Eat, Pray, Turkey: Every Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving Episode From Worst to Best
With Thanksgiving only a day away, and Covid-19 cases on the rise in the U.S., there are bound to be many Zoom Thanksgivings coming this Thursday. But if you can’t spend the holiday with your own family, you might as well spend it with one of TV’s finest: the Belchers.
The Belcher family has been on the air for over ten years now, and although they often come second to Fox’s other cartoon families, the Simpsons and the Griffins, they are definitely the ones you want to celebrate Thanksgiving with!
The Thanksgiving episode of Bob’s Burgers is the holiday special to watch. Sure, the Belchers pay tribute to Halloween and Christmas, but Thanksgiving is the Super Bowl of meals for a chef like Bob. These episodes don’t always knock it out of the park; some years they’re great and others, well…not so much. So instead of ranking all the Thanksgiving episodes from 1–8, I’m going to categorize them from worst to best — so you know which episodes to avoid, and which will make you laugh the most this turkey day.
Worst: “Thanks-hoarding” (Season 8, episode 5), “The Quirk-ducers” (Season 7, episode 6), “I Bob Your Pardon” (Season 9, episode 7)
“Thanks-hoarding” is by far the weakest of these three, and almost borders on offensive to those who actually struggle with hoarding, which is a symptom of serious mental illnesses like OCD. “Thanks-hoarding” is also very low on the Bob-crazy scale and instead sees Teddy lose control. Teddy is already a squirrelly character so to see him go off the rails is nothing new. Because of this, the episode is rather boring and mainly relies on old jokes.
“The Quirk-ducers” is also nothing special, and mainly recycles old themes: Louise scheming and being up to no good, Tina feeling awkward, etc. Ultimately the best part of this episode is its B-plot of Linda finding a potato that resembles her grandfather’s face.
Now I wouldn’t say “I Bob Your Pardon” is the worst episode, but it is pretty bad. In “I Bob Your Pardon” the family does get into a bit more of an odd situation than usual, but honestly, it feels downplayed. I guess it’s nice to see the Belcher children get excited about saving a pardoned turkey, but that isn’t enough to save the episode as a whole from feeling flat.
Good: “Turkey in a Can” (Season 4, episode 5), “Now We’re Not Cooking with Gas” (Season 10, episode 8), “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled” (Season 6, episode 4)
Now let’s get into (what I call) the Bob-crazy scale. The Bob-crazy scale really just measures (you guessed it) how off the walls crazy Bob can get. It was “invented” as early as Season 1, episode 2 (“Crawlspace”), when Bob went stir-crazy while trapped in his house’s crawlspace.
Being a chef, Bob gets extremely excited about cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and often freaks out when things do not go perfectly. So it is only natural that “Turkey in a Can” and “Now We’re Not Cooking with Gas” are both high on the Bob-crazy scale. You see, what’s great about Bob’s Burgers is that unlike other cartoons, the characters don’t usually end up in crazy, unrealistic situations. Rather, they are a kooky family who creates laughable situations out of mundane everyday circumstances, where something as simple as cooking dinner for your family can lead to a turkey in every toilet. No, you’re not mistaken, you read that correctly: a turkey in every toilet. That is the actual plotline for the episode “Turkey in a Can”. The episode may be a little gross in theory, but when coupled with the action driving Bob mad, and the hilarious scenes between him and the grocer, it produces a wild episode rife with comedy.
“Now We’re Not Cooking with Gas” is not as good as “Turkey in a Can”, but it still features a ridiculously crazy Bob, which is never not funny, so it is still a cut above “Thanks-hoarding”, “The Quirk-ducers” and “I Bob Your Pardon” which were extremely low on the Bob-crazy scale. So, is Bob acting crazy what makes a great Thanksgiving episode? Well, it is definitely a big factor!
“Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled” is one of the only good Thanksgiving episodes that does not feature a crazy Bob. Instead, what makes this episode good is its focus on Bob’s relationship with his nutty sister-in-law Gayle. This is a relationship we do not see often, so when it is shown it is always fun to watch Bob and Gayle’s incompatibility play out on screen.
Best: “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal” (Season 3, episode 5), “Dawn of the Peck” (Season 5, episode 4)
As I mentioned before, Bob’s Burgers episodes usually revolve around a mundane situation; but every now and then the family does get into an outrageous situation, which is the case for “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal” and “Dawn of the Peck.” I stand by my statement that what makes Bob’s Burgers such an interesting show is how it explores everyday circumstances. But every now and then, especially for a holiday special, it is fun to watch these characters you’ve grown to love end up in such utterly ridiculous settings that would never happen to someone in real life. For example, pretending to be your landlord’s family, resulting in being chased around a mansion with a turkey in hand, hightailing it from a gun-toting homewrecker; or having Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds come to life with turkeys while trapped in an amusement park. As you can imagine, those plotlines when mixed with crazy Bob and a drunk Bob as well, create hilarious Thanksgiving episodes!
Now, this wouldn’t be a real Incluvie review if I neglected to mention the diversity of Bob’s Burgers. Unfortunately, this show isn’t very diverse: its main cast consists of four men and only one woman, all of whom are white and straight except for John Roberts (the voice of Linda) who is openly gay and Italian. Although its cast and characters may not be diverse, the show itself has never been harmful or stereotypical of women, people of color, or LGBTQ+ folks. Hopefully, as the series continues on, it will feature more of its lesser-seen cluvie characters while still being the comfort food of our TV screens!
