Tube Stop Troopers

Remember, remember the 5th of November. Roman candles, aliens, and pot.  I see no reason why Attack the Block should ever be forgot.

South London is bathed in the glow of fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, but those aren’t the only things lighting up the night sky.  As a young nurse is coming home from a late shift at work, she’s accosted and mugged by a group of masked youths as she turns a blind alley.  In the middle of this mugging, something comes crashing down into a Volvo, pretty much turning it into a smoldering hunk of metal and glass.  She uses this distraction to escape and the youths check it out.  Leaping from the car, a small white creature with no eyes attacks and runs away.  They follow it, soften it up with fireworks, and kill it.

This is the first five minutes of Attack the Block (currently streaming on HBO Max), a hidden gem from 2011 that not enough people have seen and fewer still are talking about as much as they should be, despite its RT score of 91% at the time of posting.  I really appreciate a movie that doesn’t hang around and gets to its story quickly.  You went to the theater (or, increasingly scrolled and clicked on it from your sofa), because you know what it’s about; we don’t need a half hour preamble before the action starts. It’s a fairly simple plot.  On Guy Fawkes Day, aliens drop from the sky and land in South London with the festivities covering their landing.  These kids, aspiring gang members and drug dealers, see the scale of the invasion while showing off their extraterrestrial trophy like Hector dragging Achilles through the streets, and gear up to protect the block, their tower block council estate (essentially a high rise British version of a housing project) from the invaders.  What ensues is a fight for survival, sure, but it’s so much more.

Attack the Block is not only a pulse-pounding sci-fi creature feature, it’s also seriously funny, smartly written, and has something to say about racial and economic tension in England (which, sadly, feels very universal, still, over a decade later).  A movie this polished and well acted makes it hard to believe that it was not only a debut feature for the writer/director Joe Cornish and many of the then-unknown actors, but it was also made for a relatively scant reported $13 million dollar budget.  John Boyega plays Moses, the leader of the group, who went on later to play Finn in Star Wars; Jodie Whittaker plays Sam, long before she became the first woman to play The Doctor in Doctor Who, the young nurse who is mugged in the opening scene; Franz Drameh plays Dennis, who you may know from the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow as one half of Firestorm (the half that isn’t Victor Garber), as well as other unknowns were cast in their roles and played them very naturally.  One of the major standouts is Alex Esmail, who plays a kid called Pest and is anything but, offering a lot of the movie’s comedic relief and a large part of its heart as well.  He’s a great character and adds a lot to the ensemble’s dynamic.  Also in a minor role is Nick Frost, who, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is kind of a legend when it comes to this sort of sci-fi action horror-comedy.  While he doesn’t have much screen time, he is a real delight.

When the teens see what’s happening to their block, their neighborhood, their home, they don’t hesitate to do whatever it takes to protect it.  And this is England and they’re teenagers, so their options are fairly limited.  Bottle rockets and other fireworks take the place of guns; baseball bats, pipes, and a sword, somehow, handle things when it gets up close and personal.  But it turns out the rest of the aliens that have come to earth aren’t like the small one they killed.  They’re bigger, meaner, have rows of sharp, shark-style glowing teeth, and they’re so dark, they’re almost Vantablack—a very convincing effect used by overlaying CGI on to physical effects (most impressively for a low budget film, the glowing teeth were done using animatronics)—so they’re kind of outgunned, so to speak.   At one point, one of them says “Right now, I feel like going home, locking the door, and playing FIFA” (which is how I felt almost every day at my old job, so I can relate), but they don’t; they step up to protect the block when nobody else will.  And here is where this movie really starts to differentiate itself from most big budget blockbusters.  This isn’t about the military response, the police play a small, antagonistic role to our heroes, and there are no drawn out high level discussions or political backstabbing.  It’s a very ground level world they’re in, despite being stories up in the block.

In some ways, it’s kind of an anti-Independence Day.  It’s so refreshing to see a movie about an alien invasion that isn’t focused on the top level response.  There are no secret conversations or talks about the right time to inform the public.  Even brilliant, cerebral sci-fi films like Arrival and Annihilation often spend their time with the best and brightest, with all the resources at their disposal, with their efforts behind closed doors.  In Attack the Block, the conversations that happen are there to disseminate information to those who need it and to talk about society as whole—when someone suggests they call the police for help, the immediate reaction is distrust.  They’re more afraid of the police than they are of the aliens.  At one point, the idea is even floated that the creatures were created in a lab as a way to hunt down Black people because the police and drugs weren’t killing them fast enough.  Very heavy shades of the theory that the CIA introduced crack cocaine to Black neighborhoods in the US—there is no trust here.  And it makes sense. These are young, mostly Black “hoodies”; youths who have little to no prospects, grow up in poverty, and are often vilified as nothing but a criminal element, a state of decay in the culture.  For a time in England, it was hoodies that were the most terrifying monsters imaginable.  It became slang, dehumanizing the young and the poor; laws were passed, children were arrested, and stores that sold hoodies banned the wearing of them.  [Certainly, I am not the most qualified to talk about this; I am not English, despite the amount of Top Gear and Fawlty Towers I’ve watched over the years, and I am not and was never an impoverished inner city youth.  But I found a great deep dive analysis of the film and its place in that time and society here if you are so inclined to learn more about it—after you watch the film, of course.]

