Momshaw
So, the episode starts with Carrie's hazy Thanksgiving memories of her mother humming a perfect tune while she makes the perfect meal. This gives me an opportunity to obsess over the size of the Bradshaws' kitchen. Their house seems pretty big, and that seems apartment-sized. I suspect poor Momshaw spent her whole life screaming, "MY KINGDOM FOR SOME COUNTER SPACE."
Props
Props to the props: My mom had an old recipe box that looked much like this one. Although our recipe for a perfect turkey is to cook it on the charcoal Weber so that the oven is available for everything else. Also, no turkey is perfect just because of the recipe. You also have to actively not overcook it. But Carrie is pretty sure copying her mother's recipes will lead to a perfect holiday. SPOILER: No.
Carrie and George
She is also having a fine old time making out in Central Park while looking as picturesque as if she'd just come from the stables after giving Rafalka a jolly trot. George is very amiable. This whole episode, the George story is basically, "Dude's super easygoing."
Carrie and Mouse
I don't mean to harp on everyone's hair, but I had a sister in high school in 1984, and I just looked at the yearbook, and NOBODY'S HAIR was this regular. NOBODY. AT LEAST crimp the ends. Or tease it up. I promise I wont complain about this forever, but it still really throws me off because I find myself forgetting that this show is supposed to be set in the '80s. And actually, more and more, the whole IT'S YOUNG CARRIE!!!! construct is kind of irrelevant anyway. At least it does force people away from cell phone chicanery and Twitter yada-yada. I wonder if that makes it easier to tell stories, in a way. You don't have to outthink the ways technology makes confusion and missed connections less likely.
Carrie
So, it turns out Dadshaw has invited George and his father -- who is Scott Cohen, a.k.a. Gilmore Girls' Max Medina, a.k.a., He Of The Massive Portable Phone -- to Thanksgiving. So in addition to being stressed about making everything perfect, Carrie now has to clean out her room of all Hello Kitty memorabilia, and hide her Shaun Cassidy photo in a drawer. Foolishly, she does all this in front of Dorrit, who decides to mess with her, because Dorrit is a pill. The moral of this show is, never do anything resembling ANYTHING in front of Dorrit, because DORRIT IS ALWAYS A PILL.
Carrie
She does look cute, though. Very Anthropologie. Today she's got on her Innocence Wig, but it really ought to be Bun Wig or Hairnet Wig since she's about to slave over a kitchen counter for six hours.
Mags
Mags is all dressed up like Taylor Swift at a Kennedy brunch because she's going to Walt's WASPy house -- so here, we're getting developments that Maggie's family is from the poorer side of the tracks, and Walt's is quite rich. Maggie runs into her cop ex, on the way to hang out with Maggie's brother and dad, and he pants in her face for a while in plain sight of the house and the neighborhood before she breezes past imperiously.
Carrie
So, Dorrit -- who is anti-Thanksgiving right now -- sabotages and smudges the mother's recipes and hides all the cookbooks. Carrie, in a panic, calls Mouse to come over and cook. So wait. Why isn't Mouse having Thanksgiving? Why isn't she eating with her family and elbow-deep in her own cornbread stuffing? Actually, I think she said, but... whatever her argument was, I OBJECT.
Walt Fam
Maggie's meal is really uncomfortable. Walt doesn't stand up to his pushy dad about Dartmouth -- Walt actually wants to go to NYU so that he can come out and become Stanford Blatch (please) -- and it's clear his mother looks down on Maggie, who has no college plans at all, and then blurts out that she'll just follow Walt wherever he goes. His family is appalled, so she pretends that this was a joke, but it's clear that -- like her feathered bangs -- it was not.
George
George mostly likes to make out with Carrie in between genial shrugs and being generally unfazed by anything the world has to offer. Nice work if you can get it. Meanwhile, Mouse is downstairs doing all the work. Mouse is a really, really nice friend.
Carrie and Mouse
But not so nice that she's willing to pull the giblets out of the turkey, or as I call them, the Bits. This scene was funny. The show put a Bits Cam inside the turkey cavity and so we get the two of them peering into it, disgusted, until Carrie pulls on a rainbow knit glove and yanks them out and screams as she puts them in the trash. Only to realize that she has to use them to make the gravy. I remember the first time I realized that Bits came inside the turkey; I was horrified and grossed out by the neck, in particular, and so even to this day when the man-wife gets ready to do it, I leave the room until he's done and they're buried in the trash. We don't make our own gravy, in part because I hate gravy, and also, I do not engage with Bits. I stand for no Bits.
Dorrit and George
Meanwhile, George is so groovy that he even sees right through Dorrit's rebellion, and while she pretends to be insulted ("Let me guess, you have a turtle named Morrissey..." "Um, Morrissey is a HAMSTER"), she softens when she realizes he's actually not patronizing her, nor making fun of her. He says he gets it. And the two of them start to bond. Far from being relieved, Carrie decides this is because Dorrit is up to no good, so she abandons Mouse again to flargh around George and Dorrit and blah blah blah she is a terrible cook, which does at least dovetail with the HBO Bradshaw. But I'm not sure it dovetails with this one. She goes on and on and on about how she's Taking Care Of My Family and whatnot, and she's obsessed with carrying on her mother's memory... I just feel like THIS Carrie, somehow, was the one at her mother's side learning to cook, and making lasagna and freezing it after her mom died so that they'd have meals.
