As of September 2022, The Simpsons, entered season 34, and is ranked one of the longest running scripted shows in America, overtaking classics like Gunsmoke (which ran for 20 years), as well as Scooby-Doo (which ran for 371 episodes, through multiple iterations). While The Simpson’s didn’t often have Thanksgiving specials, they did have a handful of great memories to leave us all feeling so utterly thankful.
Known for their wild family antics and their quality holiday specials, The Simpson’s represented a normal, everyday family. With a lot of focus on Halloween and Christmas, sometimes Thanksgiving gets the short end of the stick. Occasionally, however, The Simpson’s delivered an amazing episode that brought Thanksgiving fun into a nice 22-minute adventure.
The Simpsons
- Release Date
- December 17, 1989
- Main Genre
- Comedy
- Seasons
- 36
- Studio
- Fox
10 “Step Brother From the Same Planet”
Season 34, Episode 8
Imagine learning that you may have a step-brother that didn’t quite sit well with you. Now, imagine that same step-brother being introduced on the most stressful time of the year, Thanksgiving. You now know what Homer felt like in the Season 34 Thanksgiving episode “Step Brother From the Same Planet,” which sees his father bringing home a girlfriend much younger than he is, and she, in turn, brings her son to the holiday festivities.
You can understand, somewhat, where Homer is coming from, as he is expected to treat her kid as a step-brother. While one would think that Grampa Simpson and his new girlfriend would expect Homer to bond with her son, it doesn’t always turn out that way, which led to an episode that is both hilarious and heartfelt at the same time.
9 “Poetic Interlude”
Season 33, Episode 3
Who would have thought that a “Treehouse of Horror” episode would give way to one of the better Simpsons Thanksgiving episodes? That episode was “Poetic Interlude,” which was a segment from Season 33’s “Treehouse XXXII” episode. Here, the late, great Vincent Price reads Maggie a bedtime story about how her son, Bart, pulls a prank for each month of the year, with one of those pranks being a turkey carving prank for Thankgiving.
While the story may seem light, the episode quickly becomes dark, which lends this episode an eerie vibe Price would be proud of. With the animation of the episode matching the horror-tinged tone, “Poetic Inerlude” should be on your radar if you want a side of mind-bending terror to go along with the turkey and stuffing.
8 “Tis the 30th Season”
Season 30, Episode 10
Technically, this is not a Thanksgiving episode, but it does start off with Thanksgiving dinner and then moves right into Black Friday shopping and Christmas lists, etc. It is a fun episode about the holidays, but it isn’t entirely about Thanksgiving.
After Thanksgiving dinner, Bart and Lisa give Homer and Marge their Christmas lists, and evidently they want a hugely expensive TV. When Homer and Marge see that it is on sale for significantly less for Black Friday, they make plans to retrieve it. Long story short, they don’t get it and a lot of hilarious yet heartwarming moments come about for the family.
7 “The Wettest Stories Ever Told”
Season 17, Episode 18
Even though this episode is not a traditional Thanksgiving episode, it still has references to the holiday. In this brief mention, the family has dinner ruined, and they end up telling each other stories that are nautically themed in hopes of saving the evening from total disaster… and an octopus with knives.
During the telling of one of the stories, Lisa tells of various versions of her family members on the Mayflower as they sail the seas. The end of this weird and seemingly pointless story has the family meeting the Wampanoag tribe and joining them for the first Thanksgiving feast only to have this fictional version of Ned Flanders (Harry Shearer) reveal that they were intending to take their land and kill them all… good family Thanksgiving excitement.
6 “Homer the Moe”
Season 13, Episode 3
What starts out as a strange episode having nothing to do with Thanksgiving, turns into a relatively heartwarming and lovely selection of moments. Moe (Hank Azaria) decides that he is unhappy with the mundane nature of every day being the same at his bar, and reflects on his time in college. As he leaves Homer in charge of his bar (terrible mistake) to go visit his college, he ends up making the decision to revamp his bar into a trendy and hipster hangout, making Homer and the rest of the guys hate it and leave.
Moe eventually reverts his bar back to its regular look and feel. All the guys end up back at Moe’s for a deliciously awful Thanksgiving meal made entirely of tofu and gluten. Such an odd episode, but as it ends, Homer solidifies his love for Moe by placing some money in his tip jar at the bar.
