Matthew Perry, 1969-2023

Friends premiered on September 22, 1994, when I was 24 years old, approaching 25. It was the 1st TV show that treated my generation as adults, however immature. So to know that the 1st of the main cast to die has gone is a shocking thing... this weekend.

The characters were all roughly the same age, around my age: Monica, who claimed to be 26 late in the show's 1st season and 27 early in the 2nd, and Rachel were best friends growing up on Long Island, making them 2 years older than I was; Ross, Monica's brother, was 2 years older; Ross and Chandler were college roommates; and Joey and Phoebe were around that age, too.

In actual order of age, the 6 main actors were:

* Lisa Kudrow, born July 30, 1963 in Los Angeles. She played Phoebe Buffay, whose unconventional childhood ended at age 14, when the woman she believed was her mother killed herself, and she lived on the street for a while, until she met Monica, and they became friends, and Phoebe became a licensed massage therapist.

* Courteney Cox, born June 15, 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama. She played Monica Geller, a highly competitive chef and neat freak from Long Island, who lived in her grandmother's old (and thus rent-controlled, explaining how she could afford it) apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village.

* David Schwimmer, born November 2, 1966 in Flushing, Queens, the only one who ever actually lived in New York while growing up, but the family moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Beverly Hills, California when he was a boy. He played Ross Geller, Monica's older brother, a nerdy anthropologist. In the pilot episode, we find out that his wife has left him, having fallen in love with a woman. In the 2nd episode, we find out that his wife is pregnant, and their son Ben is born near the end of Season 1.

* Matt LeBlanc, born July 25, 1967 in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts. He played Joey Tribbiani, a womanizer and an aspiring actor. Joey wasn't always dumb: He seems surprisingly insightful in the series' pilot. Unfortunately, as with the other characters, he went on to become more and more of a parody of himself: By Season 5 -- and it went 10 seasons, probably more through inertia than anything else -- the show seemed like a 7-minute Saturday Night Live sketch that now ran 22 minutes (30 minus commercials).

* Jennifer Aniston, born February 11, 1969 in Los Angeles, daughter of actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow. She played Rachel Green, a spoiled Jewish-American Princess (JAP) who left her would-be husband at the altar, and was cut off by her father when she decided to forge her own life, rooming with once-and-again best friend Monica. She became a waitress at the gang's favorite hangout, a coffee bar named Central Perk, and eventually achieved her dream of becoming an executive in the fashion industry.

* Matthew Langford Perry, born August 19, 1969 in Williamstown, in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, but grew up in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Ontario. He played Chandler Bing, a neurotic child of divorced parents, who used humor as a defense mechanism, and had an office job that was hard to define. He also had an odd way of speaking: "Could that report be any later?" "The hills are alive with the sound... of music!"

Left to right: Perry, Aniston, Schwimmer, Cox, LeBlanc, Kudrow

Yesterday, Perry was found dead in the hot tub of his home in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles. He was 54 years old -- 4 months older than me.

One of the six had to be the first to go. Accidents and sudden illnesses happen, so it wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for that to have happened sooner. And, given his admission of past substance abuse, I'm not surprised that he's the first. But it's still a shock, especially how.

Richard Moll, who played the enormous bailiff Bull Shannon on Night Court, died earlier in the day. He was 80. Now, most of the actors of that show are gone. Someone online pointed out how 1980s sitcom stars are dying. I told him to compare it to the beloved sitcoms of earlier generations, and he'd see that, at roughly the same point in their histories, those shows lost people at around the same rate.

Now, 54 is not a kid. It's not like there was some tragic accident while the show was still on the air. But it's not 80, either. At least he got to publish his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing; and to open Perry House, a rehab center in his former mansion in Malibu, California.

He got to write his life's next chapter. Sadly, it turned out to be its final chapter.

Top 10 TV What-Ifs

Vic Mignogna as Admiral James T. Kirk

in the final episode (so far) of Star Trek Continues

It's May. One of 3 "sweeps months" for TV networks. (The others are February and November.) And the end of the TV season, with reruns thereafter until September. This means big season finales, many including cliffhangers, some of which produce stories that change a show irrevocably.

Such stories, whether they change a show or simply end it, often leave us wondering: What if something different had happened?

Top 10 TV What-Ifs

These are in chronological order, from our perspective, if not necessarily from theirs.

