- Britta Perry: You came back!
- Jeff Winger: [to William] I'm sorry. You should take some credit for who I've become.
- William Winger: Okay.
- Jeff Winger: So let me tell you how I turned out, just so you're crystal clear on your impact. I am not well-adjusted. More often than not, I am barely keeping it together. I'm constantly texting, and there's no one at the other end. I'm just a grown man who can't even look his own friends in the eye for too long because I'm afraid that they'll see that I am broken. So you get credit for that.
- William Winger: Oh, come on, now...
- Jeff Winger: One time, when I was in seventh grade, I told everyone at school that I had appendicitis. I wanted someone to worry about me. But when Beth Brannon asked to see the scar, I didn't wanna get found out, so I took Mom's scissors, and I made one. It hurt like hell, but it was worth it, because I got 17 cards. And I still keep them in a box underneath my bed 22 years later, because it proves that someone, at some point, cared about me. You wanna see the scar? So you get credit for that too. This is me.
- William Winger: Look, Jeff, I, uh...
- [eyes shift back and forth, then widen, groans loudly, drops champagne flutes, clutching his chest and bends over]
- Willy: Daddy!
- Jeff Winger: Are you *faking* a heart attack?
- William Winger: [sheepishly] Kind of a Hail Mary.
- Jeff Winger: Happy Thanksgiving, dad.
- Jeff Winger: I heard your Thanksgiving wasn't much better than mine. So I thought we could take some time and be grateful for our real family. The one we chose.
- Annie Edison: Ugh. I'll be with my family, fielding the same old questions. "How's community college?" "What's your major?" "Are those real?"
- Britta Perry: [gasps]
- Annie Edison: My aunt's boyfriend.
- Troy Barnes: [sarcastically] "Oh, my family's a normal religion, I have to talk to them for five minutes before I get a casserole that's all marshmallow." That's you.
- Shirley Bennett: I'm having Andre's whole family over. Though he'll be stuck working at the stereo store for Black Friday.
- Pierce Hawthorne: Oh, sure, you get to say that, but we're stuck calling it "Jew Friday."
- [pats Troy's shoulder]
- Annie Edison: Shirley! We were just...
- Abed Nadir: About to...
- Troy Barnes: Eat garbage dip.
- [to Annie and Abed]
- Troy Barnes: Why did I have to go third?
- William Winger: [after fighting with Willy] I'm sorry you guys had to see that, but maybe you could shrink his head, since you're here, for some reason.
- Britta Perry: Yes. I can do this.
- [Runs after Willy]
- Britta Perry: Show me on the dinner roll where you're hurt!
- Willy: Dad hates me.
- Jeff Winger: What do you care what that guy thinks? He's a dick.
- Willy: See? That's what I need to learn! How to be all dead inside with muscles on top, not all emotional and flabby.
- Jeff Winger: Yeah, but you are emotional, and if you pretend you're not, you're only letting him off the hook for being a terrible father, which he is and always has been. I mean, he meant the world to you, and you meant nothing to him, and if you run away now, he'll never know. He should know. Britta's the worst.
- Jeff Winger: Look, you're probably feeling a very strong urge to sleep with me right now, and that is normal.
- Britta Perry: [scoffs] Sha.
- Jeff Winger: Britta, thank you. You were right. You're not going to get all "jock jams" on me, are you?
- Britta Perry: [chuckle-snort] No, of course not. I left my boom box at school.
- Jeff Winger: Hello, William.
- William Winger, Britta Perry: So, uh... how about we make a couple of ground rules?
- Jeff Winger: Actually, that sounds good. Okay. No hugs.
- William Winger: Wouldn't want one. No apologies.
- Jeff Winger: Wouldn't accept one. No calling you "dad."
- William Winger: No expectations.
- Jeff Winger: No B.S.
- William Winger: Drink?
- Jeff Winger: Scotch.
- William Winger: 18?
- Jeff Winger: Neat.
- Britta Perry: I just want to acknowledge that there are a lot of emotions flowing right now, and you two are probably feeling a strong impulse to sleep with each other,
- [Jeff does a double take]
- Britta Perry: and hey, that's normal.
- William Winger: [look of confusion and disgust] Wow. I'll get the drinks.
- Jeff Winger: I'm having Thanksgiving with my estranged father. Move on.
- Pierce Hawthorne: Makes sense. Jeff's at a point in his life where he needs a strong father figure to come out to.
- Pierce Hawthorne: I could pretend to have a stroke. Do a gibberish foreign language. What if I did a gibberish foreign language like Star Wars?
- [to Abed]
- Pierce Hawthorne: You'd like that, I bet. Dick.
- William Winger: [Willy throws a bread roll at his father] Damn it, Willy!
