We show our gratitude for classic Thanksgiving TV episodes like Archie Bunker's Place, Alice, Cheers and The Munsters.
We show our gratitude for classic Thanksgiving TV episodes like Archie Bunker's Place, Alice, Cheers and The Munsters.
Welcome to Don’t Touch That Dial, a classic TV podcast. Did you grow up in the 70s and 80s? Did you rush home from school to watch reruns of the Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family? On each episode of Don't Touch That Dial, three guys who love TV will look back on those days and talk about the shows and stars that made watching television before streaming, DVRs, and even VCRs so special.
ANTHONY: Hello TV fans and welcome to Don't Touch That Dial, a classic TV podcast. We have a lot to be thankful for today because we are going to be discussing Thanksgiving-themed episodes of some classic TV shows from the 60s, 70s and 80s. I’m Anthony Stoeckert.
JODY: And I'm Jody Schwartz.
KEITH: I'm Keith Loria.
ANTHONY: Before we start talking turkey, there was some sad news recently as Suzanne Somers passed away at the age of 76. She was a true TV legend who played Chrissy in the first five seasons of Three’s Company and I'll just ask each of you some thoughts, memories Jody start with you
JODY: She was really kind of made for that show. She was perfect. She was funny and her timing was terrific. She worked well with the other cast members and everything about her was just perfect, not to mention, she was, you know, nice to look at.
KEITH: Sure. I know my cousin had the poster on the wall. She was just someone that everybody loved. And again, when you're young you're like ‘Oh, she's so pretty,’ but she was very very funny and you appreciated that more as you got older. Even on her other show, She's the Sheriff, she was very funny on that, but it's not a show that gets rerun a lot but it’s something people should check out.
JODY: Also Step By Step was a good show with Patrick Duffy.
ANTHONY: Yeah and of course she was on American Graffiti for like two seconds but made a big impact on that movie. I had the poster also and it referred to her as Suzanne Somers Chrissy from Three’s Company, I think it had those words on it. When I was a kid I didn't really follow the news about her leaving but it looks like she had a point. It looks like (John) Ritter made a lot more money than she did and she deserved to be paid as much as him. I mean she really was a good comedic actress.
JODY: And they were also centering everything around him, too, and that was the thing, they were treating him as the star of the show and it was an ensemble cast.
ANTHONY: Without a doubt. She will be missed. So moving on to Thanksgiving, just a real quick question, do you guys like Thanksgiving? – I think most people do – and what's your favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal?
JODY: Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays that I actually do like and that I actually do care about. I love Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing is always my favorite part of the meal.
KEITH: I'm not really a fan of Thanksgiving to be honest, no, seriously just not not my favorite although I've had some really good Thanksgivings especially back in the college days when me and my roommates would stay – not go home – and we'd cook our own Thanksgiving. I think once I started cooking my own I enjoyed the holiday a lot more.
ANTHONY: I've always liked it and, Keith, I have memories of hanging out with you and your friends the night before Thanksgiving a couple of times.
KEITH: Now that night I definitely liked.
ANTHONY: Yeah I did and you did it for a lot of years I think like two or three years; it was a lot of fun absolutely yeah it was a very cool way to kick off the holiday. Thank you for that; thank you for inviting me to that.
KEITH: You're welcome.
ANTHONY: Well let's talk TV, that's why we're here. What Thanksgiving episodes have we been watching and what do we want to talk about? Jody, let's start with you.
JODY: The one I just want recently and the one I remember very well watching when it aired was actually a two-part episode of Archie Bunker’s Place, which by the way, I feel gets underrated in the scheme of things. It was a very nice spinoff to All in the Family and was really more of a continuation I think than a spinoff to All in the Family.
But in the first season of Archie Bunker’s Place, after it had been All in the Family for a while, they had a two-part Thanksgiving episode that aired in November of 1979 and Archie and Edith – Edith was still around, they didn't kill off Edith until season two – and they were hosting Thanksgiving and it was just gonna be the two of them and Stephanie their niece but Edith had a surprise and it was Mike and Gloria coming to visit for Thanksgiving. What is significant about this is that it is the last time that the original cast was together on camera.