1. 1956: What if the Kramdens and the Nortons had kids? The Honeymooners aired on CBS from October 1, 1955 to September 22, 1956. When the show began, the 4 main actors were the following ages: Jackie Gleason, as Ralph Kramden, 39; Audrey Meadows, as Alice Kramden, 33; Art Carney, as Ed Norton, about to turn 37; and Joyce Randolph, as Trixie Norton, about to turn 31.

Ralph frequently mentioned how long he has been driving for the Gotham Bus Company: 15 years until the New Year of 1956, and 16 years thereafter. So he started in 1940. Most likely, this was considered an "essential occupation," and, along with his weight, probably kept him from being drafted in World War II.

I find it hard to believe that a bus company, even before the U.S. got into "The War," would have hired someone not yet 21 years old as a driver. So, if not the same age as his portrayer, Ralph had to be at least 36 when the show began.

Ed (always called "Norton" by Ralph, but "Ed" by everybody else) said on at least 2 occasions in the "Classic 39" episodes that he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Whether he started working in the New York City sewer system after that, or his service interrupted his employment with them, isn't clear. (He did say he took a night school course in typing on the G.I. Bill, but said, "I couldn't stand to be cooped up in a stuffy office!")

We don't know when he got into the Navy, but I suspect that he enlisted soon after Pearl Harbor. So if he didn't lie about his age, then he was a minimum of 18 in 1941, which makes him no less than 32 when the show started.

It is reasonable to presume that each man's wife, Alice and Trixie, was about the same age as her husband. This means that, despite the Kramdens' failed attempt to adopt in an earlier version of the show, when it was still just a sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show, they could still have had children, even though it was unusual in the 1950s for married couples in their 30s to not yet have had their 1st. I'm presuming that neither couple had children because of the costs of hiring child actors. (A few did appear on the show, but never as a Kramden kid or a Norton kid.)

But all 4 performers lived into the 1980s: Gleason until 1987, Meadows until 1996, Carney until 2003, and Randolph is still alive, at age 94. We could have seen, in the 1970s or the '80s, The New Honeymooners, or The Honeymooners: The Next Generation. (UPDATE: Joyce Randolph died on January 13, 2024, 9 months short of what would have been her 100th birthday.)

Maybe we could have had the best story of all: Ralph finally got his promotion to traffic manager, Ed got his to sewer inspector -- as Norton suggested, "You keepin' things runnin' smoothly up above, and me keepin' things flowin' down below!" -- and they were able to move out of their Bushwick slum (328 Chauncey Street is a real address, but it's in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, not Bensonhurst like the show always said), moved out to one of those two-family homes in Queens like the Bunkers had on All In the Family, and could afford to have kids.

(Admittedly, there was hardly any birth control in the 1950s, other than "the rhythm method." As somebody, I forgot who, joked, once The Pill was released, the Catholic Church forbid its use, so a Catholic couple still had to use math rather than science.)

And maybe, just maybe, in the 1980s, before Ralph shuffled off this mortal coil (if not to Buffalo), a Ralph Kramden Jr. could have married Edith Norton, and they could have become "the new honeymooners," and lived happily ever after.

There is a lesser-case, if not worst-case, scenario. Maybe the Kramdens or the Nortons had a kid who was so dumb (How dumb was he?), he became one of the Sweathogs on Welcome Back, Kotter! Come to think of it, not only was that 1975-79 show set in Brooklyn, but if you told me that Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo) was related to Ed Norton, I would have believed it.

Then again, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) on Seinfeld certainly shares several resemblances to Ed Norton: Wacky neighbor, his wild entrances into his best friend's apartment, always thin no matter what he eats, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

But there are big differences: Norton could hold down a job, Kramer never wore a hat (except for that one episode where he ended up looking like a pimp), and Kramer came up with his own "crazy harebrained schemes" that turned into disasters, instead of getting roped into them by the fat guy in the building (Wayne Knight as Newman -- quite the opposite, as Kramer often roped Newman in, with the Michigan Bottle Scam being an exception).

2. 1969: What if we had gotten to see the completion of the starship Enterprise's five-year mission? This has been tried a number of times. The best one was the fanmade series Star Trek Continues, which told some several fantastic stories, including sequels to "Who Mourns for Adonais?" "Mirror, Mirror" and "The Paradise Syndrome."

It got some notable guest stars, including Chris Doohan, taking over his father James' role as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, a.k.a. Chief Engineer Scotty; Michael Forest, reprising his role as Apollo from "Who Mourns for Adonais?"; Bobby Clark, the Gorn captain in "Arena," as an Andorian; from The Next Generation, Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis as computer voices, and John de Lancie as a planetary administrator; and, not from Trek but already known for playing a large green man, Incredible Hulk portrayer Lou Ferrigno as an Orion slave trader.