5 “From Russia Without Love”
Season 30, Episode 6
Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like a fake mail-order Russian bride, right? Bart uses the dark web to order Moe a Russian bride because he no longer responded emotionally to the prank calls Bart made. After a series of wildly unrealistic events, Moe finally decides to marry this gal.
Fortunately for Moe, though, Bart finds out that this mail-order bride who said she had actually fallen in love with Moe, is actually a scam artist who was trying to get all the legal rights to ownership of Moe’s bar so that she could steal all his net worth. He breaks off everything, and she goes and pretends to be Scottish to seduce Groundskeeper Willie (Dan Castellaneta). And all of this would never have happened if it weren’t for Marge asking Homer to uninvite a drink-too-much Moe to Thanksgiving dinner.
4 “Homer vs. Dignity”
Season 12, Episode 5
When Homer realizes that he can’t follow through with a simple budget, and ends up so far beyond broke that even in death, he wouldn’t even have enough money for his grave to be attended. In a desperate attempt to make some money, he asks Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer) for a raise, who then proceeds to use Homer as his personal court jester, of sorts, and pays him small amounts of money for ridiculous tasks, like throwing pudding at a co-worker or eating a rare comic book in front of the Comic Book Guy (Hank Azaria).
After being Mr. Burns’ amuser for long enough, Lisa finally gets Homer to stop doing these wild tasks. So, when Homer takes all his “earnings” and donates it all to Costington’s Department Store, the owner suggests that Homer dress up as Santa Claus for the Thanksgiving Day parade to hand out toys to all the kids in the crowd. After a few more wild moments, Homer is grateful to, and thanks Lisa for helping him to save his dignity.
3 “Holidays of Future Passed”
Season 23. Episode 9
Starting with the end of Thanksgiving dinner and the family rushing to take their annual Christmas card picture, both Bart and Lisa protest because they hate it and wish to not have to do it anymore. Marge points out that one day they will look back and love these moments, especially when they have children of their own and can appreciate these types of traditions. Both vehemently indicate that they will never have kids because they never want to subject the world to more Simpson dysfunction.
Flash forward thirty years and both Bart and Lisa are now parents themselves, and are having significant difficulty in their parenting and relationships. They end up at Homer and Marge’s house, and after some fun adventures and heartfelt moments, the two realize that parenting is really hard, and acknowledge the effort their parents put in when they were kids. The episode ends with everyone gathering (still thirty years in the future) to take another family photo.
2 “Thanksgiving of Horror”
Season 31, Episode 8
In an homage to the annual and ever-popular Treehouse of Horror episodes, The Simpson’s recreate that same Halloween magic, but for Thanksgiving. There is a disturbing version of the family as Turkeys during the first Thanksgiving. There is artificial intelligence that Homer buys to quasi-replace Marge. And there is a ridiculous space adventure where Bart inadvertently creates The Blob with cranberry sauce.
This episode really does have everything, as it has references to so many well-known films and genres. The first Thanksgiving segment is a parody of Apocalypto, the A.I. segment touches on aspects found in various episodes of Black Mirror, and the space adventure segment clearly parodies the terrible film The Blob, where gelatinous goo becomes sentient and murderous. So, while not a typical Thanksgiving special, it really did deliver with such a fantastic variety of fun and excitement and references that everyone will likely enjoy.
1 “Bart vs. Thanksgiving”
Season 2, Episode 7
In one of the earliest episodes of the series, after getting into an argument with Lisa and breaking her homemade Thanksgiving centerpiece and throwing it in the fire, Bart ends up running away from home. While away, Bart ends up trying to steal a pie, gets chased by guard dogs, and uses a fake ID to sell blood, and then ends up in a soup kitchen receiving handouts for the homeless.
When Bart finally returns home, we get to see a truly loving reunion with his family. After such a difficult time, it is really nice to see that Bart came back, apologized, and that the Simpson clan was able to finally spend a family Thanksgiving together, even if it was only leftovers that they were able to eat together. It truly was a great moment to see them all together and happy again, really enjoying what Thanksgiving is all about – family.
