Felicity Thanksgiving episodes

Now that we're a few weeks out from Thanksgiving, I've been thinking about the queen of cozy sweaters: WB character Felicity. I've been rolling out my new wardrobe of Target sweaters and revisiting episodes from the short-lived drama.

For a festive treat, I took special interest in the show's Thanksgiving episodes, and boy are you in for Noel/Felicity make out sessions, parental drama and surprise dinner guests. First up is season one's take, appropriately titled Thanksgiving, where tensions collide at a well intentioned dinner Felicity and Julie try to host at the dorm (all the cooking is done via microwave). At the end of the day, almost the entire cast ends up at the meal, with Javier bringing the turkey, Ben's travel home cancelled (he drags Sean along), Elena's fight with her father, and Noel and Hanna's drama. The best part of the episode? The kiss between Felicity and Noel in the bathroom and her post-kiss freak out.

In season two's Family Affairs, the group is split for Thanksgiving. Sean, Ben and Julie are working a fancy event with Javier at Dean & DeLuca. The drama there? Ben has been sleeping with a married woman, whose husband is throwing the party. The rest of the group is at Thanksgiving hosted at Noel and Elena's apartment. Could that be more dramatic, you might ask? Where to begin! Felicity's parents randomly show up in town and bond hard with Felicity's casual boyfriend. His mother is Felicity's art teacher and she also joins the group for the holiday. Megan tags along to watch the chaos unfold. Felicity feels overwhelmed by the way her relationship is suddenly escalated and in a drunken moment at the dinner, she and Noel reconnect (they cannot stay away from each other on this holiday!). Let's just say things only get worse from there...

During season three, we don't get a Thanksgiving episode, but season four more than makes up for it. In The Last Thanksgiving, Felicity hosts a dinner that her ex-boyfriend Ben attends (with a new woman in tow), Elena tries to give her boyfriend an intelligence test to see if he's up to her standards and Noel never makes it to dinner because he gets in a fight with his brother and ends up at a bar, where things only get worse.

Whew! Felicity is way more emotional than I remembered. Here's another sweater picture to send you on your way. Who says sweaters are just a Felicity thing? Chris Evans in Knives Out might be our new sweater spirit animal going forward.

As Seen on Screen

I'm proud to announce that I figured out how to work Apple TV! If I didn't have a Roku already, I'm honestly still not sure how I could have done it, but that's beside the point. I've now watched the first five episodes of The Morning Show aka the only episodes I could watch during my one-week free trial without entering the murky territory of subscribing to Apple TV. With the release of Disney+ as well, let's just say, I've got some soul-searching to do when it comes to my TV choices and how much money I really want to spend on them. From what I've read about The Morning Show, the first few episodes are not where greatness lies, which makes it unfortunate that those are the two episodes that people can view for free. The show's star power however is certainly enough to leave me wanting more. The promise of getting to watch Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Billy Crudup (whose character is the true embodiment of chaos) might just be worth the cost of the clunky dialogue and platitudes about American TV viewers. After watching the show's trailer, I wrote that the casting of Reese Witherspoon was off for the role that she plays (they should have opted for a 20 or early 30-something up-and-comer) and shared concerns about a potential sympathetic portrayal of Steve Carrell's character that would take up too much screen time. After watching the first half of the series, I'm pretty pleased with my early read on the trailer. The Reese Witherspoon casting is pretty easy to get past because at the end of the day you get to watch Reese Witherspoon disappear into a new role (unfortunately it's one with the name Bradley Jackson...dear God, why?), and that's always fun. But any scene with Steve Carrell has me rolling my eyes or moving for the fast-forward button. I do not feel any sympathy towards his character, especially given the murky grounds of his termination. Will we eventually get more insight into his past? I hope so? Maybe? It's hard to watch his character cry alone in his kitchen or complain about the poor treatment he's getting or plead for someone on the show to step forward and support him because his life is about to be ruined. I have no interest in watching his character be redeemed, especially without any true examination of his behavior. The show also fails to acknowledge that most of the time, in the real world, men can pretty easily "redeem" themselves after scandals like these. I wish the show would focus more on the more interesting thread of how the other employees grapple with these revelations, especially as some acknowledge that they had an idea of what was going on behind the scenes. At the end of the day, despite these missteps, some bizarre tonal shifts and the overwhelming number of storylines present, I'm still intrigued by what The Morning Show has to offer. I mean they threw in a random song from a musical performed by Jennifer Aniston and Billy Crudup. Obviously, I would be into that. Will that mean I spend money to keep watching? You know I hate to miss out... 

Haven't You Heard?

A couple of song recommendations that have been blowing up my fall playlist (thanks to recommendations from my brother and my friends, which I'm now passing along to you, and some throwbacks that I added in on my own):

I had never heard of The Oh Hellos before, but their calming and folky sounds are just what I needed. Bitter Water is my favorite, but I also love Eurus and Hello My Old Heart.

Yellow Eyes by Rayland Baxter is soulful and smooth and starts with an amazing guitar portion at the beginning.

Another great band to check out is The Dip, especially Sure Don't Miss You, O.P. Jedediah, Atlas and Adeline, but basically their whole catalog is wonderful.

I did a deep dive into Sutton Foster's non-Broadway cast album discography on Spotify and discovered some lovely recordings of her singing other musical hits. Two of my favorites are mash-ups (of course), the first is I Got Love sung with Gimme Gimme and the second is If I Were a Bell mixed with Singin' in the Rain. Sutton's airy voice will lift you up on a rainy fall day.

My office gets way into Halloween, and this year my team decided to dress up as different Abba songs (I was Dancing Queen). This joyous costume led me to revisit some more of Abba's catalog and let's just say I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do is a ridiculously long song title but an under-appreciated song.

And in honor of Thanksgiving travels, Simon & Garfunkel's Homeward Bound is the perfect conclusion to your fall playlist.

Required Reading

Two celebrity reads for the week! Billie Lourd penned an emotional essay for Time Magazine about her mother and the legacy of Princess Leia. Get the tissues ready, because it'll make you cry (and right in time for next month's Star Wars release too!). The second is from Lin-Manuel Miranda in The Atlantic. He writes about using art to comment on important issues and points out that musicals have long included political commentary -- and that shouldn't stop now!