Its last episode, "To Boldly Go," was a sequel to "Where No Man Has Gone Before," linking Captain James T. Kirk's earliest known Enterprise adventure to the last days of the five-year mission. It included references to all the other Constitution-class starships being destroyed or ruined; Kirk (the William Shatner role played here by Vic Mignogna) regretting the 73, eventually 75, members of his crew who had died under his command; Kirk's promotion to Admiral (complete with the green and white Star Trek: The Motion Picture uniform); and a viable reason for why Spock (the Leonard Nimoy role played here by Todd Haberkorn), chose to leave Starfleet and go back to Vulcan for the Kolinahr training.

STC did not give Kirk a girlfriend and potential wife, which might have changed the way the movies were written. It might have been too easy to tease the South and put Kirk and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (played here by Kim Stinger) together, but original portrayer Nichelle Nichols probably wouldn't have liked that.

3. 1980: What if J.R. had died? TV seasons used to end in March. On March 21, 1980, the CBS drama Dallas closed its 3rd season by showing J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), President of Ewing Oil, shot in his office. The season-ending cliffhanger was invented.

The reason J.R. getting shot was written into the script in the first place is that Hagman wanted more money, and they hadn't yet decided to give it to him. If the threat of writing him out was supposed to make him give in, it backfired completely: For 8 months, the country was obsessed over 2 questions: "Will Jimmy Carter get the hostages out of Iran before the election, or will Ronald Reagan beat him?" and "Who shot J.R.?" And Hagman, formerly Major Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, became a bigger star than ever. The repeated episodes got higher ratings than when they were first run, and CBS ended up making enough money on them that they could cave in to Hagman and save face at the same time.

As it turned out, the shooter was Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby), J.R.'s sister-in-law and former mistress. J.R. survived, although he was in a wheelchair for the 1st few episodes of the 1980-81 season. He also seemed to be a changed man. By the end of the season, he was revealed to be just as bad as he always was.

He could have died. If he had... actually, as the series' last episode, in 1991, showed, maybe everyone would have been better off. It was a reverse It's a Wonderful Life, with what J.R. thinks is an angel (played by Joel Grey) showing him what the world would be like if he had never been born. Everybody was better off, from Sue Ellen (his wife and Kristin's sister), Kristin (she didn't die in an "accident" at Southfork a year later), Bobby (J.R.'s brother), and Ewing family arch-rival Cliff Barnes (who becomes the President of the United States in this fantasy).

4. 1983: What if we had gotten to see what happened to the 4077th staff after M*A*S*H? Putting the failed spinoff AfterMASH aside, I tried my hand at imagining that in September 2015. I hope all the fates I wrote out are appropriate. Certainly, for Frank Burns (Larry Linville), I think I got it right.

5. 1987: What if Sam had married Diane? Shelley Long left Cheers and her character of Diane Chambers at the end of the 1986-87 season, leaving Ted Danson's Sam Malone before they could have their wedding. Long wasn't the 1st actor to leave a show and bet on making it big in movies, and have it not pay off (that might have been Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, in 1965), and she wasn't the last (David Caruso of NYPD Blue, in 1993, is the most notorious example since). She may be the best-remembered, though.

The replacement of Long with Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe, and the accompanying change in the storyline, made Sam an underdog and more sympathetic, and probably contributed to the show lasting until 1993.

A 1987-88 season with Diane as Mrs. Malone would have made the show just another sitcom. And then there would be the inevitable wait for a baby, and then all the baby-themed storylines after the birth, and it probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. There probably wouldn't have been a Frasier, or any other spinoff, either.

6. 1996: What if Susan had lived, and George had married her? On Seinfeld, George Costanza (Jason Alexander) wanted to be able to say he was married. He didn't actually want to be married. And, though unintentional, and he was unaware that he had done so until it was far too late, he caused Susan Ross' death in the weeks before the wedding.

George found relationships suffocating, and this seemed to be especially true during the engagement. But Susan was no prize, either. In more ways than one: Supposedly, the reason the character was killed off is that no one in the cast could stand her portrayer, Heidi Sweberg.

George would have been miserable -- but at least he would have had access to the Ross family's money. Is it possible that he would have done something to make Susan divorce him, and cut him off, and return him to his previous bankrupt state? Sure, it is. Is it possible that he would have gone in the other direction, and taken the money, and cut off his friends Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards)? Yes, that is possible as well.