Here, the hoodie, whether the garment or person, is a symbol of the real economic tensions that exist both in the world and in the film; crime was the only viable option they felt they had and when Moses was bumped up by drug dealer Hi-Hatz, a secondary antagonist who comes to the block to make money off them, to selling some coke for him, that was a huge glow up worthy of celebration.  When they wanted to warn their friends and family of the alien invasion, their remaining minutes and texts on their prepaid phones became a limiting factor.  There is no glamor here; the movie is very clear about the issues at play, but it’s quick, it’s subtle, and it takes you paying attention to see it.  The writing is very astute and effective; it doesn’t need long winded soliloquies or speeches and the way it goes about making its point is as sharp as the aliens’ teeth.  There’s the block and there’s everyone else.  But being in the block, living there, being a neighbor, even if they didn’t know you, that meant you were on the same side.  They were together then, they were a team.  It’s together that they have a chance to survive.

It’s a film that works on every level and gets better with each repeated viewing.  As a piece of entertainment, it is funny, it is clever, it is full of great action.  The pacing is excellent; not quite breathless, you do have moments to recover and exhale, but it doesn’t waste any time in its 90 minute length.   As science fiction, it is a satisfying fantastical look at the real world.  As an action movie, it has pretty much everything you could ask for—explosions, chases, fights, gunplay, the lot.  It has genuine moments of horror and very real stakes.  The first time I saw it, I liked it a lot.  The second time, I loved it.  The third inspired me to talk to you about it.  I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys any of the genres in which it exists.

Attack the Block is a thrilling science fiction action comedy if you just want to leave it at that.  You can pop some corn, veg out, and just enjoy the spectacle.  It never looks or feels low budget.  It never lags.  It’s doesn’t trap you with a bloated 150 minute runtime.  But, if you look deeper, it’s a movie about how easy it is to forget that other people are human too and what extremes it takes to remind us that at the end of things, we should all be on the same side and that empathy is always called for.  Because that’s how we have a chance to survive.

Plight of the Navigator

Well, it happened.  Disney made a Star Wars show for millennials to watch with their kids.  Or, in my case, sitting on my sofa with my notebook, a can of soda, and an individually wrapped string cheese (they’re a good source of calcium and protein, leave me alone).

Star Wars has been through a lot lately.  The sequel trilogy has its detractors from all sides, it seems.  If, like me, you loved The Last Jedi, you probably didn’t like the backtrack that was The Rise of Skywalker, the stone in the pond from which all subsequent properties have suffered its ripple (with shows dedicating entire episodes and story arcs to shoehorning a justification for the lazy “Somehow Palpatine returned” moment into their runs).  If you didn’t like The Last Jedi, there’s still a good chance you didn’t like TROS. But there are plenty of people who liked all three and I am genuinely happy for them.  The Acolyte also had its unfair share of vitriolic detractors, but that’s a topic for another time (though it is one I will get to).

Free of all these trappings, it seems, is the new Disney+ series Skeleton Crew (releasing Tuesday evenings on the streaming service) which centers on a group of children from an ordinary planet thrust into very fantastical circumstances.  And when I say ordinary, I mean really quite ordinary.  You get to see what looks like a very modern suburban development, where kids wake up in beds in houses—not bunks on ships or cots in huts—they brush their teeth and eat cereal, then catch the bus and go to school.  There is a striking mundanity to the lives these people live; if it weren’t for the prevalence of droids and lack of chain restaurants, it could be almost any suburban development in America.  There are some really interesting design elements here; much like the vehicles we’re used to seeing in Star Wars, they hover above the ground, but many of them are connected and run on tram lines, like monorails for the road.  It’s a complete visual contrast to The Mandalorian, which is set in the same time period (after the fall of the Empire and before the New Republic falls to the First Order, or in movie terms, between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens).  I really like these time periods between trilogies, such as animated shows The Bad Batch and Rebels, because I think it gives writers a lot of leeway to create original characters and tell stories that aren’t tied to the Skywalker saga, where it seems that the entire fate of the galaxy is tied to two families and the rest of the people in the fight don’t matter at all.  There’s no way we’d get modern houses and buses in something set in the Empire or First Order era. It is very, very refreshing to see a Star Wars story that is not on a desert planet (at least so far), isn’t focused on getting everyone to Tatooine for some reason or another, and is aesthetically different from what we’ve seen so much of already.  But this sort of tranquility isn’t to everyone’s taste, with the very normal yearning for adventure creeping up in young Wim.

