Whipped Cream Difficulties

One of the joys of Thanksgiving is that I get to subject my nephews (and my nieces, eventually, but not this year) to the classics.

I’m not sure if “Over The River and Through The Woods” is available on any of the major services; I know Hulu only has the first three seasons of “The Bob Newhart Show”, and that’s a season four episode. Fortunately, I was prepared for that. “Woods” does take a little while to build (and I think my nephews were a little bored with the Bob/Emily interplay; perhaps next year we’ll play the “Hi, Bob” drinking game as we watch it), but once Thanksgiving starts, things pay off. (I also want to popularize the use of the phrase “Worst defeat in William and Mary’s history” as an all purpose excuse.

(Someone commented to me once that this episode was just an excuse for Newhart to do his Chinese food delivery bit. To which I respond: So f’ing what?)

I would have sworn that the kids had seen “Turkeys Away”; my sister says she thinks they crowded around the computer to watch it one year, but she’s not sure. Luckily, that is available on Hulu. To be honest, I kind of find the early part of the episode, with the whole “Mr. Carlin wants to get more involved” plot, a little laggy. Once Les gets to the shopping center, though…gold, jerry, comedy gold.

And in that vein, he’s something we hope you’ll really like: an oral history of “Turkeys Away” (and, somewhat, of “WKRP”). Among the people interviewed: the man who inspired Herb Tarlek’s character.

We did a commercial once that was for a beer where it said, “Look for the smiling face of Archduke Ferdinand on every bottle!” Somebody said, “Hugh, it was his assassination that started World War I.” And I said, “So what?”

I think I’m also going to have to start working on getting “Look for the smiling face of Archduke Ferdinand on every bottle!” into casual conversation as well.