I guess George is lucky that Susan didn't get pregnant, leaving a little Ross-Costanza baby, who might have inherited the worst of both families. Could that child have inherited the best of both families? We don't even know what that was.

But had the wedding gone forward, and the writers used the usual trope of the 1st baby being born at the end of the next season, 1997, that baby would now be 22 and (unless it was a complete idiot, or something unfortunate had happened, either of which is possible) graduating from college.

It would kind of serve George right if such a baby had been a girl. Can you imagine her dating? Can you imagine little Georgia Costanza dating a guy like Kramer? Or even... dating Kramer? "George is gettin' upset!"

7. 1996: What if Ross hadn't cheated on Rachel? Rachel Greene (Jennifer Aniston) never actually told her boyfriend, Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), "We are on a break." She said, "Maybe we should take a break." In other words, it was her idea, but just an idea, not something that they agreed upon.

She then admitted to her best friend and roommate, Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), Ross' sister, "I don't want to take a break." The problem is, she didn't say this to Ross until after it was too late.

Certainly, Ross didn't want to take a break. But he acted like he had no choice in the matter. He did have a choice: He could have told Chloe, "the chick from the copy store" (Angela Featherstone), that he was still in love with someone else, and that he couldn't go through with it.

If that had happened, he might have proposed to Rachel later that season, and, at the end of the 1997-98 season, when he said, "I, Ross, take thee, Rachel" at his wedding, it would have been to the right words to the right woman.

So then the rest of the series would have been about Monica and Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) heading to the altar. But would that have cut the series short? Yes, and that would have been a good thing: Like Seinfeld, Friends lasted too long, and the main characters had all become parodies of their respective excesses.

8. 2005: What if Gibbs had saved Kate? We already know the answer to this one, because NCIS examined a few what-if scenarios in a 2012 episode. If Special Agent In Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) had managed to prevent the murder of Special Agent Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander), she would have gone on to marry Special Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and have a child with him. Happily ever after?

As ESPN's Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" In the scenario that episode showed, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) never becomes Mossad's liaison officer to NCIS, never joins the team, and ends up getting arrested and interrogated by Tony. We don't see the result of that, but it's implied that her life isn't as good as the one we know, in which she is the one who eventually gets together with Tony and has a child with him -- only to (apparently) die, leaving Tony to leave the team and care for their daughter.

Alexander left the show after only 2 seasons because she wanted to start a family with her husband, film director Eduardo Ponti -- son of film producer Carlo Ponti and acting icon Sophia Loren. Two children later, she was ready to go back to work, and starred with Angie Harmon on Rizzoli & Isles.

(UPDATE: Ziva did survive, and she and Tony did reunite.)

9. 2006: What if we had gotten to see the Santos Administration? The final episode of The West Wing showed the end of the 8-year Presidency of Josiah "Jed" Bartlet (Martin Sheen), and the Inauguration of the new President, Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits), the 1st Hispanic President.

But the seeds of the Santos Administration's destruction may have already been sown. Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), now White House Chief of Staff after running the campaign, and having been Deputy Chief of Staff for 7 years under Bartlet, is as much of a nervous wreck as ever, and marriage to his former secretary Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) isn't going to help, as she always drove him crazy, and not in a good way.

Furthermore, the peace offering to the defeated Republican nominee, Senator Arnold Vinick of California (Alan Alda), of the post of Secretary of State couldn't have lasted. Vinick and the former Houston-based Congressman Santos may have earned each other's respect, but they didn't exactly share policies. I think that, sometime in the 3rd year of the Administration, Vinick would resign over a difference of principle. I don't think he would have run for President again, challenging Santos for re-election -- not at his age, and already knowing what kind of stress a full campaign can give.

But Vinick could have solidified support behind a single Republican candidate, even if it was one as far to the right as the pro-choice but otherwise conservative Vinick selected for his running mate, Governor Ray Sullivan of West Virginia (Brett Cullen). And with Bartlet having avoided a recession for 8 years, there might have been only so much that President Santos could do to avoid one, especially if the Republicans retook the House of Representatives (having kept the Senate all along) in the midterms. I suspect that Sullivan would have beaten Santos in 2010.
(The show never did explain why the elections happened in 1998, 2002 and 2006, instead of 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. And since they showed real-life Presidents up to and including Richard Nixon, re-elected in 1972, we know the elections still happened on schedule up to that point. And screenshots of things like computer screens and TV broadcasts showed that the show was moving with the actual calendar, and not taking place 2 years in the past or the future.)

