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Thanksgiving With The Family

 In a way, What’s Cooking follows a lot of the patterns of any sitcom’s thanksgiving special. In the show Friend’s, the Thanksgiving episode of the 9th season is involved with the family drama of the secrets that Ross and Monica are hiding from their parents, most prominently the fact that Monia and Chandler are living together. The tension of the episode relies on the things that are not being said; Rachel’s failure of making a trifle, Monica and Chandler’s relationship, Phoebe's weird sex dream about Monica and Ross’s dad, Ross’s constantly downward spiral of a life, etc. 
In the sitcom Mad About You, we see the struggle of an interfaith couple, Paul and Jamie, attempting to prove to their respective parents that they can cook a great Thanksgiving meal without their help, and without following their family traditions. Their families are appalled by the ways they break tradition; no canned cranberry sauce, no salad, no marshmallows on the sweet potatoes, and most shocking of all, It’s served as a buffet! Even once Jamie and Paul get their families to accept their style of hosting Thanksgiving, things are put back into jeopardy when their dog eats the turkey! The tension in the rest of the episode involves the couple attempting to buy a new turkey without letting their family know that anything went wrong.
While the film What’s Cooking does involve comedy reminiscent of these sitcoms, it also has it’s serious moments. This reminded me of another Thanksgiving-themed film, Pieces Of April, the main character, April, is the black sheep of her family, and tried to cook an impressive thanksgiving meal in her city apartment, where her family is coming to meet her boyfriend, who, to their surprise, is black. April aims to use this as an opportunity to prove herself to her family, and to move past their difficult past. Her plan takes a sharp left turn when her oven breaks, and she has to rely on the kindness of her neighbors to save her dinner in time for her parent’s arrival. 


The conventions associated with a family thanksgiving are universal. The high stakes of cooking perfect food plus the pressure of hosting extended family and the tension of the secrets that each family member is hiding, are at the core of so many different films and television episodes surrounding thanksgiving dinner. The use of four separate families from different backgrounds all experiencing these issues shows how universal these ideas are, no matter how different people may seem.


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