Much like the 80s movies from which it draws inspiration, movies like The Goonies, Flight of the Navigator, and Time Bandits, Skeleton Crew is about a group of kids with a fairly stereotypical set of characteristics for this kind of show.  There’s the dreamer with his head in the clouds, always thinking of adventures and becoming a hero, Wim.  There’s Neel, Wim’s scaredy-cat best friend who shares interests with Wim, but not the same desires (also, he’s a little blue alien elephant boy, who, in the grand scheme of things, is no Grogu, but he’s still pretty adorable).  Then there’s the precocious, rebellious Fern, complete with an authority figure for a parent (played by Kerry Condon, which was a bittersweet moment for me, knowing how great of an actress she is and how small of role this may potentially be for her in the Star Wars universe), and the mysterious, but kind-hearted KB who grounds Fern.  Whether these characterizations will deepen as the story unfolds is yet to be seen, but I’m hopeful that things will progress as the series does.

It’s familiar, especially if you grew up with those 1980s Amblin Entertainment movies or even if you’ve watched Stranger Things recently.  But that’s not a bad thing, not inherently.  There’s a lot of fun to be had and lessons to be learned along the way in these kinds of stories if they’re done well.  To paraphrase the comic book series Saga, so many of these children’s stories are the same—you break the rules, things go horribly wrong, the kids come home and realize the rules are there for a reason, but the actual message is that you should break the rules as often as possible because you have your whole life to follow a routine and the chances for adventure are few and far between.  If executed well, familiar isn’t a problem.

Wim is an interesting bag of opposing forces.  No, not light and dark here, even though he wishes he were a Jedi, he doesn’t appear to be Force-sensitive, and rather, is just a normal kid.  But while he yearns for adventure and breaking out of his boring life, he also shows a little envy towards Neel’s family.  Wim is an only child of a workaholic single father with his mother not in the picture (whether she left or died has yet to be revealed) and he has shown some wistful longing when seeing Neel greeted by his parents and siblings as they walk home from school.  Whether this desire for more is Wim’s escapist fantasy for a more fulfilling life because he has to spend so much time on his own or a true calling to buckle some swash across the galaxy, I can’t say quite yet.  So far the series has focused more on him than the other characters, but I imagine we’ll get deeper looks into the lives of the other kids soon.  As it stands now, KB is a total mystery from her possibly cybernetic eyewear to her home life, all you know about the kid is that she has more sensible head on her shoulders than the rest of them.  While it’s a challenge to talk about characters when I know so little, it’s telling that I want to know more, that I’m interested in them as characters and not just as mouthpieces that get us to the action sequences.

Speaking of, the action has been sparing in the two-part premiere (and the two episodes are definitely meant to be watched together, the first part is pure setup and world-building, with almost nothing going on before the impetus of the show reveals itself), but when it does come, it is very fun to watch.  And beyond that, everything about this world looks great.  Like I said, I was thrilled to finally be out of the desert, but I hadn’t realized how much I missed seeing aliens (non-humanoid, anyway, technically they’re all aliens to us earthlings, I guess) in the Star Wars world again.  The Mandalorian had a few outside of Lil’ Baby Grogs, but Andor was conspicuously light on non-human characters; though it could be said that the focus on the Empire was at least part of the cause of that, even The Acolyte only gave us a few non-human characters.  The world here is rich and vibrant and really feels like Star Wars.  And the decision to utilize, at least from what I can tell with the naked eye, a great deal of practical effects and puppetry instead of relying solely on CGI for this means that the show is visually deep and feels real when you look at it.  Of course there is CGI, but when you’re watching the show, it doesn’t feel like you’re watching someone writhing around in a black catsuit with a bunch of balls stuck to them.  Whether or not that’s actually the case, I don’t know for sure, but if it is, my eyes have been thoroughly deceived.

As the penny drops and the kids find themselves in very unfamiliar territory without a fully formed prefrontal cortex among the lot of them, they find themselves very quickly getting into trouble.  They end up at a pirate spaceport that is somewhat reminiscent of both Knowhere from Guardians of the Galaxy and Mos Eisley from A New Hope, without ever feeling like a carbon copy of either.  As children, they stand out quite a lot amongst the motley bunch of robbers and killers and are pretty lucky to not end up on the wrong end of a blaster.  In the midst of a few funny moments and some good action, we learn something about their home, At Attin.  See, it’s not just an overly structured society in which schoolchildren have to undergo career assessment testing that may determine the course of their lives, it’s also an extremely cut off planet.  So much so that its mere existence has become a thing of myth.  Whoops.  It’s like walking into a bar full of treasure hunters and casually dropping that you’re from the golden city of El Dorado and you’d very much like some help getting back there.  Those craving adventure may learn that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.