A two-part episode as I said, part of the thing here is that Mike has lost his job because he was protesting naked in the march against nuclear energy …
ANTHONY: I remember that.
JODY:... which slowly but surely Archie finds out about. And when he does, he uses the term “he had full nudal frontity” to discuss what Mike was doing and then he said, “Walking around naked can only make the country more horny.”
KEITH: I actually can't think about Thanksgiving without thinking of “full naked frontity.”
JODY: “Full nudal frontity.” Get it right. Some throwaway parts of this episode because obviously it's Archie Bunker’s Place, the episode begins with Archie working in the bar and Barney is in there and he's crying because his wife has left him and he’s going to spend Thanksgiving alone but nobody in the bar is inviting him over which is hysterical. And Archie tells him, “No funerals this weekend, Barney, all your friends have plans.”
ANTHONY: Do they make a joke out of the fact that no one invites him or is it just nobody invites, like it's just…?
JODY: Nobody invites him. I think it was intended to be a joke. I don't know if people picked up on that or not. The scene has nothing to do with the rest of the episode but It's just how the episode opens.
ANTHONY: Do they hint at Mike and Gloria’s marriage problems in this episode?
JODY: They do not actually. And people who follow the show will know that when it was still All in the Family, they had an episode where Archie and Edith went to California to visit them and they were having marital problems but they reconciled at the end of that episode. For this Archie Bunker’s Place episode, they seemed to be together with no real problems. Obviously, bad stuff was on the way but you find out at the end of the episode that the reason that Mike was marching was because Gloria didn't wanna march alone so it was Gloria’s idea to march.
ANTHONY: Aah, that’s right. I don’t remember this episode at all but this is jogging my memory. I remember that now.
JODY: That's how the show ends with Gloria saying, “Well, I didn't wanna march alone.”
KEITH: Was this one of the last ones that Jean Stapleton was in?
JODY: Oh yeah, she was on Archie Bunker’s Place for one season and even then very sporadically.
KEITH: Right, very sporadically so this could be toward her last appearances.
JODY: I don't think it was her last one but it was close to it. They actually only showed her name on the opening credits of the episode she was in for that season. And of course, there’s a few minutes of Martin Balsam who actually gives Archie advice on how to handle the situation with Mike; Murray, his Jewish partner. And it ends with Archie gets very upset and leaves the Thanksgiving dinner but they end up the four of them having the leftovers together late at night sitting at the kitchen table. The episode ends with the four of them at a table together.
KEITH: Where was Joey?
ANTHONY: I was going to ask that.
JODY: He was there; he was in the episode and he was there for the regular dinner but then when they're all talking late at night, Joey and Stephanie are upstairs sleeping.
ANTHONY: How old is Stephanie at this point? Did she know Mike and Gloria walked around naked?
JODY: She had met them once and Edith told her about it, but didn't mean to, Edith kinda let it slip to Stephanie and she said, “Don't tell Uncle Archie,” but then little by little it came out.
ANTHONY: Gotcha. Gotcha.
KEITH: You can't trust Stephanie ever.
JODY: Yeah, you really…
ANTHONY: Boy, did I learn that the hard way.
JODY: She was always a snitch. They had a lot of Joey’s a little kid and he's going through a phase and won't talk or kiss Archie. So that's the other running gag in this thing and Archie’s afraid that he's gonna end up gay.
ANTHONY: Because he won't kiss Archie?
JODY: No, there are other things. He wants to play with Stephanie’s doll and things like that.
KEITH: So, here's a funny story just because we're mentioning Joey and has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Once I was at a thrift store and I found the baby Joey doll. I don't know if you remember, Anthony, I think I took a picture of it and asked if I should buy it; it was like $90. But it was like it was very tempting because it had you know Archie on the box holding Joey in his hands.
