When she seduces Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd), Wednesday becomes suspicious of her intentions.

What they don’t realize is that she’s a serial killer who marries rich bachelors and murders them to collect their inheritances. When siblings Wednesday - the role that launched Christina Ricci’s incredible career as glamour goth - and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) suffer from a bout of jealousy and try to kill the Pubert several times, Gomez and Morticia hire nanny Debbie Jelinsky (Joan Cusack) to keep the kids in line. In the 1993 macabre masterpiece, a sequel to the first live-action Addams Family movie, Gomez Addams (Raul Julia) and his wife, Morticia (Anjelica Huston), celebrate the arrival of baby boy Pubert. Cue the harpsichord and finger snaps because we’re talking about Addams Family Values. Also at the top of the pile? A Thanksgiving movie that’s not actually a Thanksgiving movie at all. See, for example, Ang Lee’s moody masterpiece The Ice Storm (one of the best dinner scenes of all time) and John Hughes’s bittersweet comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. When done right, a film or TV Thanksgiving scene approaches the tradition more analytically or skeptically, either from a historical standpoint or by delving into the awkward familial dynamics that are often magnified by the holidays. Thanksgiving is a controversial American holiday that, when put on film, can easily misfire as we see in so-called classics like The Mouse of the Mayflower, the 1968 animated TV special that relied heavily (if not entirely) on racist stereotypes and a prettied-up version of the 1621 harvest that brought together the indigenous Wampanoag and British settlers. Welcome to The Reheat, a space for Eater writers to explore landmark (and lukewarm) culinary moments of the recent and not-so-recent past.

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