"We've made a lot of enemies over the years."
— Frank
When the beef they have with people all over Philadelphia threatens to ruin their Thanksgiving plans, the gang decides to invite their enemies to dinner to settle the score once and for all.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Gail the Snail is a platonic version towards Dee, forcing the latter to be her best friend for the day.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The gang insist that they don't have beef with Cricket, despite him pointing out that he was a priest before he got tangled up with them.
- The Bus Came Back: This marks Hwang's first appearance since season one.
- Call-Back:
- Mac and Dennis attempt to rent the director's cut of Thunder Gun Express at the beginning of the episode.
- Frank asks Dennis why he's always trying to get people to sign "creepy documents".
- Mac and Dee both call the fake Bruce "jabroni".
- Gail gives Hwang a handjob under the table, and he claims that she's "mashing it".
- Frank refers to the cocaine that Bill brings as "nose clams".
- Comedic Sociopathy: The episode ends with the gang barricading their bickering guests in Mac and Dennis's burning apartment and drilling the door shut with screws before bailing.
- Continuity Cavalcade: A who's who of recurring characters that the gang have managed to offend over the course of the past nine seasons is invited to their dinner party, including the McPoyles, Charlie's landlord Hwang, Gail the Snail, Bill Ponderosa and the random guy whose car they destroyed after mistaking him for Bruce Mathis.
- Continuity Nod:
- Liam only has one eye after somebody ate his other one at his wedding.
- Mac tries to invite Dennis and Dee's biological father Bruce Mathis, but accidentally invites the man they once mistook for him instead.
- Crappy Holidays: Both Mac and Dennis state at the beginning of the episode that they hate Thanksgiving, and the gang's attempt at smoothing things over with their enemies definitely results in this.
- Death Glare: Frank and Hwang silently glare at each other across the room while eating crackers.
- Depth Deception: Liam has no depth perception due to his missing eye. His attempt to cut Dennis' video membership card in half is awkward enough that Ryan has to do it for him and at one point he tries to sit on Mac's bed and misses by a clear foot, falling on the floor instead.
- Disability Superpower: Dennis tries to convince Cricket to donate his remaining good eye to Liam by claiming that his other senses will become superhuman.
- Eyepatch of Power: Averted by Liam, who has an incredibly creepy flesh-colored eyepatch in lieu of the usual black to make it look "less obvious". It gets even more unsettling after he glues a badly-drawn cartoon eye onto it.Liam: Is it off-putting? Does it look real?Dee: The skin tone is a... is a good... match. Oh, well, when you move the other one, I guess I can tell a little bit, if I'm being honest.
- Food Fight: The meal quickly devolves into this after the gang's attempts at resolving their beefs spiral out of control.
- Friendship Moment: It's kind of cynical given the context, but the episode ends with the gang affirming they don't need to be liked by anybody else since they have each other, before going to spend the remainder of Thanksgiving together at Charlie's apartment.Frank: We don't need to get along with everybody else, we got each other!Dennis: Screw everybody else.Mac: I hate people who are different than me, you know? Why pretend?
- Genre Blind: The McPoyle twins bought a video rental store, describing it as an "emerging market".
- Kick the Dog: After Cricket asks if he can eat the gristle, Dennis tells him only if he eats it off the floor like a dog.
- Literal Metaphor: A whole series of them: first of all Charlie cooks literal squash and beef, then Mac produces a bucket of sand and a hatchet so that they can "bury the hatchet", and finally Dee comes out with a piece of slate and a cloth to "wipe the slate clean".Dennis: This is all very on the nose.
- Money to Burn: Frank sets fire to a whole wad of cash in order to make a point to Hwang about not paying the rent, inadvertently setting Mac's room on fire in the process.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: A lot of Gail's dialog comes off like this.
- Sidetracked by the Analogy: After Dennis compares the gang settling their disputes to "the original Thanksgiving", the others get derailed into a discussion over whether they would be the pilgrims or the Indians.Frank: The pilgrims. They came out on top.Dee: I don't know about that, Frank. The Indians, they've got sports teams, they've got casinos; they're a very celebrated people.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Frank and Hwang state that the (extremely salty) crackers need more salt and they both hate and are very untrusting of doctors.
- Thanksgiving Episode: A particularly warped take on the trope.
- Trash the Set: The episode ends with Mac and Dennis's apartment burning down after Frank starts a "money fire".
- The Unapologetic: The gang is this in spades. Mac and Dennis would rather try to find a replacement eye for Liam than apologize for the part they played in his losing it to begin with.