ANTHONY: And you didn't get it?
KEITH: I passed on that.
ANTHONY: Ninety’s a lot.
KEITH: It is a lot.
JODY: It is a lot for that.
KEITH: 5 bucks, I think I would have bought it but all right…
JODY: I think I would’ve gone to 20, but I don’t know about 90.
KEITH: Let's go to another show and I think this is one of the most famous Thanksgiving episodes if you ask someone their favorite: WKRP.
ANTHONY: Absolutely.
KEITH: Anthony, do you know the famous line?
ANTHONY: “I swear I thought turkeys could fly?”
JODY: “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
KEITH: There you go, Jody. Our editor is correcting.
ANTHONY: The whole episode Mr. Carlson had this idea to celebrate Thanksgiving but he wouldn't tell anybody.
KEITH: exactly.
ANTHONY: I'm sure the radio station had lawyers and that they would have had to have been involved in this process.
JODY: Not this one.
KEITH: They could’ve looked like Herb and Les were the kind of lawyers (the station would have had).
ANTHONY: And for anybody who might not know; Mr. CArlson's idea is to give Away turkeys and they were thrown out of a helicopter because Mr. Carlson thought they could fly. I don’t know exactly what he said, but how did Les Nessman report on this?
JODY: He's like “Oh my God! They're hitting the ground like bags of wet cement!” He’s like “Oh, the humanity!” He's reporting it like …
ANTHONY: … Like it’s the Hindenburg.
JODY: Right, like the Hindenburg. But first he’s reporting and he's in this area and there's nobody around him. He's looking around and people are kind of staring at him like what's he doing and he goes, “The crowd here is … curious.”
KEITH: Yes. Two things: It's funny you mentioned the Hindenburg because I had read that Richard Sanders who played Les actually prepared for the episode by listening to the recording of Herbert Morrison’s live broadcast.
ANTHONY: Oh, OK.
KEITH: And also interesting is that this is actually based on a real-life event. There's someone actually…
ANTHONY: Oh, I didn’t know that.
KEITH: Yeah…
ANTHONY: Did they actually throw the turkeys out …?
KEITH: … They actually threw turkeys out of a helicopter.
ANTHONY: Get out!
KEITH: Yeah. So I read, I guess the producer of this show kind of told him the story to Hugh Wilson, who is the creator of WKRP, and when Hugh Wilson heard the story told the guy “Thank you. You just won me an Emmy.” He knew how funny that would be.
ANTHONY: What was Gary Sandy’s character’s name? Andy…?
JODY: Andy Travis.
ANTHONY: What was he doing in this episode? I haven't seen it in decades. What was he doing?
JODY: Carlson wouldn't tell Andy what it was because he wanted it his. Andy is just going along with it because you know Carlson's his boss and he's just promoting it the best way he can. And then he finds out about it the way everyone else finds out about it. He's in the … basically what's happening is Andy and Johnny and Venus are in the booth where they play the records at the station and they're listening to Herb’s – Les’ rather – broadcast from there so as they're standing there that's how they're hearing about the turkeys. You actually see them and you see their reaction. It's very funny.
ANTHONY: Is Andy worried? I mean he knows Mr. Carlson…
JODY: Oh yeah. No, he's definitely concerned, he just doesn't think it could be this bad. He figures it's a simple Thanksgiving promotion; how bad could it end up being?
KEITH: And, by the way, turkeys can fly.
ANTHONY: Really?
KEITH: Wild turkeys can fly.
JODY: Not from that length.
KEITH: Not from that length, but they do fly.
ANTHONY: And wild turkeys can, these were probably…
JODY: These are regular turkeys.
ANTHONY: These were probably farm-raised.
JODY: So there's a part two where they're having a skywriter (writing) ‘Happy Thanksgiving from WKRP’ and Les is reporting on that and he’s like, “He's writing something. I can't see what it is.” He’s like “Ha..pp..y Thank..s..gi..ving…”
KEITH: Can we have Anthony do a Les Nessman impression?