Dadshaw
Dadshaw is like, 'Yay, Carrie is cooking! Let's have scotch and watch the Patriots!' I would at least like to applaud the Bradshaws for having their Thanksgiving meal in the evening, which is how we do it, too. You can give me a giant lunch, but I'll still be just as hungry for dinner, so I get LESS huge during Fat November if I just serve dinner at dinnertime.
Sebastian
Meanwhile, Sebastian finds out that his mother ditched him to go to the tropics with her tennis instructor, leaving him all alone to brood picturesquely and stare at a spot on the wall.
Mags and Walt
Walt is replete with hilarious man sweaters. They need to just stick some knitting needles in his backpack, or put a knitting grandmother in the corner of every scene that takes place at his house. Anyway, Maggie ribs him for not telling his father who he really is (Walt allows a TINY moment of "NO KIDDING" to pass on his face, but not so much that Maggie would notice, which was nice acting), and admits she figured she WOULD just follow him because she has no plans of her own, and Walt tells her yes, he is just trying to keep the peace until he has to 'fess up, but that she shouldn't follow that example and should fight for whatever dreams she has. It's a nice scene. Strange that we hadn't gotten a sense of Maggie's background until now, but better late than never.
Maggie and Bro-Maggie
I mean, turns out Maggie has brothers. Who knew? But there is no money for Maggie to go to college, because one of their brothers is already there. Maggie is bummed out -- apparently she didn't know she might want to go to college until somebody made her think about it, but now it's probably too late because her grades are terrible and they're broke. She also turns down the cop guy's advances again because she decides she should want better for herself, and wishes she'd wanted it all along. Aw. I wasn't sure about Maggie at first but she's been good the last two episodes, and you do kind of feel for her here.
Dorrit
Carrie catches Dorrit outside smoking pot. Dorrit explodes that she sabotaged the day because she thinks Carrie is trying to replace their mother. Bicker bicker bicker run upstairs (where Dorrit continues to smoke the pot. Is Dadshaw sensory-deprived?). Carrie freaks out that George will see them squabbling and think she is a freak, which is lame, because last week was all about them surviving squabbles and stupidity. But she wants her normalcy to seem perfect to him, so she sticks Mouse with the cooking AGAIN. This underscores the central logic of the show that Carrie spends all her time trying to take care of the family. Because she does not -- as here, she spends her time doing self-serving things while back-burnering the other stuff. In this case literally.
TURKEY GO BOOM
Carrie had shoved the turkey in the oven and broiled it to try and get it done faster. So of course it explodes. And so does Carrie: She shouts about how she's been trying to make this a perfect day, just like when their mom was alive, so that they don't feel sad all day. She almost blurts out about Dorrit and the drugs, but catches herself and covers (at least the burning turkey might explain why Dadshaw didn't smell anything). There is one amusing bit where Mouse under her breath calls out Carrie on her assertion that she's been slaving over the food all day, but otherwise, it's basically a catharsis. So it turns out the flaming turkey is a metaphorical flaming turkey. In death it found its meaning.
Candlelight Bonding
So Dorrit thanks Carrie for not spilling the beans -- or the bud, as it were -- and Carrie assures her she's not trying to replace their mom. Dorrit -- who used to hang with their mother while Carrie watched football with their dad, which makes NO SENSE given that in this same episode we've heard Carrie make reference to not liking watching football -- giggles that what Carrie doesn't know is that her mother cursed and screamed her way through cooking, and just cranked up loud music to hide it. So Things That Seem Perfect Rarely Are, And That's Okay As Long As There Is Love. Do you hear that, Carrie? So naturally George turns out to be completely chill about all the dramz and kisses her and leaves and is dreamy.
Dadshaw
Gee, Dadshaw sure does feel low about making Carrie do all the work today. He tells her that she's been so busy holding the family together blah blah blah really? EVERY WEEK she is either in Manhattan, or lying to him, or bagging on her sister, or dumping her to hang out with Sebastian. SHOW, DON'T TELL, y'all. I would have so much more sympathy for her feeling like she's giving up aspects of her life to try and hold the family together, if she were actually, you know, giving up on aspects of her life to try and hold her family together.
Sebastian
Donna invites Sebastian to her house. He swipes a bottle of whiskey and moseys out of his attractive den of self-loathing.
Jake Ryan
But instead, Sebastian shows up at Carrie's door, because the only person he thinks will understand his baggage is Carrie, and not his girlfriend Donna -- always a tremendous sign for any budding relationship. Carrie offers a sympathetic ear, then lets him stay -- and Dadshaw, understanding, agrees. Sebastian offers him the bottle of scotch as if he'd always meant to, which... hey, maybe he did. Dadshaw is like, "...Oooookay, I'll let that one slide."
Carrie
Also, while they talked, we noticed for the first time that Carrie has been wearing fuchsia tights. Why not, indeed.
Thanksgiving
So while the power is still out from the fried fuses, they gather around and eat bean dip and ambrosia salad (yikes) and Sebastian and Dadshaw bond over hating the Dallas Cowboys, and the camera pulls back on one of those perfectly disastrous makeshift-family Thanksgivings, the likes of which Mouse's parents probably wish they were having, except they haven't been cast yet.
Props
And Dorrit plants a cassette deck on the table so they can listen to some tunes. MEMORIES. I hope they had plenty of D batteries in the house before the blackout, or else pretty soon The Cars are going to hit gridlock. O SNAP.