Welcome to the weekly TV thread.

The Original TV Score Selection of the Week is “The Vanishing Breed” by the late Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble from Robertson’s score to the 1994 TBS docuseries The Native Americans.

I’ve never seen The Native Americans. I’m planning to watch on YouTube someone’s VCR recordings of the docuseries, which was narrated by poet Joy Harjo from the Muscogee Nation and was given a “Cheers” in TV Guide’s Cheers ’n’ Jeers section in 1994.

“For perhaps the first time in any mass medium, most major creative positions in the series—including directors, writers, and narrator—are filled by Native Americans. It’s smart, it’s right—and it’s about time,” wrote TV Guide’s unidentified Cheers ’n’ Jeers guy.

I’ve heard the music Robertson, who was of Mohawk and Cayuga descent, composed for the docuseries, and it’s excellent. I’m also a fan of Robertson’s main title theme from The Color of Money, especially when it’s paired with legendary title designer Dan Perri’s hand-drawn opening credits. I must be the only Scorsese fan who thinks The Color of Money would have been a better movie if it had been about Paul Newman and Forest Whitaker—who killed it in his only scene in the movie—instead of Newman and Tom Cruise. (“In just one scene, this 25-year-old kid shows up outta nowhere and effortlessly clowns one of the most magnetic leading men in Hollywood history,” wrote A. Square about Whitaker’s scene in The Color of Money in a 2023 Avocado thread on Whitaker’s best roles.)

I don’t watch football anymore. What the hell am I supposed to watch on my laptop on Thanksgiving if I stopped giving a shit about the NFL in 2017?

Ooh, I know. I could rewatch a couple of Reservation Dogs episodes as counter-programming against the colonialist bullshit of Thanksgiving. There’s another option: Whitaker was also compelling on The Shield. I could rewatch an hour of Lieutenant Kavanaugh and his Frank Grimes-style meltdown.

I’m not sure what to watch—I’ve been tuning in and out of the annual MST3K Turkey Day marathon—but I know I’ll be stuffed by the end of the day. I don’t think much of Thanksgiving, but I like the dinner part of the day. I doubt anyone will respond to a Couch Avocados prompt today due to the hecticness of Thanksgiving. It’s also because not many people responded to most of my earlier prompts. Aw, fuck it. I’ll just post it anyway. Today’s prompt is: Which fictional TV character’s home would you want to eat dinner at, whether the night is Thanksgiving or any other night? Have you imagined yourself eating dinner that was cooked and served by Gareth Blackstock—Lenny Henry’s character on Chef!, a sitcom from the U.K., a country that, by the way, doesn’t observe Thanksgiving—or Sookie St. James?

I have three characters whose dinners I’ve fantasized about sampling. Every time Chief of Police Tinkler dropped by the Tate mansion to discuss the latest developments in his investigation of Peter Campbell’s murder on Soap, he kept getting distracted by the dishes Benson made (“Is that strawberry shortcake? Oh, boy, do I love strawberry shortcake”), and his constant amazement made me wonder what Benson’s prime rib dinners and desserts taste like. The Thanksgiving dinners Bob prepares on Bob’s Burgers have always been enticing to me. I also think dinner at the Woos’ house on Extraordinary Attorney Woo would be marvelous, even though it would probably consist only of gimbap because that’s the only dish Woo Gwang-ho, who runs a gimbap shop, makes for Young-woo, his autistic lawyer daughter, and it’s the only dish she likes.

Woo Young Woo Kimbap’s filming location in Suwon has become a tourist attraction. It’s actually a Japanese restaurant called Kazaguruma.

The Woos aren’t the only Extraordinary Attorney Woo characters who live on gimbap. In Extraordinary Attorney Woo’s eighth episode, Dong Geu-ra-mi, Young-woo’s mischievous best friend, demonstrated that she does gimbap differently—she makes them square-shaped instead of rolling them up—and the episode inspired fans to post their own recipes for the Dong Geu-ra-mi Gimbap.

Is Benson DuBois, Bob Belcher, or Woo Gwang-ho also one of the fictional characters whose suppers you’ve imagined yourself enjoying? Did the meals in the recent Star Trek: Lower Decks episode that revealed that Dr. Migleemo is from a planet of foodies make you wish for a pop-up restaurant that recreates the various meals and drinks that appeared on Lower Decks? Or have you always wanted to be Howard Borden whenever he’d grab any of the meals on Bob and Emily Hartley’s dinner table? My favorite part of the Bob Newhart Show opening titles in the show’s final season is Howard ignoring Bob and Emily waving goodbye to him as they leave for work because he’s so immersed in the Hartleys’ cereal.

Find someone who looks at you in the same way Howard looks at the Hartleys’ cereal.