ANTHONY: I cannot do a Les Nessman; I can't do any impressions but I can't even try to do a Les Nessman impression.
JODY: Our resident Rich Little over here.
ANTHONY: I can't even do, like, a bad Les Nessman like I do bad impressions of everybody else.
JODY: It’s not a voice that could be imitated very easily. It's very, you know, it's nothing, there’s nothing special about it… While Nes is doing that, they cut back to the station and Johnny’s lip syncing him doing it, which is very funny.
ANTHONY: That's awesome!
JODY: The great Howard Hesseman.
ANTHONY: You know, when it was Halloween I didn't watch The Munsters but for Thanksgiving I watched The Munsters. They mentioned Thanksgiving, but I don't know if it's really a Thanksgiving episode. Herman wants to go to an Army reunion and he won't go unless he can fit into his old Army uniform. He's put on a few pounds over the years and he doesn't want to wear civilian clothes because if he was wearing civilian clothes, everyone will look at him.
KEITH: Now I know you could do a Fred Gwynne impersonation.
ANTHONY: Ah, Lily.
KEITH: There you go.
ANTHONY: That's about it, that's all…
JODY: Wow, he's here.
ANTHONY: That's all I can do.
JODY: Let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that Herman was in the Army.
ANTHONY: I always wondered like he managed to survive in the Army but he does make a joke about how when the enemy would see him everybody would run and then he goes, “Come to think of it, our boys would run too when they saw me.” So I don't know if Herman had friends in the Army. I hope he did, I hope he had friends and was accepted.
KEITH: Wasn't he a cook or something? I feel like he had…
ANTHONY: They didn't say that in this episode. Mr. C was a cook.
JODY: Mr. C was an army cook.
KEITH: I feel like Munster was as well.
ANTHONY: He could’ve been.
KEITH: Any of our listeners at home that know the answer to that, please write in.
JODY: Please call in. Thank you for your service, Herman.
ANTHONY: And one of the funny moments in this episode is he goes to a doctor, who was played by the great Paul Lynde and Paul Lynde sends his glasses out to be fixed so he doesn't know that he's dealing with a monster. And he's touching his hairy arms and he goes “Now you have to get your dog outta here,” and all that kind of stuff. Then, of course, at the end, he gets his glasses back, puts them on and he runs away, as people seem to do whenever they found out Herman was around. At the end, Herman starves himself for like weeks or days, and one day he invades a family’s Thanksgiving dinner and eats all their food.
JODY: Can I ask a question? Does this episode begin with sort of a wrap- around, you see him like invading the family’s Thanksgiving…
ANTHONY: Yes
JODY:... and they cut back to how it began right?
ANTHONY: It's a very cinematic technique, yes. He invades it and says something like “You might be wondering how I got into this,” and then they go back to the beginning of the episode.
KEITH: That wasn’t done much back then.
ANTHONY: Now when I watched it this time, I kinda thought weren’t there episodes where they would show a scene of the episode before the episode started?
JODY: Yeah.
ANTHONY: … And not as a setup; they would just like sort preview the episode with the little scene. I thought they were doing that. I didn't realize they were actually setting up a flashback.
JODY: Yeah, it was a flashback, and again one of the early ones doing that. That became a bigger technique later.
KEITH: Absolutely.
ANTHONY: Great episode.
KEITH: One that I don't think any of us watched but all of us have just embedded in our memories is probably Cheers Thanksgiving episode.
ANTHONY: Absolutely. Jody, do you want to talk about that one, the premise and what not?
JODY: Why don’t we have Keith talk about Cheers because I have another one I want to bring up later.
KEITH: So Carla just moved into a new house and all the Cheers people kind of figure out that they have nothing to do for Thanksgiving which seems to be a running trend on all television shows; no one has families.
ANTHONY: That’s true.
