THE BIRD

Everybody Loves Raymond
Season 8 (2003)

“The Bird” is my hands-down favorite of all the Everybody Loves Raymond Thanksgiving episode, no easy feat given the competition.  It ably demonstrates the show’s genius for taking a minor incident and blowing it up into a family-wide catastrophe, and it’s also pretty impressive that the show was still producing such high-quality episodes in its second-to-last season.  I’m a big fan of the McDougalls, the family-in-law that joined the show after Amy married Robert.  The soft-spoken, religious MacDougalls provide a brilliant contrast to the emotional, rough-around-the-edges Barones and this episode pits the two families together in a marvelous manner.

Shirtless and weirdly chest-hairless Ray Romano alert, if you're into that sort of thing.  

The Barones arrive to spend Thanksgiving with the MacDougalls, something none of them are all that happy about.  The men are dismayed to learn that the family doesn’t own a TV and Marie is miffed at being pushed out of the culinary spotlight.  Despite a rough start the two families are starting to bond (thanks to a shared love of naps) when a small bird smashes against the front door. Everyone is dismayed and Pat, the gentle MacDougall matriarch, cradles the bird and takes it into the kitchen.  Moments later it’s revealed that instead of nursing the injured bird she broke its neck.

The Barones are horrified and the MacDougalls baffled by their reaction.  Long-simmering antagonism between the two families erupts, and shortly thereafter the clueless kids force everyone into participating in a Thanksgiving play.  The Barones take the role of the Native Americans (Ray angrily rips off his shirt in order to claim the role of Squanto) and the MacDougalls play the pilgrims.  They then act out their hostilities via the play but the entrance of another bird ends the argument: Pat enters with the cooked turkey and everyone rushes to the table to feast together.

I'm Team Pilgrim on this one-- better headgear.

The episode rolls out like a delicious one-act play; the dialogue and characters are hilarious.  I grew up watching George Engels as Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and she is equally wonderful here in the role of Pat, a similarly tender-hearted character with flashes of someone feistier underneath.  The themes at work in this episode are entirely relatable, as who hasn’t struggled at some point to bond with someone else’s family?  Little things make for big differences, especially around the holidays.  As for everything beginning and ending with a dead bird, all I can say is well-played, nameless team of sitcom writers.

The Menu: Unidentified Appetizers, Turkey, Green Salad, Brussels Sprouts & Pie

Thanksgiving Quotient: 5

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