Sports Night crafted the definitive Thanksgiving TV episode

Thanksgiving means it’s time to celebrate with Sports Night’s “Thespis,” the best Thanksgiving TV episode and one of the best TV episodes ever.

Thanksgiving is here, which usually means Thanksgiving-themed TV episodes. But truthfully, that discussion begins and ends with the “Thespis” episode of Sports Night.

The ABC sitcom is one of the best TV series of all time, but one of the miracles it pulled off was its excellent holiday episodes. Many shows have Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed installments, and almost all of them wind up being forgettable if not terrible. They either have to come up with a holiday-related plot for the episode or wind up forcing a holiday theme into an episode that didn’t need it, resulting in something that’s either cheesy, awkward or both.

Sports Night was the exception to the foible. All of its holiday episodes were genuinely good ones that also evoked the holiday spirit, and there was no better one than “Thespis,” the show’s original Thanksgiving episode in 1998.

The main plot of the installment is Turkey Day-related. It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman) is neurotic about having to prepare dinner for her entire family. As the episode opens, she’s using the studio’s light grid to thaw out a frozen turkey, which results in one of the show’s best visual gags when the raw poultry comes crashing down.

So paranoid is Dana that when Jeremy Goodwin (a pre-Scandal Joshua Malina) mentions that this is the same day Thespis became the first actor in human history, and that his ghost reportedly still haunts performances of any kind, she becomes convinced that the show-within-a-show may be experiencing some otherworldly difficulties.

Jeremy eventually has to pull Dana back down to Earth and remind her of the real importance of the holiday — not her ability to cook a turkey, not her mother’s disapproval of her life choices, but the fact that your family are the people you love even though they annoy you. It’s heartwarming, it’s simple, and it’s also very funny — the perfect plotline to celebrate the holiday and not hit viewers upside the head with it.

But where “Thespis” is brilliant is that Aaron Sorkin not only develops an organic Thanksgiving story, he also surrounds it with other stories that are just as important. The holiday plot doesn’t dominate the episode; it’s just one piece of a memorable pie.

There’s another important date in this Sports Night episode, too, and it’s that Dan Rydell (Josh Charles, The Good Wife) and Casey McCall (Peter Krause, 9-1-1) are celebrating their anniversary. It’s been five years since they started working as a team, except only Dan remembers that.

Not only is Dan miffed that Casey doesn’t remember, but the fact that he doesn’t remember also makes him feel like he isn’t valued. The argument over whether or not he’s a consolation prize is the catalyst for a major revelation: NBC wanted Casey to host Late Night before Conan O’Brien, but he passed on the iconic role to stay with Dan — a decision that preserved their friendship but also destroyed his marriage.

That’s a big wrench to throw in, especially since “Thespis” is only Sports Night‘s eighth episode; it’s heavy material to wade into. Yet it adds incredible dimension to Dan and Casey’s friendship. Viewers not only learn how much they’ve been through together but get a real understanding of their history through Charles and Krause’s performances. They bring out the vulnerability and the emotion that comes with knowing someone for a decade, and the strength of their friendship is palpable.

Sports Night has Casey and Dan learn more about each other, and uses that to let the audience learn more about them. This episode grounds them as not just another TV buddy act; these are two guys who have been in each other’s lives for some truly challenging moments, and more than a few funny ones, too. (The one bummer of this episode is we never see Casey delivering part of the St. Crispin’s Day speech he once drunkenly recited at the St. Paul Radisson.)

For all the talk in TV and movies about chemistry, “Thespis” shows that Charles and Krause have it in spades. They feel like they’ve worked together for 10 years, and they play their interactions in a more understated way, building to the big reveal. Their best moment in the episode is actually one that’s very quiet and almost a throwaway; they don’t need a huge scene to show us that Casey and Dan care deeply for one another. That’s what real friendship is.

And last but certainly not least, Isaac Jaffee (the late, legendary Robert Guillaume) finds out that his daughter is having an emergency Cesarean section 10 days before she was due to give birth to his first grandchild. Both mother and baby turn out to be just fine, but it’s a sobering subplot that balances out the high comedy of falling turkeys and jokes about Alberto Salazar winning the New York Marathon.

Ruminating on the importance of loved ones, Isaac gets the best line of the episode and good advice for anyone: “You say a few words, you make a gesture, you remember an important date. Small price to pay for what you get in return. For what you get in return, it’s a steal.”

All of this happens in one episode with Sorkin weaving the three plots so that they play together without missing a beat. And he fits them all into a half-hour, which when you take out commercial time is more like 22 minutes. How he’s able to develop three strong stories within such a relatively short frame is one of the reasons why Aaron Sorkin is our generation’s best writer.

With “Thespis,” each story ultimately orbits around the same message: loving the people who love you, especially when it’s difficult, and making sure they know how you feel. That’s a Thanksgiving truism if there ever was one, and Sports Night delivers it beautifully within the context of its own show.

It pays tribute to the holiday but it also gives us a Greek history lesson, lots of laughs, and some wonderfully understated performances. That’s how you put together a Thanksgiving episode, not to mention a great half-hour of television that lasts beyond Turkey Day.

Sports Night is now streaming on Hulu. Find the next Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.