Recap / Cheers S5E9: "Thanksgiving Orphans"

Episode: Season 5, Episode 9
Title: Thanksgiving Orphans
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Cheri Eichen and Bill Steinkellner
Air Date: November 27, 1986
Previous: Knights of the Scimitar
Next: Everyone Imitates Art
Guest Starring: Bernadette Birkett (voice)

"Thanksgiving Orphans" is the ninth episode of the fifth season of Cheers.

It's holiday time, and the folks at Cheers start talking about Thanksgiving plans. It turns out that Carla is alone for the holiday, because her kids have gone to Atlantic City to spend it with her horrible ex-husband Nick. (Why her baby son by Dr. Bennett Ludlow isn't there is unanswered.) When Woody mentions that he's alone for the holiday as well, Diane suggests a holiday dinner for the gang.

Everybody shows up at Carla's unaccompanied—Woody and Frasier are away from family, Cliff's mom is volunteering at a homeless shelter, Sam's date cancels, and Vera Peterson insists on going to see her mother instead. The gang then sits down to a chaotic dinner that ends with one of TV's most famous food fights.

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Tropes:

• Best Served Cold: As the food-spattered gang eats dinner, Diane says to Sam, "Just remember that revenge is a dish best served cold. You won't know when and you won't know where, but I'm going to get you." This sets up the ending where Diane throws a pie at Sam but winds up hitting Vera.
• Blatant Lies: The group assured Diane they would stop watching TV after the current football game ended. When she later notices the uniforms have different colors, Cliff claims the teams change clothes after every touchdown.
• Buffy Speak: Norm's weird habit of referring to the thermometer in the turkey as "the little pop thing" drives Frasier to distraction.
  Frasier: The little pop thing has a name! It's called a thermometer! Now can we all just please say "thermometer"?
  Everyone else: "THERMOMETER!"
• Cassandra Truth: Sam makes a date for Thanksgiving but manages to blow it by being his horn-dog self. When Diane finds him alone at Carla's, she believes he's just lying to maintain the illusion.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: When asked if Vera is coming, Norm says they had a pretty bad fight about the whole thing. As the others try to assure him things will be fine, Norm opts to switch gears by talking turkey.
• Character Filibuster: Diane is allowed to make a toast. Not surprisingly, it lasts a long time (several fade cuts).
• Covered in Gunge: Everyone after the Food Fight, most spectacularly Vera when she is hit in the face by a pie.
• Delayed Reaction: The studio audience pulls one of these, when Sam explains why his date went poorly. He makes the joke, the audience laughs, then they catch on to what he said and really start laughing.
• Easily Forgiven: Diane's outrage and humiliation at being invited to serve drinks lasts until she makes an indignant phone-call, where the professor apologizes.
• Everyone Has Standards: As Diane talks about what happened at her professor's house, Sam and Frasier (the two with the most reason to enjoy any misery) are quite sympathetic towards her, with the latter saying the professor deserves to get an earful about it.
• The Faceless: Vera officially became this as of this episode when she is hit in the face by a pie at the end. Lampshaded by Sam on her no longer being The Ghost when he Stage Whispers to the others, "We're finally going to meet Vera!"
• Family of Choice: Discussed Trope, as Frasier says "Family is not limited to blood relations." And of course the Thanksgiving gathering shows how the Cheers gang really is a family.
• Food Fight: The famous ending has the whole group, increasingly irritated and hangry as dinner is delayed, having an epic food fight. Diane tries to stop it, only to join in after she's hit by Sam with cranberry sauce.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: No-one wants Diane at the Thanksgiving dinner, and she doesn't help her case by being her normal, stuffy self, throwing a strop at the others wanting to watch the football, and refusing to let anyone have any food until the turkey's done (meaning by the time they give up on that goal, everything's cold and / or fuzzy).
• Funny Background Event: Just as Diane's winding up for her incredibly long toast, Sam walks into the room, sees this and begins to back out again. Unfortunately for him, Diane sees this and commands he come and sit down.
• Henpecked Husband: The others doubted Norm would attend, as Vera was insistent on going to her mother's like every year. Norm does show up at Carla's doorstep, saying he insisted on attending and that it actually led to a pretty big fight. Later, after taking a pie in the face, Vera bluntly tells Norm to get his coat, and he meekly agrees.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Someone makes a comment about how their holiday is better than a regular family holiday where "some duddy old aunt" shows up "to ruin all your fun." Cue the doorbell ringing and Diane saying "Gobble gobble!" from outside.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: It's a sign of how rattled she was at her humiliation that Diane unreservedly asks for a beer.