KEITH: … so they all decided to spend it together even though Carla doesn't really want that. Diane offers to cook. Everybody comes and chaos ensues as it always does during Thanksgiving episodes.
ANTHONY: The turkey won’t cook. Norm brings the turkey. I don't know what the hell was going on.
JODY: Norm is cooking the turkey. Norm had volunteered to cook the turkey. And every couple of minutes he comes back in and says, “Yeah, not quite there yet.” As it turns out the oven is broken and they don't know that until later on and now there's no turkey.
ANTHONY: And they have all the other dishes ready though and it leads to a food fight, which is one of the all-time great moments in sitcom history as far as I'm concerned. How does it start?
JODY: Well, none of them have plans for Thanksgiving and …
ANTHONY: No, no, no, no. How does the food fight start? Somebody ends up hitting somebody in the face with mashed potatoes. Is Diane going on and on?
JODY: Yeah, she's doing a heavy speech and then Sam hits her with potatoes.
ANTHONY: And that's how it gets started.
KEITH: But then Norm throws some peas; Cliff throws some yams at Frasier; he throws gravy at Woody. It gets a little crazy.
JODY: Diane says, “You die, Malone!”
ANTHONY: And then at one point they're all in position to throw something and Diane stops everything.
JODY: Yes.
ANTHONY: … and you can see in their faces how much fun the cast was having with this.
JODY: Oh, no question.
KEITH: Absolutely. But again one of the famous things at the end is someone's at the door and it winds up being Vera…
ANTHONY: Oh that's right.
KEITH: … who was going to go with her sister and decided to spend it with Norm and Diane wants to throw a pie at Sam, hits Vera so Vera is actually on camera with a pie on her face and she simply says, “Norm, time to fetch your coat,” and he goes, “Yes, dear.”
JODY: But first she says, “Nice friends, Norm.”
ANTHONY: I was so mad at Diane. Finally, my chance to see what Vera looks like and she ruined it.
JODY: She’s always causing problems.
KEITH: Once again Bernadette Birkett, who we mentioned in the Halloween episode.
ANTHONY: She was Vera?
KEITH: Yes.
ANTHONY: Very cool.
KEITH: Norm’s wife, George Wendt’s wife.
ANTHONY: She was his wife in real life, right? I didn’t know that until that Halloween episode. Jody, did you watch something else?
JODY: Yeah I watched an episode of Alice, the Thanksgiving episode that I hadn't seen probably since it aired but I remembered it and I wanted to watch it again. It aired in November of 78. First of all it's called “Who Ordered the hot Turkey?” Mel buys eight turkeys for $5 each because …
KEITH: That's a deal.
JODY: Yes. He's decided he wants to stay open on Thanksgiving and because he got eight turkeys for $5 each he thinks he can make a killing with people buying turkey dinners.
ANTHONY: Sure.
JODY: Now I'll stop here for a minute and ask myself who's going to spend Thanksgiving at Mel’s Diner?
ANTHONY: As Keith said in TV land no one has anywhere to go on Thanksgiving.
JODY: Yeah, so that's the first question. This is a diner in the outskirts of Phoenix. Who's gonna spend Thanksgiving there? And the other funny thing about this is that he had told the waitresses Alice, Vera and Flo they can have Thanksgiving off. But they had to actually ask for Thanksgiving off and said “Yes we'll be closed Thanksgiving” and now literally the day before he's like “No, change of plans; we're open.”
ANTHONY: Horrible.
JODY: He actually says, “Maybe you could be off on Christmas.”
KEITH: So are Henry and Earl there as well?
JODY: No, no, but here's one of the things that happens. First off Alice was hosting a couple of orphans at her house. So now that she has to work, she's got Mel to agree to host even more orphans at the diner and Mel sees it as an opportunity so he let the local news know to come down and do a story on it to help him out.
KEITH: And there was a very famous orphan there wasn't there, Jody?
