Shirley invites everyone over to her house for Thanksgiving dinner, but Jeff can’t go because he’s spending the holiday with his estranged father. Britta does a victory dance because it was her Halloween speech that brought them together. She invites herself along for emotional support because according to daytime television, parent-child reunions can get intense. Oh, and there’s also a half-brother.

Jeff and his father are like Frick and Frack, French and Saunders, Beavis and Butthead….His half brother, Willie Junior, however, is a disaster. “He’s the Schwarzenegger, I’m the DeVito, I get it!”

Everyone else arrives at Shirley’s house and meets her inappropriate family who fill the holiday with tension and backbiting. Because it’s awkward, the group hides out in the garage like trapped rats. Abed suggests a prison break, but they need a plan that won’t hurt Shirley’s feelings or destroy her property. Chevy Chase suggests faking a stroke and talking in a gibberish foreign language. Annie tries to break out on her own by pretending to have “girl problems,” but instead received an impromptu gynecological exam from Shirley’s sister-in-law.

The group decides that teamwork is their best hope and tag teams the rest of Turkey Day, popping into the house one by one and then retreating to the safety of the garage. Finally, Chevy Chase goes in and tries to fake a broken hip. But instead of a trip to the hospital, he finds the perfect audience for his crappy comedy routine.

Abed, Annie, and Troy were about to make a desperate move and dig into a rotten batch of seven-layer dip and suffer the consequences, but Shirley let them know that they were free to go since she only invited them as a buffer. Because they’re family, too, they stay and offer to bust Shirley out of there, with Abed helpfully drawing a map of Shirley’s house on his stomach. Shirley explains that those people may be awful, but they’re her family, so she goes back in for more punishment.

Winger’s father tries to take credit for Jeff’s success and dresses up abandoning him as a good thing. When Willie Junior asks his new big brother Jeff to teach him everything he knows, Jeff explains that their father was terrible. Jeff tells his father that he should take credit for how he turned out—a broken mess. To get out of the conversation, Jeff’s father faked a heart attack.

Something about Chevy Chase doing white face over black face, and Jeff makes everyone Thanksgiving dinner back at school. Which I guess is like their home.