So the Democratic effort to regain the White House in 2014 would be very different. President Bartlet, if he was still alive (Sheen still is), would likely be so afflicted by multiple sclerosis that he couldn't take an active part. His 2 Vice Presidents are out: John Hoynes (Tim Matheson) was politically radioactive, and Bob Russell (Gary Cole) only got as close to the 2006 nomination as he did through sheer inertia, as he was the "incumbent" due to Bartlet being limited to 2 terms by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

Santos isn't going to run again, although, constitutionally, he could. His 1st choice for Vice President, Bartlet's former Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer), is dead. His 2nd choice, which we are led to believe is Governor Eric Baker of Pennsylvania (Ed O'Neill), wouldn't be a young guy, either. As the Number 2 guy in the recent failed Administration, as was the case with the real-life Walter Mondale under Jimmy Carter, there'd be a cloud over him even if he led a blameless life and served 4 years as Vice President with class and distinction.

And who would do the campaigning? Josh? Forget it: As his Deputy Chief of Staff and Bartlet's top speechwriter, Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), pointed out, Josh was already close to a heart attack and a stroke in November 2006; by the early 2013, when the next campaign would start, he's probably dead? Donna? As his widow, unlikely: She would blame politics for killing her husband. Sam himself? Given that he left politics after his failed run for Congress in the special election of 2003, and only came back with great reluctance because he thought Josh would work himself to death or insanity if he didn't, I doubt it.

Former White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff)? Still scandalized from his leak about the "military shuttle." Former Chief of Staff and Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney)? Smart lady, but she wasn't exactly an organizational genius as Chief of Staff. She can express policy, but she's not good at making it.

White House aide Charlie Young (Dule Hill) and, presumably by that point, his wife, the former President's daughter, Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss)? It's not hard to see Charlie being elected Mayor of Washington in the coming years. A future Presidential candidate, possibly; and, with Barack Obama either not existing in this world or still serving in the Senate, the honor of becoming the 1st black President is still available -- but, for Charlie, not this soon. If he was 19 when the show began, he would be 34 in 2014. More likely, with a Democratic win, he'd be up for a Cabinet post or an Ambassadorship.

It's entirely possible that 2014 will see President Sullivan re-elected. By the time the 2018 campaign gets underway, a new generation of Democratic leaders could have emerged -- and there would be conservatism fatigue. Maybe by then, Sam, C.J., Donna, Charlie and Zoey could be ready to be the new campaign leadership team. For whom? I'm glad I don't have the job of writing out the details of such a new character.

10. 2011: What if Ned had exposed Joffrey's true parentage? In the storyline of Game of Thrones, Ned Stark (Sean Bean) discovers that, while Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) is the son of Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), wife of the King, Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), he is not Robert's son. Rather, his father is Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Cersei's own twin brother.

I should note that, in Westeros, which may take place on a different planet than Earth (series creator George R.R. Martin has also written science fiction), incest is not considered a taboo. The problem isn't the incest, it's the illegitimacy: If Joffrey is not the son of the King, then he is not the next rightful King.

And when Robert dies -- probably killed while hunting by someone loyal to House Lannister -- Joffrey is King, and shouldn't be. Ned, who had been Robert's "Hand of the King" -- effectively, the Prime Minister of the Seven Kingdoms, and probably a play on the term "right-hand man" -- reveals this to the nobles, and threatens to reveal it to the public. The King would then be Stannis Baratheon, brother of Robert.

Ned is told by Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), father of Cersei and Jaime, and the true power behind the throne, that, as his daughter, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), is engaged to Joffrey (at least politically, it was a good idea at the time), her life would be forfeit as well as his for the treasonous revelation he was threatening. By taking it back amongst the nobles who now knew, Ned would spare himself and his family.

Except King Joffrey, whose genetic makeup has left him a sadistic little jerk -- a bastard in both senses of the word -- orders Ned's execution anyway, and in front of his family: His wife, all 5 of his legitimate children, and the young man he has raised as his own son even though... well, the true origin of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) doesn't need to be spelled out here.

If Ned had managed to escape from custody, and escape with his family intact, many GoT fans believe it would have prevented all the suffering that followed. But this theory is ridiculous: Knowing Tywin, Cersei and Joffrey, there is no doubt in my mind that Ned and his brood would all have been hunted down, and wiped out. It would have been what "The Red Wedding" nearly was. Atrocious pun alert. It would have been a total eclipse of the Starks.

