star trek thanksgiving
Thanksgiving may be the national holiday of stuffing yourself, but as you sit on the couch in a haze of tryptophan and pumpkin pie, you may want to consider binging on a different form of comfort food: streaming television.
There's something deeply comforting about turning on a show you already know and love and letting hour after hour of its familiar glow wash over you. Yeah, you already know how the season finale turns out, but that's part of the pleasure; like a bedtime story you've heard over and over again, the joy is in the repetition. So sit back, relax, and check out the streaming TV smorgasbord of excellent and deeply pleasant shows we'll continually sip through a virtual straw this weekend. (Have suggestions of your own? Leave them in the comments.) --LAURA HUDSON
Star Trek
Tastes like: mashed potatoes
Walking into any semi-traditional Thanksgiving dinner, one can always be assured of at least two sure bets: one, that [insert your own embarrassing family tradition involving binge-drinking here], and two, that you’re going to eat the mashed potatoes. The fluffy, brilliant-white glob of pure fatty carbohydrates on your plate – much like Star Trek, whichever series you prefer – is a guaranteed crowd pleaser: it’s not central, like turkey, but it’s a reliable classic – unfettered, simple, innocent. It is what it is, and has nothing to hide. Plus, you’ve been eating it at Thanksgivings probably since before you could chew solid foods, and as the most obviously wonderful thing on your plate, it’s hard not to go for it immediately. There’s always way more Trek than you expected, so this binge-eating episode will have many, many sequels in the days to come. You dig right in, Trekkie – it’s tradition.
If you didn’t hear by now, the curators at Netflix have done an exemplary job, and every series – TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, even the animated series from 1973 – is available there, as are Nemesis, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, (not to mention a whopping six documentaries). The original 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the rest of the TOS movies are streaming on Amazon Instant Video. (Let’s call the movies – an extra-flavorful twist on the original – mashed sweet potatoes.) Careful, though: Watch too much and you will have no appetite – or time – for anything else. –DEVON MALONEY