While not everything works, the cast is starting to gel and I have high hopes that the fun of this show will continue.  I love when Star Wars gets deep and serious, but I think there’s room for all sorts of storytelling in Star Wars and I really believe it’s important not just to cater to fans from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but also to new fans, to kids, the ones who will be introduced to the series by their parents who grew up watching the movies, perhaps after their parents introduced it to them.  Star Wars has to grow and change along with its fan base, but it doesn’t need to spoon-feed itself to the vocal few who believe that Star Wars should only be one narrow thing.  I love that there’s space for something like this and I’ve found myself waiting impatiently for the next episode. I really can’t wait to see where Skeleton Crew is headed—and much like its wayward characters, I think we’re in for some adventure along the way.  And who the hell doesn’t want to have an adventure?

Quiplash in Cameotown

I’ve been a fan of Ryan Reynolds since Two Guys and a Girl still had a pizza place in its title.  He does a lot of funny stuff, from his one episode in Scrubs to his star turn in Detective Pikachu.  And my, oh my, from the level of skepticism I had when Hugh Jackman was cast as Wolverine, what feels like fifty or sixty years ago, to the level of admiration I had for him by the end of Logan, he cast aside all my doubts and continued to give the best performances in the X-Men franchise, even outshining James McAvoy’s excellent Patrick Stewart (I mean Charles Xavier).  So I was pretty damn excited when I saw first that they were coming together for Deadpool & Wolverine.

And that was sort of where my excitement ended.  From minute one, it was clear that the best idea they could come up with was calling out their bad ideas and the dearth of creativity that plagues not just Marvel now, but so many blockbusters these days.  I get that Deadpool’s whole thing is that he’s the irreverent merc with a mouth who breaks the fourth wall, but the first note I wrote on the movie says “kind of over it at this point” and since I started the movie that way, I was really hoping that the situation would change.  But the trajectory was not one of improvement.  From the opening scene where Deadpool digs up Logan’s corpse where it was left after Logan (though I believe that movie took place in the future, still ahead of the current time) and uses it to kill a bunch of TVA agents (that is the Time Variance Authority, not the one in Tennessee) before he does a dance made for TikTok over the opening credits, I was sighing and rolling my eyes in a way I didn’t previously know possible.  I bet you didn’t think this movie, Deadpool’s first entry into the MCU, was going to be a Loki spin-off, but it is.  I guess with all the cameos, they decided to save budget by reusing sets (but not actors) from that show.  Of all the cameos that they stuffed into this movie, they couldn’t fly Ke Huy Quan in for an afternoon?  I mean, they brought back Toad and Pyro from the X-Men films, but you couldn’t get Ke?  I guess he was too busy, compared to slackers like Chris Evans and Channing Tatum.

Sure, it’s true that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first two Deadpool movies; I thought they were good, but sometimes felt like they were written like a kid who spends their first night away from their parents and learns that they can say all the bad words they want.  It was just a bit forced at times, but they were good movies.  And at the center of those movies was the relationship between Wade and Vanessa; that was the thing that elevated them from schlock like Kick-Ass to actually good movies.  So, of course, the move here is to make Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa a cameo instead of a character and just have Reynolds throw so many jokes against the wall spaghetti-style that you don’t notice that the movie kind of has no story and the fights don’t mean anything.  Underscoring this lack of stakes is the movie’s music choices, laying over ironic popular songs over every battle to show off how funny and silly the movie is.  This is a movie that is trying really hard to convince it’s funny by constantly saying “See?  Look how funny that is!  I’m so funny!” and hoping you just go along with it.  The movie transitions to a job interview where Wade meets Happy Hogan (hey, I remember that guy!) and tries to become an Avenger.  Happy shows him the door and Wade decides to become a car salesman; a very bad one, despite the fact he really pushes minivans, especially the Honda Odyssey, for pretty much the entire movie.  It’s not just a one scene product placement; other than quips and the word “multiverse”, I swear he says “Honda Odyssey” more than anything else in the film.  I mean, the only way the writing in this movie could have been lazier is if they decided to do the cameos as Zoom calls and actually hired the actors on Cameo.  It would have undoubtedly been cheaper that way and maybe they could have afforded a coherent plot and to fly in Ke Huy Quan.  Really, as disappointing as this movie was, the biggest disappointment I had was that Ke wasn’t at the TVA after his epic performance in Loki Season 2.