• Lonely Together: It's the focus of the episode, in which the gang can't be with their loved ones on Thanksgiving and instead eat dinner at Carla's. In the end, they declare they're thankful for all the people they miss (Norm's wife, Cliff's mother, the recently-deceased Coach) since it does mean they have people they care about.
• Manchild: Not surprisingly, Woody's excited to see the Macy's parade has a Mighty Mouse float.
• Misplaced Retribution: What starts the food fight off is everyone throwing food at one another, but not whoever it was that irritated them.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Carla tells everyone that the arrangement at her table is boy-girl-boy-girl. Cliff can sit wherever he likes.
• Nice Guy: Woody. He sincerely welcomes Diane to the gathering and much of his toast is about how thankful he is for the great friends he's made since moving to Boston. After the food fight, he also suggested toasting loved ones who couldn't be with them that day.
• Not So Above It All: Diane, when she tries to stop the Food Fight at the end.
  Diane: PEOPLE!—PEOPLE!—PEOPLE! STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY!!! [Pause while the others, armed with food, maintain their fighting stance] I have never been witness to such a silly, soph— [Diane is hit by cranberry sauce, thrown by Sam.] Sam Malone... Kiss your butt good-BYE!
• Frasier as well, who's attempt at being aloof and patronizing quickly breaks down into self-pity:
  Frasier: You know, I'm glad to see that you're all fending off the holiday blues. This time of year is filled with arguments, suicides, murders. Yeah, I guess it's the seasonal happiness of others tends to throw a glaring light on the flaws in our own interpersonal relationships. But see, of course, that's no problem for me, I'm alone.
  Carla: Wanna join us for some bird, Frasier?
  Frasier (desperate): Could I?
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Despite his usual complaining about Vera, Norm is deeply troubled by their fight (which he describes as the worst one they ever had). He doesn't hesitate to toast her when the group is mentioning loved ones that couldn't be there. He's actually quite elated when she does show up at Carla's house.
• Pie in the Face: Vera takes one, thus preserving her status as The Faceless.
• Rage Breaking Point: After waiting so long to eat, Frasier screams about the constant usage of "the little pop thing" and gets yelled at by everyone else in return. It's at this point the gang is done holding back their assorted irritations from throughout the day, capping off with a truly epic food fight.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Having decided to stay with the gang for Thanksgiving, Diane asks where else she could go. Everyone else proceeds to give her assorted directions.
• Running Gag: The TV that keeps getting shifted back and forth between Frasier's end of the living room and the other end where Norm/Sam are sitting.
• Sarcasm Mode: Frasier gets irritated when Diane brags about how she's been invited to her professor's Thanksgiving dinner, where William Styron is expected to be a guest.
  Frasier: What a wonderful opportunity for you, Diane. You know, perhaps in the evening you can establish a rapport with Mr. Styron while passing the yams. Who knows? Come pie time, he may well have taken you under his wing and launched you into the literary galaxy.
  Diane: Frasier, you and I are of like mind.
  Frasier: Except one of us is kidding.
• Serious Business: The cold open has Frasier go on a long angry rant about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and how All of the Other Reindeer cruelly abuse the poor little guy.
• Thanksgiving Episode: Actually aired on Thanksgiving Day 1986.
• This Is Gonna Suck: The expressions on Sam and Frasier's faces as Diane begins speechifying her toast are of despair and misery.
• Three-Way Sex: Sam's date fell apart after the woman's sister made a surprise visit. Arriving at Carla's, Sam says the sisters care for how he suggested they spend the holiday together.
• Title Drop: A rare example of a Cheers episode title drop. Diane, at her most pretentious, says "Now I don't have to worry about my poor little Thanksgiving orphans whilst I sup with the literati."
• To Absent Friends: As part of Sam's toast, he name-drops Coach, and everyone follows.
• Vague Age: Diane was always careful to never say how old she was. After shamefacedly admitting that she was "invited" to the professor's dinner to serve drinks, she says "That might be all right when you're a wide-eyed 19-year-old, but it's certainly not all right when you're...not."
• Vanity Is Feminine: According to Diane, after realizing she'd been invited to the professor's party for drinks, she "dropped the tray, burst into tears, took a moment to freshen up my mascara, and fled."

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