JODY: Yes I’ll get to that in a minute. First off he finds out all the turkeys are stolen and James Cromwell is the cop investigating that. So he ends up having to pay $100 for the stolen turkeys. Then, he finds out they're all alive so he's going to get Charlie the butcher to kill them for him. But Vera likes the turkeys and she feels bad and she lets them all go. So the orphans come; there are no turkeys. And Nancy McKeon and Corey Feldman are two of the orphans.
ANTHONY: Oh wow.
JODY: Yeah, Nancy McKeon being Tommy McKeon's sister…
KEITH: Phil (McKeon).
JODY: … later of The Facts of Life and the kids decide they don't like turkey anyway; they want chili dogs.
ANTHONY: So everybody ends up happy. And Mel makes no money.
JODY: Probably not.
KEITH: He loses money.
JODY: He actually ends up losing money because now he has to pay full price to the farmer not to press charges because James Cromwell the cop and the farmer come in and say if you pay the full price for the turkeys we won't arrest you for having stolen property.
KEITH: And I think one of the side dishes was actually grits on this episode.
JODY: Yes, which he kisses.
KEITH: I know we only have a few minutes left so why don't we just wrap up real quick with naming some of our other favorites real quick. I want to start. It's a more recent show than some of these other classic ones but Mad About You has an amazing Thanksgiving episode where they have to keep making turkey after turkey because – well, not making – buying turkey after turkey…
JODY: They keep getting it from the delI.
KEITH: … because Murray the dog eats their turkey and they're trying to impress the family and there's one scene where Helen Hunt’s Jamie throws a turkey out the window which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television.
ANTHONY: Paul Reiser says that wouldn't have been my first choice – out the window.
JODY: Actually, Anthony and I watched that together and we kept rewinding it because we kept laughing.
KEITH: It was that funny. Anyone else have a favorite memory real quick?
ANTHONY: Well the more recent show, not really of our time but I liked Friends, I didn't love it but definitely my daughter has, like a lot of kids her age, just loved it and I've enjoyed watching their Thanksgiving episode that they would have every year. In our day, you did a Thanksgiving episode and every year they ran that one. Friends would do (a new) one every year and and I have a lot of fun watching those with my daughter every year
JODY: Bringing up this show is a little taboo now but I will say in 1984 The Cosby Show had a very, very funny Thanksgiving episode where Cliff is trying to teach Theo how to carve the turkey.
ANTHONY: We can still talk about the show.
JODY: And that's where you find out that there's another daughter. That's the first appearance of Sondra, the oldest daughter.
ANTHONY: That freaked me out. When that show was on I'm like what, what what is this?
JODY: Yeah, so for the first few episodes you think it's only those kids and then you find out there's another kid at Princeton.
ANTHONY: Well, he even says in the first episode, she goes “Why do we have four kids?” And he says “Because we didn’t want five.”
JODY: Right, ‘Because we didn’t have one,’ which is actually from his stand up bid. The actress who played her is actually only 10 years younger than Felicia Rashad.
ANTHONY: We're almost running out of time but I'm just curious, did Family Ties have a Thanksgiving?
KEITH; I don't remember.
JODY: Not that I can remember. They had a couple of Christmas ones.
KEITH: Yeah, I don't remember one either.
ANTHONY: I'm surprised.
KEITH: But I have to say you know Fred G. Sanford, Sanford and Son did one and my favorite line from that is “Fred G. Sanford, the G stands for gravy.” That was my Redd Fox, by the way.
ANTHONY: That was fantastic.
JODY: Brilliant.
ANTHONY: I don't think…
JODY: He was here.
ANTHONY: I don't think we can top the G stands for gravy so I think it's a good place to wrap up and wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for listening.
JODY: Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
KEITH: Happy Thanksgiving. If you wanna go out the night before, hit me up.
JODY: The number will be posted.
Thanks for listening to Don't Touch That Dial, a classic TV podcast. If you like what you heard be sure to subscribe and please leave a review on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen. We'll be back soon with another journey back in time to the days of static, laugh tracks, and seven channels.