I am very tired of multiverse stories.  I feel like we’ve forgotten that when DC Comics had to clean up its multiverse because it became far too unwieldy to handle, they had to have a huge event that they literally called a crisis to tie everything together and make the universe followable again.  And when the best you can do in a multiverse is give us a state where things are slightly different from the established universe, it really feels like you’re not doing much with your concept.  And, it also manages to take the stakes out of everything and make it so that character deaths and efforts and sacrifices are essentially meaningless because they’re not some singular person who steps up when needed to do the heroic acts the world needs of them—they’re one of an infinite number of mostly the same versions of themselves that can slot right in once this one dies.  I’ve never cared for the idea and it’s been done to death by the MCU and the Arrowverse, of all things, which was essentially forced into it because of network changes for Supergirl.  MCU’s multiverse jumped the shark in 2022 with Multiverse of Madness and it has not aged well at all.  I’d go as far as to say the only property that actually pulled off the multiverse story well was Loki, because that show had a beating heart at its center and excellent performances by Tom Hiddleston, Ke Huy Quan, Sofia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, and Wunmi Mosaku, the sole veteran of that series that makes an appearance in this movie.

Anyway, Wade is pulled into the TVA and told by a fellow who calls himself Mr. Paradox that he’s the chosen one to fix the sacred timeline or something and that his timeline is slated for destruction after Logan’s death, as he was the anchor being for that timeline and without him it can’t exist—so we’re going to have to really ignore how that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and just go with it, I guess.  I mean, unless the anchor being is born at the moment of the timeline and is immortal, wouldn’t mean that all timelines at some point don’t have an anchor being and should be slated deprecation?  Including the sacred timeline?  Well, I guess they don’t want us asking questions like that, and other questions like “Why was The Eternals so bad and if Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, but to me he’s always Paper Boi) is the one who gave humans all the technology starting with things like the plow, what makes Iron Man so special?”.  But that’s another problem.  So, Wade decides to get a replacement Wolverine.  Cue the montage.  And yes, Deadpool actually says that.

See, the move here, the entire conceit of the movie, really, is that if you call out bad writing and uncreative decisions that it somehow becomes good writing and creative.  That’s right—if you write your movie like it’s its own Reddit comment section, people can’t complain on Reddit.  At least that’s the theory, it seems.  So much of this meta comedy is trying to mask the lack of originality and stakes and simultaneously call out and appease the Reddit mob.  It just doesn’t work; not for me, anyway.  You can’t call out bad choices while leaning into them and get a pass for it.  I mean, come on; they even made an “I identify as” joke like it’s 2014.  I get it, your view of comedy hasn’t changed in almost a decade, cool.  Just don’t expect me to be impressed by jokes I got tired of seeing on Twitter when my beard was still all black and I had hope for the future.  If your idea of a good time is quantity over quality with a maybe 5% hit rate, Deadpool & Wolverine has you covered.  But I don’t think you can quip your way to a satisfying movie just by doing it as much as you possibly can in its bloated runtime.  And I say bloated because even though something is happening all the time, halfway through the movie I still didn’t really know what it was about and I wasn’t even sure who the villain was.  At first I was sure it was Tom Wambsgans from the TVA, then I was sure it was Cassandra Nova (played by Emma Corrin, who was actually allowed to emote in this movie, unlike their role in A Murder at the End of the World, in which they were seemingly only permitted to look like a deer in headlights and chat flatly to an AI assistant), then I swapped between the two, then it was both, then it was neither, and I ended the movie still wondering what anyone’s plan or motivation was.  Still, it was pretty dope to see Matthew Macfayden.  I settled on the idea that I was the villain all along and, frankly, I was fine with that.  Because perhaps this movie is really as bad as I think it is or perhaps I’ve just outgrown it.  Maybe it’s a little of both, but I really do think that I could go back and watch the first two Deadpool movies and still enjoy them because there was something there, a kernel at the core from which a whole cornstalk could grow.  But here, there’s very little to hold on to.  And that very little rests completely on Hugh Jackman’s shoulders.

Yes, much like his time in the X-Men movies, Wolverine carries this film.  Jackman puts in an excellent, heartfelt performance as a character beloved by many and clearly one that means something to him.  It’s just a shame it’s in a movie meant to be memes and TikToks.  But hey, at least they made a movie specifically for cosplayers, I bet they’re stoked about the multiverse full of Deadpools.  I’m sure Comic Cons will have lots of excellent costumes on display and I can’t wait to see them.  Jackman absolutely brings it in a film that’s not worthy of his talents as he plays the “worst” Wolverine in the multiverse, but sad and angry is when Logan is at his best.  Let’s face it, Wolverine isn’t a beloved character because he’s a happy-go-lucky, relentlessly positive Ted Lasso-type.  He’s sad, he’s alone, he’s mean, but he’s got a heart and he does the right thing.  Which he does here.  The man can’t help but step up, not just in the story, but for this movie.  Because any scene where Logan wasn’t talking was absolutely boring. Even the fight scenes between effective immortals and/or legions of red shirts underpinned by silly music choices weren’t fun to watch because there were no stakes to any of them and after about the 30th cameo, you’re exhausted with how excited you’re supposed to be (although seeing Dafne Keen again and Channing Tatum as Gambit were actually delightful).  I was rolling my eyes so hard and so often I had to concentrate on not falling over.  For the most part, these super specific references for the terminally online bored me to tears.  Add to that a carbon copy of the Guardians of the Galaxy ending, the feeling of “Hey, I know that thing, I’ve seen that thing before” isn’t one of delight, it’s one of despair.  At the end of this, I just wanted to watch Loki and Logan again.  And the worst thing about a movie like Deadpool & Wolverine is that it could have been so good.  They just decided against it.

