragic apartment (she has four cat litter scoops, yet when Bob asks her why she has only one bowl in her kitchen, she says, “I’m not rich, Bob”), they return to the car just as it’s buried under a plow-full of snow. For the rest of the episode, Bob pulls Gayle through the blizzard on a sled made out of a kiddie pool, and back at the house, Linda and the kids are left to finish making dinner.
The dynamic between Gayle and Bob is always delightful, mostly because Gayle does everything in her power to push Bob towards losing his cool. It is a very realistic dynamic, the kind we often experience in real life during holidays when we are forced to interact with family members we did not choose. And though there are such things as found and chosen families, we all have those people in our extended families who we might not have chosen but also wouldn’t trade. Like Bob says at the end of the episode, reflecting on his nightmare of a day spent with Gayle over a turkey that Lin and the kids have sewn together with thread, “Maybe it’s good to be annoyed by your family, because that means you have one.”
3. Season 8: Thanks-hoarding
Teddy is so common a fixture on Bob’s Burgers that he’s more of a “series regular” than a recurring character, but either way, he is another one of my favorites. Handyman, restaurant patron, and sort-of-best-friend to Bob, Teddy is one of the show’s most well-meaning characters, but his overzealous nature, gullibility, and lack of self awareness make him a kind of pathetic person. This doesn’t mean he isn’t lovable, though, and “Thanks-hoarding” serves as a rare glimpse into Teddy’s personal life, a partial explainer for why he is the way he is.
When he finds out that his family is making a last-minute trip into town for Thanksgiving, Teddy desperately calls Bob for help in assembling a meal. The rest of the Belchers tag along, and when they arrive at Teddy’s place, they discover that dinner is not the only thing Teddy needs help with. It turns out that Teddy is a hoarder, and the space that once served as his dining room is now so crammed full of broken furniture and useless objects that the kids invent a game to see who can find the “best” item (which is obviously the Magic 8 Ball with no liquid inside).
Linda decides they are going to help Teddy clean up his place while Bob does meal prep, and in the process they unearth some difficult truths about Teddy’s adolescence — difficult by this show’s standards, which means the whole thing is still light-hearted and easy to watch. Even so, I admire the way this show handles sticky situations; the writers manage to find the humor in Teddy’s disordered behavior without ever making him the butt of the joke.
2. Season 3: An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal
This is the first ever Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving episode, and it’s just about as good as they get. It’s when we first learn about Bob’s obsession with Thanksgiving, introduced through one of the show’s greatest recurring bits: Bob having full conversations with objects and voicing the objects himself. This time, it’s the turkey, which Bob purchases at the grocery store and decides to call Lance.
In addition to food prep, Bob is very fond of the traditions he and his family share on the holiday, so he is obviously reluctant when their landlord, Mr. Fischoeder, approaches the Belchers with an offer that would change the day significantly. In order to impress an ex-flame, Mr. Fischoeder wants the Belcher family to pretend to be his family, and Bob to serve as his personal chef. Bob refuses, but when it turns out five months rent is on the line, he ultimately concedes.
I won’t go too deeply into the machinations of the plot, but know that this episode escalates into a full out screaming match between an absinthe-drunk Bob and wine-drunk Linda, which then escalates into a shotgun chase and a devastating death. Also featured: the always wonderful performance of Kevin Kline as the wealthy and unhinged Mr. Fischoeder, several “Thanksgiving songs” performed in earnest by Linda Belcher, and a full absinthe-fueled hallucination in which Bob and the family interact with a life-size Lance in what appears to be a direct visual reference to My Neighbor Totoro.
1. Season 4: Turkey in a Can
As good as “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal” is, nothing compares to “Turkey in a Can,” which is not just the best Thanksgiving episode but also one of the most iconic Bob’s Burgers episodes in general.
Dedicated to the Thanksgiving meal as per usual, Bob has decided to brine the turkey three days in advance. Unfortunately, when the family wakes up two days before Thanksgiving, they discover that the brining turkey has been mysteriously placed in the bathroom toilet. The episode plays out like a whodunnit, with the prime suspect being Louise (because if someone does some fucked up shit, it’s probably Louise), but really it could be anyone: Gene, Tina, Linda, or maybe even Gayle, Linda’s sister, who is obviously in this episode because she’s the best and how could the best episode be the best without Gayle and her cats? Sidebar: at the start of this episode, Gayle explains how she “adopted” her cat Mr. Business, which is that she found him on a porch, “just sitting in the sun.” The way this information is both delivered and received is incredible. Anyway, things ramp up as yet another turkey is lost to the toilet, and Louise begins a Charlie Day-esque investigation of the suspects.
Meanwhile, Bob keeps returning to the same grocery store to buy a turkey from the same meat counter man, who takes this to mean that Bob is just looking for an excuse to flirt with him. There are many moments that elevate this episode beyond the average Thanksgiving fare (Tina’s campaign to sit at the adult table by repeating the line “in this economy” over and over again, Teddy’s interruption of Bob’s story to show Bob and Mort a picture on his phone of a little rat in a little hat that he found sitting in a toilet, etc), but it is Bob’s exchange with this man in the grocery store that really pushes it over the edge.
Instead of this being a joke about how Bob is definitely not gay and feels uncomfortable being flirted with by a man… we learn that Bob is… BISEXUAL? When the man tells Bob that things with his boyfriend aren’t working out and that he wants to take Bob out, Bob says that he can’t, he’s married, and then he says: “I’m straight—I mean, I’m mostly straight.” He proceeds to say that the grocery store guy is way out of his league anyway, and then says, “I’ll call you, wait, no I won’t” as he flees the store. Perhaps you think I am reaching, but a cursory google search will show you that MANY people have drawn this conclusion. Bob Belcher is queer and we are here for it.
The episode’s conclusion — the big whoddunit reveal — is absolutely worth the price of admission, and if you haven’t seen it, I’m not going to spoil it for you here. But if you’re going to pick one Bob’s Burgers episode to watch this Thanksgiving, let it be “Turkey in a Can.” Or, you know. You could watch all eight.