‘New Girl’s’ Thanksgiving Episodes Pick Up Where ‘Friends’ Left Off

Friends is remembered for many things. A hairstyle, a monkey, a holiday armadillo–and, obviously, Thanksgiving. The hit NBC show about six 20-somethings (and later 30-somethings) finding love and living life in an impossibly low-stress Manhattan certainly didn’t invent the idea of doing a Thanksgiving episode, but it definitely perfected it. Once they doubled down on the tradition of doing a Thanksgiving dinner every year, that one episode became an annual TV event. Underdog getting away, Mockolate, the most intense touch football game ever, Monica’s eye-patch, Chandler losing a toe, the trifle with beef and peas, Brad Pitt, Christina Applegate–with flashbacks and guest stars galore, not to mention series-best plots and one-liners for each of the six stars, it’s hard to top Friends’ reign as the king of Thanksgiving.

New Girl, though, sure does try. I don’t feel it’s fair to pit these two shows against each other, because who needs conflict at this time of the year? I want to point out that the Fox sitcom, which aired its first Thanksgiving episode 8 years after Friends‘ final one, has kept the annual holiday episode tradition alive with a similar commitment and ambition. If watching the Friends episodes is how you kill a few hours around this time every year, then I highly suggest you get the five New Girl episodes in rotation too.

As two shows starring casts of initially single adults, New Girl feels like the rightful heir to Friends’ sitcom throne in more than one way. But particularly when it comes to holiday episodes, New Girl captures something about the season that family sitcoms can’t. Both Friends and New Girl speak to the power of friends and found families. And while it was always weird that the friends, all New York natives, never spent the holiday with their families, New Girl gets around that because the entire cast is made up of Los Angeles transplants. These characters can’t go home for Thanksgiving, not with Christmas so close (and New Girl makes a point to show the cast all going their separate ways for Christmas). So instead, they spend it together, having the kind of Thanksgiving that so many adults (myself included) have every year. You can’t be with the people you’re related to, so you spend it with the people you choose.

You gotta appreciate New Girl’s commitment to Thanksgiving, one that feels deliberate considering that the show did a Thanksgiving episode every season it aired in the fall (all except for Season 5 and the upcoming Season 7). Friends, after including a solid Thanksgiving entry in its debut year, didn’t figure out its winning formula until Season 3; the season 2 episode (“The One with the List”) is great, but has next to nothing to do with Thanksgiving. New Girl went for it, and kept raising the bar for itself year after year.

New Girl uses the holiday to make room for big guest stars, something that Friends did as well. Season 1’s “Thanksgiving” sees Jess (Zooey Deschanel) trying to woo her co-worker Paul (Justin Long), and Season 2’s turkey-centric adventure introduces Jess’ parents played to perfection by Rob Reiner and Jamie Lee Curtis. Other plots involve Schmidt’s (Max Greenfield) super macho cousin coming to visit, played with barrel-chested gusto by Rob Riggle. And the show’s final Thanksgiving episode guest-starred Peter Gallagher as Schmidt’s horn-dog dad.

And just as Friends smartly changed up its celebration every year, tackling different aspects of the holiday like post-dinner reminiscing and the pre-dinner airing of grievances, New Girl kept things fresh all five years with equally hilarious moments. There’s the time Schmidt cooked a whole Thanksgiving meal in a dead neighbor’s kitchen, or Jess’ attempt to pull off the perfect IRL Parent Trap, or Nick’s (Jake Johnson) desire to rough it like a man (a plot that involves someone contracting giardia!), and–how can I forget–Schmidt’s big scheme to turn Thanksgiving into a singles mixer called Bangsgiving.

And, in a truly perfect continuing gag, the characters remember just how awful their previous Thanksgivings were; “Thanksgiving III” has flashbacks to the most insane moments from the previous two years, and “Last Thanksgiving” reveals what happened during the never-seen 2015 dinner (it apparently involved a lot of peyote). These aren’t just run-of-the-mill holiday episodes, the usual sitcom shenanigans with stray comments about a turkey in the oven. These episodes are completely stuffed with the Thanksgiving spirit, which isn’t really a thing, but New Girl makes me believe in it.

Like I said, Friends perfected the Thanksgiving sitcom episode, and New Girl kept the tradition alive with episodes that celebrate friends, family, the sacred tradition of hitting up Best Buy’s Black Friday sale. With it’s final season on the way, I think it’s time we start celebrating New Girl every November and give thanks for dryer turkeys, hot lunch ladies, and the one Parent Trap that kinda worked.

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