Seriously, couldn’t get this guy? Not even on Cameo?

Study Room Thanksgiving Special

I love Bob’s Burgers.  I tried it when it first started airing, but for some reason I bounced off it.  Then, years later, convinced by friends of mine, I gave it another try, and now, it’s become not just one of my favorite animated shows of all time, it’s surpassed Futurama as my top comfort show, and is one of my favorite shows full stop.  Barely a day goes by that I don’t watch at least one episode of Bob’s.  I shouldn’t be surprised, since it’s the creative marriage between the people behind Home Movies and King of the Hill, two more shows I love.  Bob’s does just about everything well, but more than perhaps any other show I’ve seen, it absolutely nails holiday episodes.  And since the nation is gathering around tables this Thursday (apologies to my Canadian readers, I’ll take care of you next October), I thought I’d celebrate the many excellent Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving episodes by ranking them all by my preference for you, so you have an option to occupy the family when the forks are put down and that one uncle you really don’t like wants to start giving you life advice.  Let’s get into it.

11. Season 6, Episode 4: “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled”

Gayle fans are probably going to hate me for placing this one at the bottom, and while I’m not a Gayle hater, Linda’s sister is at her neurotic peak here—whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is sort of in the eye of the beholder.  But if you’re like me and you think Gayle is best in small doses, this episode where Bob ends up having to drag her in a kiddie pool down a snow covered street to get to Thanksgiving dinner, it’s a little too much Gayle.  But it’s not a bad episode—it ends strongly and is definitely a good watch.  Still, something has to be at the bottom of the list and this is it.

10. Season 4, Episode 5: “Turkey in a Can”

Gayle and her cats are over for Thanksgiving, and as Bob tries out a new three-day brine, the turkey ends up in the toilet overnight.  And then the cat box.  After his initial shock, he gets a replacement turkey, but the it also ends up in the toilet.  And so on and so forth.  While this episode ends sweetly as the mystery is revealed and the repeated visits to the grocer for replacements offer some hilarious scenes, this one is this far down the list for me because it’s just too gross for my tastes.  Between the raw turkey in the toilet, rolling around in the litter box, and then Linda being sick on it, it just hits on all the things I don’t personally enjoy.  The episode is not without its moments, but they’re not enough to push this one further up the list.

9. Season 10, Episode 8: “Now We’re Not Cooking With Gas”

We all know that Thanksgiving is Bob’s favorite holiday and he is over the moon to find out that he’s been selected to purchase a Riverbrook Lake Farms heritage turkey after 5 years on the waiting list.  I’m not much of a turkey guy myself (unless it’s smoked, then we’re talking), but I’ve had the kind of turkey he’s talking about, straight from a farm, never frozen, and it absolutely makes a difference.  For Bob’s favorite day of the year, a gas outage on the block and no other oven access drives him to Linda-levels of steamrolling, forcing the family into the alley to cook the bird on a makeshift fire pit.  As the embers start to fade and the fire department threatens to hose him down and fine him fairly heavily, Bob starts a relentless race against the clock to cook the turkey before he runs out of fuel or the fire department returns to shut down the party.  This pushes him to send the kids out for every possible flammable object and Louise’s pyromania goes on overdrive, which is usually fun to watch.  However, when they fail to bring back anything usable, it’s Tina’s sacrifice that makes Bob realizes he’s the one ruining the day for everyone.  While the ending is quite nice and Bob learns a lesson, another episode in this list drives it home a little better and with funnier subplots, so that earns this one a 9th place spot only.

8. Season 3, Episode 5: “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal”

Bob’s first entry into the Thanksgiving special is a strong start to a lovely series of episodes.  Bob is left out when landlord and eccentric Calvin Fischoeder offers them 5 months of free rent if Bob cooks his Thanksgiving dinner—and the Belchers pretend to be his family so he can trick a woman who will only date married men into a relationship (the intended length of which I can only speculate).  But, as expected, things take a turn for the Belcher family and what results is a serious bit of madcap fun.  Also, Linda debuts her Thanksgiving song and it’s an earworm.  Not my favorite, but it’s catchy as hell.  I’m a huge fan of Fischoeder and his affection for Bob and this is a very funny episode; placing this one 8th isn’t a criticism of the episode so much as it is a testament to how good the Thanksgiving episodes of Bob’s have been.  That this first one has been bested—in my opinion, of course—several times over shows how good a Thanksgiving episode Bob’s is capable of.

