It’s not my fault that Friends is what I have for sitcom nostalgia. I was born in the mid-eighties, so that rules out the glory years of Bewitched or The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Cheers. Combine that with the fact that one of my babysitters used to watch it at our house surreptitiously because she wasn’t allowed to watch it at home, which will really cement the coolness of anything, and it’s not that surprising that Friends holds a place in my heart.

Which is why Friends Thanksgiving episodes are also what I first think of when I think about Thanksgiving television. Friends did many more of them than most other long-running shows, which tend to eschew Thanksgiving for the more dramatic Halloween and/or Christmas holiday episode. Thanksgiving also became the excuse for some of the show’s funniest set-pieces, its flashbacks, its guest stars, and its outright silliness. Some of the better moments:

Ugly naked guy:

Of the several Thanksgiving episodes, the first one is really not my favorite. I’ve got nothing against the “we got locked out of the apartment” plotline (that’s standard, and Friends uses it at least a few more times), and there’s certainly no use trying to fight the “we all want to be somewhere else, but circumstances conspire against us and we end up together on Thanksgiving” premise – that’s just a classic. No, the biggest problem with “The One Where Underdog Gets Away” is that everyone spends most of the episode in individual plotlines, and Ross’ is really stupid (he discovers that Carol’s been talking to the baby in the womb, and he gets jealous). In the end, though, they all gather around the window to watch ugly naked guy celebrate Thanksgiving.

Brad Pitt:

This is the first episode of television I remember watching and thinking as much or more about the actors than I thought about the actual show. Brad and Jen were married, and the entire episode is built around the hilarity of Brad Pitt’s character absolutely despising Rachel in high school. And sure, he’s rocking a pretty unbeatable clean-cut preppy Brad Pitt look in this episode, so Phoebe gets to be the audience stand-in and just drools over him the entire episode.

Phoebe remembers a past life:

This is a ten-second joke from “The One With All the Thanksgivings,” which is a Friends flashback episode detailing the events that lead up to Monica getting skinny and accidentally cutting off Chandler’s toe. Briefly, though, while the other cast members recall their worst Thanksgivings from the past, Phoebe remembers a Thanksgiving from one of her previous lives, which features her bandaging a soldier in the Civil War.

And my favorite, the trifle:

“The One Where Ross Gets High” will always rate as my favorite Friends Thanksgiving. The stakes are not that high, and there’s no plot that really pulls any of the cast members away (in fact, one of the plotlines is that Ross and Joey desperately want to get away, and aren’t allowed). In the end, the biggest laugh lines are about something so stupid that the show almost shifts out of its usual “waaa waaa” trumpet humor and into a full-on farce. Monica’s parents don’t really like Chandler, and Ross used to lie, but none of it matters because Rachel makes an English trifle with the pages in her cookbook stuck together (lady fingers, jam, custard, lady fingers, beef cooked with peas and onions, whipped cream, and bananas). The entire episode culminates in seven people sitting around a table trying to pretend they like a disgusting dessert. It’s absurd.

The Thanksgiving episodes of Friends are hardly bottle episodes – there’s always a guest star or multiple flashbacks or something else that will ring up the episode’s cost – but nevertheless, there’s something similar about them. The Thanksgiving premise means all of the cast members spend most of the episode together in Monica’s apartment, which minimizes the potential for a stupid Joey-related side plot, and lets everyone play off of each other. And look, this was not a high-brow show. At its best, Friends managed to seem like a much sillier, stupider, higher-pitched version of recognizable scenarios from everyday gatherings (provided your everyday scenarios didn’t involve black people, gay people, or actual tragedy), and Thanksgiving reliably delivered Friends’ best version of itself.

It’s Thanksgiving week, which means another deluge of holiday-themed programming, and I want to use this opportunity to point to a show I frequently watch but have yet to write about. Despite its standard sitcom format and middle of the road humor, it’s difficult for me to deny a fondness for How I Met Your Mother. It’s playful and moves quickly, it’s self-referential without being obnoxious, and it’s silly to the point of absurdity.

“Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap” demonstrated many of those quintessential characteristics, particularly HIMYM’s fondness for reference. As the title suggests, last night’s episode is a continuation of one of the show’s many long-running premises, in this case, that Marshall has been granted the right to slap Barney in the face five times. Marshall has been slowly doling out his share of slaps over several seasons, and in this episode, decides to grant his penultimate slap to Ted and Robin as a Thanksgiving present. Of course, this entails a brief flashback through the previous slaps, a recounting of the Slapsgiving rules, an ensuing battle over who will actually get to slap Barney, and a subsequent heart-warming Thanksgiving Day discovery of what friends and family really mean. This classic “and now everyone hugs each other moment,” of course, is both a parody of the essential sitcom sentimental resolution, as well as undermined within the episode by being entirely based around slapping someone right in his face.

It’s fluff, and I know it, but there’s just so much to love about this show. Neil Patrick Harris as Barney is always at the top of my list, and he was great in this episode, nervously anticipating each delayed slap. I’m a fan of escalating throwaway gag, represented here by Lily’s father’s increasingly unpleasant board game concepts (“Tijuana Slumlord,” “Car Battery,” “There’s a Clown Demon Under the Bed,” “Dog Fight Promoter,” and “Diseases”). At its best, what this show does better than any sitcom I know is nail the rhythm. Jokes rarely disappear without being sewn back into the season at an opportune moment, and scenes like the end of “Slapsgiving 2,” where each character steps up to try to slap Barney are always well-timed and well-written so that the premise that may have only been mildly funny at the beginning becomes hysterical by the end. By the time Marshall announces that the slap has done exactly what he wanted, which was to allow everyone to recognize “both the frailty and the greatness in ourselves and each other,” the long-delayed slap has melded so completely with the saccharine pronouncement of Thanksgiving spirit that the actual slap feels as meaningful as finally carving the Turkey.

How I Met Your Mother doesn’t always work, but even on its off days, it’s been so consistently strong that I’d really like to credit it with helping revive the sitcom as a viable, funny, intelligent form. The half-hour comedy doesn’t have to live and die with I Love Raymond or Two-and-a-Half Men, and that is just one of the things I am thankful for this year. (Cue sappy sitcom audience making AWWWW! sounds).