Top 10 Friendsgiving TV Episodes of All Time
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Family Thanksgiving dinners—with their requisite squabbling and cooking mishaps—make for excellent TV, but you don’t need to be blood relatives for hilarity to ensue. These 10 episodes prove that a potluck with friends or coworkers can be just as heartwarming, messy, disastrous, or wholesome. Here, a smorgasbord of Friendsgiving episodes to watch with your chosen family this Turkey Day.
RELATED: Friendsgiving Food Ideas: 30 Appetizer, Side Dish, and Dessert Recipes
Friends, “The One with the Thanksgiving Flashbacks” (1998)
Each of the 10 Friends seasons features a classic Thanksgiving episode, but we’re partial to this flashback-filled entry, which includes Chandler and Ross in Miami Vice attire and Phoebe as a World War I field nurse—plus Monica dancing with a raw turkey on her head.
Watch it here: The One With the Thanksgiving Flashbacks, on HBO Max
Cheers, “Thanksgiving Orphans” (1986)
Tensions run high when Norm brings a raw turkey to a potluck, and Diane makes everyone wait to eat until it's cooked. The night ends in a knock-down, drag-out food fight, and the wobbly gravy skin goes flying.
Watch it here: Thanksgiving Orphans, on Hulu
How I Met Your Mother, “Slapsgiving” (2007)
It’s Lily and Marshall’s first married Thanksgiving, and Marshall is scheduled to deliver Barney the third slap in their ongoing “slap bet”—after which he debuts his piano anthem, “You Just Got Slapped.”
Watch it here: Slapsgiving, on Hulu
The Bob Newhart Show, “Over the River and Through the Woods” (1975)
With his wife Emily away visiting family, Bob and his friends spend the holiday watching football, getting drunk on vodka and apple cider, and ordering Chinese takeout.
Watch it here: Over the River and Through the Woods, on Hulu
RELATED: How to Host (or Attend) Your Best Friendsgiving Yet
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, “Thanksgiving” (2013)
Santiago invites the precinct over for dinner in a ploy to convince Captain Holt to be her mentor, but her terrible cooking derails the evening. Case in point: She thinks baking soda and salt are interchangeable.
Watch it here: Thanksgiving, on Hulu
New Girl, “Thanksgiving” (2011)
Jess invites over her crush (a music teacher played by Justin Long), and everything goes awry, from a turkey catching on fire while defrosting in the dryer to the discovery of their neighbor’s corpse.
Watch it here: Thanksgiving, on Netflix
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “The Gang Squashes Their Beefs” (2013)
The morally dubious crew invites over people they’ve wronged so they can make amends over a dinner of—wait for it—squash and beef.
Watch it here: The Gang Squashes Their Beefs, on Hulu
Friends, “The One with the Rumor” (2001)
If we’re being serious, any ranking of the best friendsgiving episodes deserves at least two from Friends. Season 8’s go-around features Brad Pitt as Monica’s old high-school friend, Will—the founder of the “I Hate Rachel Green Club.”
Watch it here: The One with the Rumor, on HBO Max
Happy Endings, “More Like Stanksgiving” (2012)
Dave, who is 1/16th Navajo, tries to make an “authentic” holiday dinner (send in the clams!), but the gang is more interested in a DVD that shows where they all met a decade before—on the never-aired The Real World: Sacramento.
Watch it here: More Like Stanksgiving, on Hulu
The Mindy Project, “Thanksgiving” (2012)
Mindy runs into an old blind date named Dennis (Ed Helms) at her friend’s Thanksgiving party in Greenwich, and she tries to seduce him with an awkward—but appropriately holiday-themed—whisper: “Potatoes.”
Watch it here: Thanksgiving, on Hulu