- Willy: I'm expressing.
- William Winger: Knock it off. Why can't you just swallow it like any normal person?
- Willy: Oh, heh, heh. Oh! Right, like your new son. Like mister-- Mr. I've-Got-My-Shirt--
- [to Jeff]
- Willy: I don't know personal details about you.
- Jeff Winger: Well, my name's Jeff.
- Willy: Don't help me, Mr. Helper-Guy.
- Shirley Bennett: Thank you for doing this, but I'm not going. Those people up there, they may be rude, pushy. They may have come to wrongheaded conclusions about Batman and Robin.
- Troy Barnes: Oh. Thank you.
- Shirley Bennett: But they're my family. Family means putting up with each other even when it's hard.
- Abed Nadir: [Voice-over] We never got to do a Shawshank homage. Not the way I wanted to. Maybe the hardest prisons to break out of are the ones without locks. Wait, that doesn't make any sense. After that day, Jeff seemed like a man unburdened. He told me about seeing his father, about how leaving there felt like breaking free of an emotional prison he'd been in. Something about shackles on his heart. To be honest, I stopped listening. I was thinking about Christmas. I hope we do Die Hard.
- Abed Nadir: [VO] One thing was clear to me and the crew. Bennett lockup was not where we belonged. We belonged in the sun, with the wind in our hair. Maybe at a Bennigan's, enjoying a Turkey O'Toole.
- [Out loud]
- Abed Nadir: We should tunnel out.
- Annie Edison: Abed, Shirley is our friend, and we're guests in her home. We need a plan that won't hurt her feelings or damage her property.
- Abed Nadir: Definitely don't look behind that poster, then.
- Abed Nadir: Funny thing about prison. Sometimes the person you thought was your warden turns out to be a prisoner, which doesn't line up with the Shawshank thing. But maybe we've always been doing more of a Prison Break. The show.
- Britta Perry: Psychology tells us there are no accidents.
- Jeff Winger: Oh, really? What about car accidents? Tara Reid, or the Hindenburg?
- Shirley Bennett: ...And then Pierce did whiteface over blackface. No one was amused.
- Pierce Hawthorne: It's meta. Abed gets it.
- Abed Nadir: [Voice-over] It did feel like a prison, and that meant only one thing made sense conceptually. We had to break out. And someone with the gravitas of Morgan Freeman had to narrate it.
- [Out loud]
- Abed Nadir: We need to do a prison break.
- Britta Perry: I have an idea. Why don't we use these dinner rolls to do some role play? I see what I did there.
- Willy: Okay. This roll, this is me. He's crying.
- Troy Barnes: This is the Jonestown of dinners. Feel like I'm in jail. You know what happens to guys like me in jail. They get really into push-ups. I am fine with my upper body the way it is.
- Dean Pelton: Anyhoo, I just thought I'd mosey on over here, invite you all to Greendale's annual Thanks-living potluck dinner, where we remember all we have to be thankful for. There may be a statistical link to enrollment at Greendale and holiday suicide.
- Shirley Bennett: Oh.
- Dean Pelton: Just a shoelace... and belt-free night full of fun. You should all drop by.
- Jeff Winger: The only thing that's going to get messy and emotional is Troy, when he realizes there are yams underneath those marshmallows.
- Troy Barnes: I knew it was too good to be true.
- Jeff Winger: Look, I appreciate your concern, but really, the most helpful thing you can do is stay out of my business.
- Britta Perry: So, Troy, how was your first real Thanksgiving?
- Troy Barnes: No offense to Shirley, but I don't see what the fuss is about. Thanksgiving's the wors...
- William Winger: Oh, I see you've met Willy Junior.
- Willy: You said he wasn't going to replace me. He's the Schwarzenegger. I'm the DeVito. I get it.
- [chuckles maniacally]
- Willy: Hi.
- Jeff Winger: Hi. You must be my half-brother.
- [they shake hands]
- Willy: Oh, your hands are so much bigger than mine.
- Jeff Winger: I thought I told you to stop reading my email.
- Dean Pelton: Yeah, well, I thought I told you to stop keeping secrets. How am I supposed to keep track of what you tell me in confidence and what I hear through your walls with a glass to my ear?
- Troy Barnes: What is going on? Why is Thanksgiving so terrible?
- Annie Edison: I know. The tension, the backbiting, the judgmental comments. This makes Thanksgiving with my family look... eh, still pretty bad.
- Abed Nadir: [Voiceover] This tag team turkey day became our routine. We endured the indignities as best we could. Cousins fighting, complaints about the food, listening to a nephew do Borat for a full hour. We figured out ways to steal away from time to time, saying we had to pee, had to get ice, had to do a Jewish thing in the other room.