7. Season 11, Episode 7: “Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid”

Okay, so you know I don’t like toilet humor by now and while Gene does spend this entire episode on the bathroom floor, it keeps the truly gross stuff off screen.  I know there’s a contingent of Bob’s fans that don’t like “story” episodes, but I love them, so this one earns the 7th spot.  As Gene is quarantined in the lav because of a stomach bug, Louise and Tina (and eventually Bob) decide to tell him stories through the door to comfort him as he’s missing the best food day of the year and Bob’s new experimental menu.  Gene asks for stories that make him hate food and the kids do their best to comply.  Louise tells the story of The Breadator, a parody of The Predator, where Gene is the hero who takes on an invisible alien hunter made of rosemary bread, one of Bob’s new dishes.  Tina tells the story Pear Force One, a spoof of Air Force One where President Gene and his wife, First Lady Mom (yeah, Gene’s Oedipus complex is on full show here), are hijacked by sentient pear terrorists who want to prove that pears are as good as apples.  And Bob tells Parmageddon, a story about deep sea marinara miners who have to save the Earth from a Texas-sized chicken parm from space.  A very sweet episode that offers a lot of laughs, it’s only not higher on this list because other episodes are just better.

6. Season 12, Episode 8: “Stuck in the Kitchen with You”

Similar in structure to “Now We’re Cooking”, Bob’s Thankzilla side rears its ugly head here as he steps in to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the residents of a retirement home when the cook goes into labor. But, where this outshines “Now We’re Cooking” is the direct confrontation that leads to Bob altering his behavior and strengthening his relationship with Louise (my favorite pairing in the show) and a lovely and funny B-plot where Zeke and the remaining Belcher kids rally together to entertain the senior citizens when a TV outage means they can’t watch the parade.  Even Linda has a great little subplot with Sergeant Bosco and his mother.  These things just take it up a level for me and make it a classic Thanksgiving episode.

5. Season 7, Episode 6: “The Quirk-Ducers”

Despite being given a half day on the day before Thanksgiving, school counselor Mr. Frond’s dreadful yearly Thanksgiving plays keep them there far too long and hamper the beginning of what should be a very long weekend for the kids.  So, Louise concocts a plan (this phrase shows up in my notes a lot) to adapt one of Tina’s “erotic friend fictions” into a musical that is so offensive that Frond himself shuts it down and sends the kids home.  You see, Tina got Mean Girl’d when Tammy calls her quirky and she takes it out on the page.  What comes next is a very sweet and genuine story about Tina learning to value her uniqueness in a time when conforming is the easiest path to peer acceptance, with one of the best songs in the long history of great songs in Bob’s.  I genuinely love this episode.

4. Season 13, Episode 8: “Putts-Giving”

This might be a controversial one, but I adore this episode.  Thanksgiving just happens to be the last day that a 50% off coupon for the local mini-golf course is valid and Louise convinces Bob to take the family there for a short trip before dinner is served.  The course has a yeti obstacle that is rather involved and Louise tries to get it to perform all its tricks at once—however, Tina abandons the effort because she wants to show Bob and Linda that she’s mature enough to go to an after-Thanksgiving party with high school boys in attendance.  What ensues is classic Louise chaos, however what really pushes this episode up the list for me is Louise’s motivation; sure, she wants to see the yeti do its crazy dance, but when it comes right down to it, she is reacting to fear.  Despite Louise’s tough exterior, the 9-year-old is afraid that her older sister is maturing beyond her and will never want to have fun with her and Gene again.  It’s a touching episode about growing up and what it means to mature and the sense of loss that comes with your older sibling outgrowing your interests as new things start to interest them in life; for Tina’s adolescent brain, that largely means boys (and their butts specifically) take priority over goofing off with her siblings.  As things go terribly wrong (another phrase often in my notes), Tina steps up and shows a real maturity and affection for her little brother and sister that is absolutely heartwarming.  An instant classic for me and it just misses out on the top 3 because of three even more excellent episodes.

