It’s time for a special Thanksgiving episode of Big City Greens, and for it, we’re heading back into the country setting of Smalton, where we might even do a bit of shopping afterward.
Turkey Trouble
The whole family has gathered together for Thanksgiving out in Smalton. This includes everyone you’d expect, plus Nancy’s dad, Nick.
This is the first time that Nancy has done most of the cooking, and she is quite stressed while doing so. Bill, making sure his ex-wife doesn’t go berserk trying to handle most of the duties, is doing his best to make sure that Cricket and none of his hijinx interfere.
Tilly, the gamemaster of holiday fun for each occasion has created a new game – “Hobble Gobble Go” – wherein each family member must have their feet tied up and have to hobble into the woods to collect handmade Turkey cards. Everyone is ready to participate….mostly. Nancy is still game but is still preparing and stirring food while doing so.
The game is afoot, with Nick and Gramma Alice already in quite the competitive spirit though the former (being absent for quite some time) has no idea what to expect when it comes to a Tilly game.
Immediately, Bill notices something is wrong. Cricket, whom he caught earlier sneaking into Nancy’s food, has gone missing from the game. That must mean he’s in the kitchen tampering with Nancy’s preparations. And he’s right. Cricket is pilfering some muffins or rolls already.
Determined to stop his rambunctious son, Bill contributes to a cacophony of incidents that result in most of the meal being destroyed, including the iconic turkey that Nancy was most concerned about. Now, it’s up to Bill to team up with his son who knows best when it comes to deviant behavior to cover up the whole accident and replace the turkey.
Out in the woods, the rest of the family is playing Tilly’s game, which is surprising Grandpa Nick with its difficulty. Surely nobody would notice if he cheated, right? As he is untying his ropes so he could walk with ease, Tilly catches him instantaneously and penalizes him by taking his shoes and filling them with concrete – all per the rules of her game. He is ready to give up, but it’s his score that keeps him playing as it’s right in a dead heat with Gramma Alice, whom he wants to one-up considering she was saying he was ill prepared for this game.
Out in town, Cricket and Bill are trying to secure a replacement turkey, but of course everything at the grocery store is sold out anyway. As they are leaving, the pair run into Patti and Wayne (remember them? From the Smalton diner?). Patti herself points out that yes, she (a baker of the town’s most popular pies) is herself buying a pie from the grocery store, but everyone deserves a day off. They ask her if she knows anywhere that she they can get a turkey, and Wayne points out that there is wild one hanging out near the highway that they can go catch.
Don’t worry, we don’t actually see Bill and Cricket wrangle a turkey and serve it up for dinner. Far from it. While deciding whether or not to actually capture the turkey, they are distracted by a turkey cooling on a window sill and are thinking of stealing it from their residents – Trey and Tracy (Remember them? From the episode with the pothole filled road?). Bill finally decides that now is the time to come clean and own up to the fact that they destroyed the dinner.
In the woods, the game is wrapping up and Nick is apparently the winner…until that wild turkey that Bill and Cricket chased briefly shows up, which Tilly invokes one of her rules and immediately declares it the winner of the game.
Afterward, they all go inside and find many of the Smalton residents inside, with Cricket having reached out to most of the neighbors to ask for help and they all pitched in. Plus, Nancy loves the idea of a potluck Thanksgiving from now on to make sure that she is not nearly as stressed with the meal preps again.
Somehow and someway, it appears that Bill and Cricket covered up the damage quite well.
Hard Bargain
Based on the title alone, I was expecting the rare Black Friday episode of any series, but alas. Though, this episode does deal with shopping. Why? It seems that Cricket, in his excitement about cleaning up syrup from the breakfast dishes – with his tongue – guzzled the rest of it out of the syrup container and shattered it while doing so. So, the Green family must now head to the local thrift store where they can find a replacement relatively cheaply.
Nancy uses this as an excuse to head to the Smalton Thrift Barn, but Bill is wary. After all, these kind of places also have rare and valuable antiques, and Cricket is bouncing all over the place on a sugar high from all the syrup. Bill literally puts Cricket on a leash (as he is acting like a dog with the zoomies running around on all fours) and the family heads out.
As soon as they get to the store, Cricket cuts himself loose and is rambunctiously running through the store. Oddly, this seems very familiar to the first half of the episode with Bill trying to stop him, and Bill might end up doing more damage. This isn’t quite the case as he brainstorms ways to wrangle his son.
Meanwhile, Gramma Alice has been distracted by a knitting loom, and is ready to spend most of her day crafting something.
Tilly and Nick are roaming throughout the store and pointing out different dolls and toys that look like each other. This continues until they find a creepy doll that Tilly implies is out for revenge in some way. Nick laughs and balks at the idea until this doll starts appearing on each aisle of the store that they go down.
Nancy has found the bargain bin where everything is 99 cents, and finds the new syrup container there. However, she has also found a vintage Biker Buzz oil can that has a misprint that she knows can be sold online for a thousand dollars. And here it is for 99 cents! She goes up to purchase the items and tells the woman who owns the store, Dorothy, to keep the change, which in turn leads to Dorothy calling Nancy “a good person.” The conversation continues, and we learn that Dorothy has had the hiccups for days, and is also not making any money at the store and might have to close it down after being open for decades.
Knowing that she plans on selling the can to profit, Nancy grapples with herself (and some well placed mirrors) over whether or not she is truly a good person.
Elsewhere in the store, Cricket is finally coming down off of his sugar rush and is draining fast. As he wavers, he leans upon a vintage Splish machine and a vintage bottle falls out. As Bill is quick to point out, such an old soda would be nothing but crystalized, pure sugar. Now, Cricket has a second wind.
Bill must wrangle his son once again, and takes a blanket that Alice had just made on the loom and taunts Cricket like a bull. Perfect, since other visuals in this sequence help build that allusion. He gets Cricket to charge after him and away from the expensive items and pulls the blanket away at the last moment, which launches Cricket into a birdcage that Bill can lock up until Cricket comes down off his sugar rush again.
In the chaos of that, we find out that Nick is not being followed by the same creepy doll, but instead there are four of the same dolls scattered in different places around the store – each of which have fallen into Bill’s blanket.
As Bill safely catches them, Alice yanks the blanket away from her son and ends up destroying all of the dolls. Dorothy points out the break it and buy it store policy, and that the dolls are worth a thousand dollars in total. Nancy quickly chimes in that they’ll pay it, even though Dorothy was leaning towards not letting her pay, considering nobody would buy them anyway, especially since they’ve been in the store for so long.
Nancy won’t have any of it, and says that she will pay for them all and gives her her credit card. Nick, unimpressed by his daughter’s actions, says she shouldn’t have done that before Nancy explains that she can sell the oil can so they’ll break even.
But it’s not all bad for Nick (or maybe it is), Tilly has combined the broken pieces of the four dolls into one, scaring Nick one last time.
This episode of Big City Greens is now available on Disney Channel, the DisneyNOW website, and the Disney Channel YouTube page. You can also catch up with earlier episodes and seasons of the hit series, streaming now on Disney+.