
6. Will & Grace
Episode: Season 3, Episode 8-9, “Lows in the Mid-Eighties”
What’s on the menu: Having such a close kinship (and timeslot) with Friends really rubbed off on fellow Must See TV staple Will & Grace. In the series’ original run, it produced a quartet of stellar Thanksgiving shows, which were often two-parters.
In Season 7, the gang spends the holiday with Vince’s family in Queens. In Season 4, the gang travels from dysfunctional family to dysfunctional family, and in Season 2’s one-parter, Jack comes out to his mother. But Season 3’s blast to the past goes down as one of the best Thanksgiving episodes of all time.
“Lows in the Mid-Eighties” finds Will and Grace talking a woman who’s unknowingly dating a gay man through her relationship woes with a retelling of the story of how Will came out to Grace. When the BFFs dated in college, Will ended up proposing to Grace and meeting her family as her fiance. He was in very deep. Unfortunately for Grace, Will rips off the bandage and it results in a night neither one of them will ever forget.
Why we’re thankful for it: What is it about classic sitcoms, flashbacks, and Thanksgiving episodes? Whatever it is, they were magical. Will & Grace flashed right back to the defining moment in Will and Grace’s relationship, Will and Jack’s meeting, and pre-rich Karen’s past partying at the disco. No stone went unturned, and no joke went un-laughed. The eight seasons of the sitcom’s original run on NBC produced many iconic episodes, and “Lows in the Mid Eighties” is a can’t miss on Thanksgiving. Let’s see what the revival’s got for the holidays!