As bad as things became for House Stark, they are still better now, as the show comes to a close without its resolution yet being known, than they would have been if Ned hadn't made a fool of himself and unknowingly forfeited his life.

UPDATE: On November 19, 2019, ScreenRant did a post about Ned's survival, how it could have happened, and what the results would have been. Most of them would have been good, including the Lannister forces being wiped out at the Battle of Blackwater Bay, and the lives of the Lannister family as a whole being forfeit (with the exception of Cersei and Jamie's 2 younger children, as Ned would have spared them as innocent minors); and no Red Wedding, so Ned's wife Catelyn and eldest son Robb live longer.

But Arya never would have had to leave Winterfell to train as a warrior, and would not have killed the Night King. So either someone else would have had to do it (Jon? Robb?), or Westeros would have fallen. If Ned had lived to that point, maybe everyone would have died. Instead of Infinite Earths, the Crisis In Seven Kingdoms could have been the end of life as they knew it.

Top 10 TV Thanksgiving Episodes

"What are you, an animal?"

UPDATE: Through Thanksgiving 2023, I see no reason to change this list.

Honorable Mention. Barney Miller, "Thanksgiving Story," November 24, 1977. Mental patients have escaped from a private hospital, and are loose in an automat. Yes, they still had automats in New York, even as recently as 1992.

10. Home Improvement, "Thanksgiving," November 25, 1997. The Taylors are invited to watch the Detroit Lions' annual Thanksgiving Day game from a luxury box at the Silverdome. Tim is given a tour of the stadium, and, being himself, he manages to black out the building. Rodney Dangerfield has a cameo as another guest of the Taylors' skybox patron.

9. Bewitched, "Samantha's Thanksgiving to Remember," November 23, 1967. Aunt Clara accidentally transports the family back to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621, to observe the first Thanksgiving.

Except that it's the period where anyone in Massachusetts who behaved improperly was considered a witch. So who goes on trial for witchcraft? Not Samantha, who actually is a witch, but Darren. And Samantha ends up using her witch powers to prove him innocent.

8. Full House, "The Miracle of Thanksgiving," November 20, 1987. It's Danny's 1st Thanksgiving without his wife, and his daughters' 1st without their mother. He wants to make it extra special.

But Grandma Tanner can't make it. So Danny, Joey and Jesse want to make a reservation at a restaurant. Older daughters D.J. and Stephanie insist that they all make the dinner together at home. Hilarity ensues -- until they realize that baby Michelle finally realizes that Mommy is not coming back.

7. Happy Days, "The First Thanksgiving," November 21, 1978. Marion is unhappy that the rest of the Cunningham family would rather watch football on television than help with the dinner, so she tells them her version of the story of how the Pilgrims and the Indians came together for the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621.

The various actors play period-specific versions of themselves, including Henry Winkler playing "the odd one," who seems to already be in good with the Natives. Because, even in the era of King James I, the Fonz is just that cool.

6. Cheers, "Thanksgiving Orphans," November 27, 1986. Everybody's got some reason or another to not spent the holiday with their families. So Diane invites them all to dinner -- at Carla's. Norm brings a huge frozen turkey, and when it takes forever to cook, Carla calls it "Birdzilla."

Bored and hungry, a food fight starts, which ends with Diane throwing a pie at Sam. He ducks, and it hits Norm's late-arriving wife Vera instead. As a result, Vera, making her 1st onscreen appearance after all her mentions, still doesn't show her face. She is played, uncredited, by Bernadette Birkett, the real-life wife of Norm's portrayer George Wendt.

5. ER, "Great Expectations," November 25, 1999. Carol goes into labor on Thanksgiving Day, and it gets complicated. This is the debut episode of Maura Tierney as Abby Lockhart.

4. The West Wing, "The Indians In the Lobby," November 21, 2001. For reasons of political correctness, this episode is sometimes referred to as "The Butterball Hotline." Two Native Americans refuse to leave the West Wing lobby until the President (or someone high up in the federal government) hears their grievance.

Josh has to both get to Florida, where his widowed mother is after moving from Connecticut, and convince a Georgia prosecutor not to seek the death penalty for a 13-year-old boy who killed his teacher.

President Bartlet tells everyone who will listen (and when your boss is the President, you will listen) how his family turkey is cooked, but is reminded that an improperly cooked turkey might kill his guests. "I'm not saying that's necessarily a dealbreaker." So Charlie tells him that the Butterball company has a hotline for answering cooking questions, and the President calls it, pretending to be a private citizen. He is also very annoyed that Bruno has taken a poll on where the First Family should spend Thanksgiving.

