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Good Eats

Romancing the Bird— A Good Eats Thanksgiving

Season 1, Episode 14, Aired Nov 14, 1999

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Notes
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- This episode is included in the Holiday Treats (Volume 1) DVD.
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Allusions
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- Romancing the Bird The title may refer to the 1984 film "Romancing the Stone."
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- The blueberry, or the cranberry Alton, preparing to show his sister what the first Thanksgiving was really like, offers her a choice between a red cranberry and a blueberry, just as Morpheus famously offered Neo a choice between red pill and blue pill in The Matrix.
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- Where does she get all those wonderful toys? Alton, marvelling at Shirley's slideshow machine, is channeling Jack Nicholson's Joker, from the 1989 hit film Batman.
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- Mystery Food Science Theatre A reference to cult hit Mystery Science Theatre 3000, often MST3K to its devotees; the show presented old movies for mockery in a format similar to Shirley Corriher's brine lecture.
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- The Life of Brine This subtitle, for the section on how to brine the turkey, refers to the Monty Python hit, The Life of Brian.
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- How MacGyver of you Another "W" quote; this one refers to the long running adventure series MacGyver, whose title character was famous for improvising his way out of tricky situations by using common items in new ways. Alton earns this faint praise by employing a cooking thermometer to aid in defrosting a turkey.
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- Will the rest of the Addams Family be there? W's reply to Alton, when he invites her for Thanksgiving dinner, compares his family to the bizarre family popularized by cartoonist Charles Addams, and brought memorably to television in 1964.
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- W, the equipment specialist W makes one of her many appearances in this episode, although this time, she's at Alton's home. Usually, he must go to her. She is a reference to "Q", James Bond's redoubtable armorer. In this episode, Monty Norman's original James Bond theme can be heard playing faintly in the background during most of her appearance.
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- The Turkey Is Strong With You The "mysterious stranger" who visits that long ago Brown Thanksgiving says this to young Alton. He is imitating Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The theme continues as he withdraws an electric knife from within his jacket the same way Obi-Wan withdrew his lightsaber. And he uses a Jedi mind trick to make Alton's relative not want to carve the turkey.
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- My own family history was more Norman Bates than Norman Rockwell Norman Bates was the creepy motal owner serial killer from Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho. Norman Rockwell, by contrast, was an American painter famous for scenes of happy Americana. His work often adorned the Saturday Evening Post.
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- Title: Romancing the Bird The title is a reference to the movie Romancing the Stone [1984] by Robert Zemeckis.
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