Saturday Night Live: The 10 Best Thanksgiving Sketches

The late-night sketch behemoth's best takes on Turkey Day.
Saturday Night Live: The 10 Best Thanksgiving Sketches

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From current events to holidays, Saturday Night Live's position at the top of the TV comedy hierarchy has had audiences looking to it for topical takes for years. It's a responsibility that's been taken on bravely, and effectively, with some of their holiday sketches even earning a place in the lore of these events and holidays themselves. Thanksgiving may not immediately come to mind as a “special episode” target the way Christmas or Halloween might, but SNL's done many a great sketch and episode on Turkey Day. Here are 10 of the funniest.

Kristen Wiig

COMEDYG 06 NERD CRACKED.COM Thanksgiving Foods w/ Kristen Wiig Joining what turned out to BE a miniseries of cut for time sketches featuring a creepy narrator going through a collection of holiday goodies was this Thanksgiving gem. Giving Kristen Wiig some strange things to say, a sweater, and turning the camera on is never a bad idea.
COMEDY DEL NERD CRACKED.COM Debbie Downer: Thanksgiving Dinner Rachel Dratch's Debbie Downer, as full of dismaying information as she is with abject sadness, is a perennial favorite. Pairing that with the already tense, emotional energy that's wrapped up in a Thanksgiving dinner was an easy recipe for laughter. You know what the pilgrims did bring? Smallpox.
COMEDY DE NERD CRACKED.COM Wayne Thanksgiving Beck Bennett's Bruce Wayne is on hand for a charitable food drive put on by the Wayne Foundation, but when talking with some of the residents of Gotham, he's confronted with the idea that repeatedly breaking everyone's jaw might not be the most reasonable solution to the city's crime problem.
COMEDY DEL NERD CRACKED.COM Vincent Price's Thanksgiving Special This mashup of the two fall holidays has a lot to love. An, as usual, delightful impression from Bill Hader, some great one-off lines like I went to a small school... it was just me and two other guys, and a cene-stealing impression of a doddering, drunken and gleeful Judy Garland by Kristen Wiig.
COMEDY 06 NERD CRACKED.COM Your Hometown Tourism Commercial This spot-on spoof of a tourism commercial advertising Your Hometown perfectly pinpoints every small psychological attack caused by what is ostensibly a holiday trip. From Dad's tighty-whitie home improvement projects to smoking weed near a child's slide, the specifics are perfect.
COMEDY of NERD CRACKED.COM Target Commercial Another sketch that thrives on the specifics, this fake ad comes from a Target that's realized the strange role it fills as a hotspot for holiday visitors to completely dissociate in. The energy is unmistakable to anyone who's taken a break from their family by looking through graphic tees they'll never buy.
COMEDY of NERD CRACKED.COM Thanksgiving Parade This sketch finally treats the Macy's Day Parade balloons with the respect and fear they demand. The balloons drift closer and closer to Beck Bennett's sick new apartment, showing that the line between big Spongebob and terrifying Spongebob is blurrier than you think.
COMEDY 06 NERD CRACKED.COM The Ladies Man: Thanksgiving Whether there's trouble in your love life or not, there's nothing to be learned from Tim Meadows' Ladies Man in this Thanksgiving edition of the recurring sketch. Donning a pilgrim hat, he doles out relationship advice between sips of the cognac from the Courvoisier truck that jackknifed in front of his house.
COMEDY DEL NERD CRACKED.COM Family Feud: Harvey Family Thanksgiving Kenan Thompson's Steve Harvey is a joy. A study into every way you can describe a mustache (dark and shiny like a slippery lil' penguin), this outing finds Harvey confronted with a child that exhibits a love of pocket squares and shiny shoes that's so strong it might just be... genetic?

Jack Handey

COMEDY DEL NERD CRACKED.COM Fuzzy Memories: Thanksgiving Fuxxy Memories Jack Handey, a name revered in comedy nerd circles the world over, may BE more well-known for his Deep Thoughts series, but it was his Fuzzy Memories series that hit Thanksgiving. Short, sweet, and devastating, as his best pieces are, it'll stick in your head for days like a pop song chorus.

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