The previous season's Thanksgiving episode, "Shibboleth," is often held up as one of the best Thanksgiving episodes any TV series has ever had. I like this one better.

If you would actually like to call the Butterball Hotline, the number is 1-800-288-8372. Or, 1-800-BUTTERB(all). Be advised, though, that, just as Bartlet did, you may have to wait, as there are a limited number of operators/experts.

3. WKRP in Cincinnati, "Turkeys Away," October 30, 1978. Why did this air right before Halloween, instead of right before Thanksgiving? Anyway, Mr. Carlson thinks dropping turkeys out of a helicopter is a great Thanksgiving promotion. Live turkeys.

"As God is my witness," the Big Guy says, "I thought turkeys could fly!" Spoiler alert: Wild turkeys can, but domesticated, farm-produced turkeys, bred for human consumption, can't.

The top two aired on the same night, on the same network, NBC. Number 1, at 8:00 Eastern Time, one week before Thanksgiving, was immediately followed by Number 2 at 8:30.

2. Friends, "The One Where Underdog Gets Away," November 17, 1994. Ross and Monica's parents are going on a cruise for Thanksgiving, so instead of going to Long Island for the dinner, Monica decides to do it herself, at her apartment in Greenwich Village.

Joey can't spend Thanksgiving with his family on Staten Island, because an acting job he got goes awry. Chandler hates Thanksgiving because of something that happened as a boy.

In the middle of preparations, the Underdog balloon breaks away from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and they all go up to the roof to see it. When they get back, they discover that they're locked out.

Later Thanksgiving episodes would show Ross and Monica renewing their football rivalry (the Geller Bowl, competing for the Geller Cup), a confrontation between a pregnant Rachel and a high school rival (played by Jennifer Aniston's then-real-life-husband Brad Pitt), and a flashback episode that showed why Chandler hates Thanksgiving, how Chandler inspired Monica to lose 100 pounds, and how Monica's revenge for Chandler calling her fat not inadvertently cost Chandler a toe.

1. Mad About You, "Giblets for Murray," November 17, 1994. One of my very favorite episodes of any TV series, on any subject. It also aired an hour before the Seinfeld episode "The Mom & Pop Store," so that was one great night of television comedy.

Paul and Jamie are hosting Thanksgiving for the first time. Their families are driving them nuts. They admonish the Buchmans and the Stemples for their behavior, and remind them that they're adults and that they know what they're doing. Then they discover that Murray the dog has eaten the turkey.

So they have to get a replacement turkey. The one they actually serve is the 5th try. With each try, more family members learn the truth, until Paul's mother is the last to know -- and, normally a shrew who treats Paul like dirt and hates Jamie, she comes through in the end: "What? I never had a mother-in-law?"

The 4th turkey also proves, as had WKRP 16 years earlier, that turkeys don't fly.

Top 10 TV Halloween Episodes

Note: This is weighted toward shows I not only saw, but liked. So if you're looking for The Simpsons and their annual "Treehouse of Horror," forget it. The sooner everyone realizes that The Simpsons is gross and sucks, the better.

Honorable Mention -- since, technically, it's not an episode of a regular series. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, October 27, 1966. This is the 1st animated depiction of 2 staples of the Peanuts comic strip: Lucy Van Pelt (voiced by Sally Dryer) pulling the football away from Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins), and Charlie's dog Snoopy (Bill Melendez) imagining himself to be a World War I flying ace.

Lucy's brother Linus (Christopher Shea), rather than Charlie himself, is the star of this episode, believing in the Great Pumpkin, apparently Halloween's answer to Santa Claus. Charlie's sister Sally (Kathy Steinberg), who has a crush on Linus, sits in the pumpkin patch with him, awaiting the Great Pumpkin's arrival. As for Charlie Brown's trick-or-treating, "I got a rock!"

Honorable Mention -- since it didn't air on or near Halloween (rather, it aired on New Year's Eve), but it does involve a costume party. The Honeymooners, "The Man From Space," December 31, 1955. Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and Ed Norton (Art Carney) both want to win the costume contest at their lodge, the Loyal Order of Friendly Raccoons. Their competitiveness causes a rift in their friendship. Ralph practically dismantles his apartment to build his "man from space" costume, and when Norton is called in to work in a sewer emergency, it looks like Ralphie boy has it won.