3. Season 8, Episode 5: Thanks-Hoarding

As Bob plans his meticulous Thanksgiving, Teddy comes in hysterically needing help to host an unplanned Thanksgiving dinner for his mother, her boyfriend, his sister, and her husband.  Bob, being a reluctantly good friend, decides to take the family over and help out.  In the process of prepping and teaching Teddy how to reheat food in the oven (Teddy is overly nervous and unable to follow even the simplest instructions), Linda discovers a room full of junk that hides a dining table.  She figures that cleaning out the junk and preparing the dinner table would be a much better idea than Thanksgiving dinner around the coffee table in the living room, so she and kids start a purge of Teddy’s items.  But as it turns out, Teddy is seriously attached to his stuff and as the purging process goes on, Linda comes to the realization that Teddy holds on to these broken things in the hopes of fixing them as he once did his best to fix his parents’ marriage as a kid.  This is a kindhearted episode that speaks to Teddy’s backstory in a way that we haven’t seen it before.  We always knew that Teddy was a friendly, but ultimately lonely guy who was working through something, but this is one of the best glimpses we get into the damage around which his personality formed.  It is a sweet, sweet story that has lots of laughs along the way and really shows Bob’s at its best; a touching story mixed with laugh out loud comedy.  While it’s an unconventional Thanksgiving episode, it found its way into my heart in a way that only Teddy can.

2. Season 5, Episode 4: “Dawn of the Peck”

Bob’s is always great when it finds a new take on integrating horror into the comedy and its Halloween episodes are legendary, perhaps even more iconic to the series than its Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes, and this one straddles the line of that pure Halloween terror and Thanksgiving brilliance.  The family decides to go to Wonder Wharf (also owned by the Fischoeders) for their Turkey Trot, what Linda believes will be a cute version of the running of the bulls, and the kids are excited to go on the rides and spend a day at an amusement park rather than just sitting around watching TV while Bob cooks.  As a result, Bob decides to boycott Thanksgiving and spend the day alone at home, getting drunk and listening to music.  But as things tend to, they go horribly wrong once again, and the birds are all out of sorts and overly aggressive, resulting in a zombie-like stampede.  Linda is trampled and pulled to safety by Teddy, the Belcher kids, along with Regular Sized Rudy (my absolute favorite supporting character) and Andy and Ollie are stranded on the teacups.  Rudy is always a delight, the crazed turkeys encroach, Linda is frantically trying to get to them, and blissfully unaware, Bob talks to and for his turkey baster (one of Bob’s best quirks that we get insight into in another episode and a classic recurring gag) and, drunk and determined, decides to go get a turkey and make his family the Thanksgiving dinner he’s wanted to make all day.  As the turkeys (and other fowl) wreak havoc, Bob walks into a mess he is woefully unprepared for.  Where later episodes are much more emotionally involved, this one delivers laugh after laugh and leaves you with a big smile on your face.  “Dawn of the Peck” is one of my go to episodes, so good that it transcends the Thanksgiving episode moniker, becoming an any time episode.    

1. Season 9, Episode 7: “I Bob Your Pardon”

Linda’s obsession with the mayor sees the family heading to the town’s first ever turkey pardoning, but she’s distressed when she finds out there’s a bait and switch and the mayor isn’t there, only the deputy mayor.  Beyond all that, the kids overhear a phone conversation in which a mayor’s aide lets slip that the pardoning is a big sham and the turkey, Drew P. Neck, is on his way to a slaughterhouse.  Louise has an excellent arc in this episode as she goes from hating turkeys to convincing Bob to go on a quest to save the turkey, enticed by the thought of adventure, and then pushes her limits to protect Drew P. Neck.  They follow the aide, kidnap the turkey, and try to find a safe place for him to live out his days naturally.  There’s a great callback here to one of my favorite episodes, “Stand By Gene” as they hurdle obstacles on the way to sanctuary.  This episode also has one of my favorite line deliveries by Tina, as she, after-school-special-style, yells “I mean what, we’re going to start lying to turkeys now?  YOU THINK THAT’S PRETTY COOL DAD!?”  I don’t know why that line tickles me the way it does, but I can’t help but laugh at it every time.  This is an episode that delivers on every level—it’s as funny as it is emotionally satisfying, and every little gag and through-line just works.  Even the argument that runs through the episode about fresh cranberry sauce versus canned (which is utterly pointless, since cranberry sauce sucks in any form) offers multiple laughs as it comes up throughout.  While the idea of saving the turkey is Tina’s, in this episode where every character delivers, Louise, as usual, overdelivers and stands out above the rest.  Just a completely brilliant episode that works on every level, it’s my favorite Thanksgiving episode and one of my favorites in the series overall.    

So there you have it.  If you’re not already a fan of Bob’s Burgers, I hope this ranking convinces you to give the show a try (the entire series is streaming on Hulu at the time of writing) and if you are a fan, I hope you enjoyed my look at each of the show’s excellent Thanksgiving episodes.  There really isn’t a stinker in the bunch; each one has its merits.  Thank you for reading this very long bonus post and have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!  Save me a piece of pumpkin pie, will you?