This episode would be shown in both the 1985 and the 1955 segments of Back to the Future. The Honeymooners did air on November 5, 1955, but it was a different episode, "The Sleepwalker."

10. Cheers, "Bar Wars V: The Final Judgment," October 31, 1991. Since Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, Cheers' arch-rival bar, has messed with them on Halloween before, and it appears that they have messed with Cheers on H-Day again, Sam Malone (Ted Danson) decides to go all in. It turns out that he and the Cheers Gang go too far.

9. Friends, "The One With the Halloween Party," November 1, 2001. The highlight of this episode is seeing Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) dressed as Supergirl. But Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) dresses as "Spudnik," a potato with a silver TV antenna on his head, in tribute to the 1st artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. Except he looks like a giant turd.

8. Roseanne, "Boo!", October 31, 1989. Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) likes to think she's "The Queen of Halloween." Her husband Dan (John Goodman), on the other hand, likes to think that he's "The Master." They go all-out to spook each other, and also to spook their daughter Becky (Lecy Goranson), who has lost the Halloween spirit.

7. Home Improvement, "Crazy For You," October 27, 1993. Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor (Tim Allen) is one of those perpetual kids who goes overboard for Halloween, including practical jokes, so his wife Jill (Patricia Richardson) decides to play a practical joke on him, convincing the local celebrity that he has a murderous stalker.

6. Modern Family, "Halloween," October 27, 2010. Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) is one of those perpetual kids who goes overboard for Halloween. Fortunately for him, he's married to Claire (Julie Bowen), who shares his passion for the holiday. She wants to put together the ultimate Halloween haunted house, but the rest of her family isn't exactly cooperating.

Till death do they part -- and then some.

5. Frasier, "Halloween," October 28, 1997. Dr. Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) hosts a Halloween party, with literary characters as the theme. He's dressed as Cyrano de Bergerac, complete with exaggerated nose.

His brother, Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), discovers that his costume, the Archbishop of Canterbury from The Canterbury Tales, is "a babe magnet," particularly attracting a bodystocking-wearing Eve (played by Camille Donatacci, whom Grammer soon married).

But the subplot is that Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin), the producer of Frasier's radio show, is pregnant (unplanned), but Niles misunderstands, and thinks Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves), his unrequited crush, is, and that the baby's father isn't stepping up to make an honest woman of her. So he proposes to her.

Frasier and Niles' father, retired Seattle Detective Martin Crane, is dressed as the greatest detective of them all, Sherlock Holmes. At one point, Niles asks him where Frasier is. Marty: "Haven't got a clue." Niles: "Holmes, you astound me!"

4. Barney Miller, "Werewolf," October 28, 1976. Although not specifically a Halloween episode, it aired during Halloween week, and a guy turns himself in to the 12th Precinct by claiming to be a werewolf. The character would return a few years later, claiming to be possessed by a demon.

"Barney... Barney!"

3. NCIS, "Witch Hunt," October 31, 2006. A Marine's daughter is kidnapped while trick-or-treating, and Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and his Major Case Response Team have to find her.

Meanwhile, we find out that Special Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), a perpetual frat boy whom we would have expected to love Halloween, hates it. And forensic analyst Dr. Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perette) is dressed as Marilyn Monroe, and still helps to solve the case.

2. Castle, "Vampire Weekend," October 26, 2009. A college student who's into the "vampire lifestyle" is murdered in a cemetery. Mystery novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and New York Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) have to solve the murder. In so doing, they solve another murder, one from 18 years ago.

A subplot involving Castle's daughter Alexis (Molly Quinn) provides some comic relief, and finally some poignance. Castle starts out wearing what he calls a "space cowboy" costume, actually the one Fillion wore as Captain Mal Reynolds on Firefly, one of several references to that show over Castle's 8-year run. He ends it dressed as Edgar Allan Poe.

1. M*A*S*H, "Trick Or Treatment," November 1, 1982. A day late, but by no means a dollar short. The medical staff at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War, including Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) as a longjohns-wearing Superman, tell ghost stories while working on patients, and learn the spookiest one of all.

Ken Levine and David Isaacs wrote several episodes of the series, although not this one, which features an appearance by George Wendt as a Marine who has a drunken Halloween misadventure. Andrew Clay, the future Diceman, plays another. Levine and Isaacs would go on to write many Cheers episodes, with Wendt as Norm Peterson.

The song "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett is a staple of Halloween episodes, but it wasn't recorded until 1962, 10 years after this M*A*S*H episode takes place, so it doesn't appear in the episode.