Thanksgiving Day is upon the kids of Third Street School, and so begins the can drive. Most of Miss Grotke's class doesn't want to participate, since the Ashleys (who are in Miss Furley's class) always win. But Mikey, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, joins the can drive for the sake of helping the less fortunate. When everyone else in Miss Grotke's class participates, however, they, unlike Mikey, lose sight of what Thanksgiving is really about.
Tropes:
- Competition Freak: The main six (minus Mikey) for much of the episode.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: At the end of the episode, the Ashleys and the gang admit that they could have been better people if they had worked together in the first place, rather than competing. They say that Mikey was right that it was about the donations.
- Door-to-Door Episode: Mikey starts off by asking kind neighbors if they can donate cans. Most do. Spinelli ups the ante by threatening a neighbor via Angry Collar Grab, leading him to donate his food.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Out of everybody, only Mikey really understands that the entire point of the can drive is to feed the homeless. Everybody else is focused on winning to show up the Ashleys.
- Enemy Mine: After their Jerkass Realization, the Ashleys and all the other kids team up to gather more cans and save the drive.
- Foreshadowing: In the middle of the episode, TJ vows that he and his friends are going to crush the Ashleys so bad "the only thing left will be broken green beans and a smeared streak of creamed corn!" Guess what happens towards the end.
- Here We Go Again!: After Miss Grotke and Miss Furley's classes team up for the Can Drive, Principal Prickly announces that that there is going to be a toy drive. Given by everyone's expressions however, they aren't going to be as petty this time.
- Long Runner: While the exact founding date isn't revealed, Third Street Elementary School is revealed to have been around since at least the 1920s—in fact, the first graduates (which included a student named Eudora B. Finklestein) having been there during the 1927/1928-school year. This makes a lot of sense in hindsight, as later episodes reveal that Miss Finster and Principal Prickly were both students at the school when they were kids and have been working at the school since at least the 1967/1968-school year.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The entire fourth grade's reaction to realizing that their efforts of one class to be better than the other have caused all the food to spill out, meaning that the cans can no longer be sent to the homeless.
- Noble Savage: Miss Grotke dresses like a Native American for Thanksgiving.
- Only Sane Man: Mikey keeps reminding his friends that this competition is not about showing up the Ashleys or receiving a turkey dinner. It's about donating cans to the homeless.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Mikey is normally the pacifist and pretty optimistic about life. He screams at everyone to stop fighting and walks off in anger after his friends and the Ashleys end up destroying the cans in their skirmish; his huge reaction ends the battle.
- Series Continuity Error: According to this episode, the Ashleys are in Miss Furley's class, whereas most other episodes show that some (or all) of them are in Miss Grotke's class.
- In addition, Swinger Girl is shown to be opposed to the Ashleys, in spite of the fact that a later episode, "Swing on Thru to the Other Side", has a character mention that she's in Miss Furley's class.
- Thanksgiving Episode
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Poor Eudora B. Finklestein only needed to get a bean can out from her purse for most of the fourth graders to fight over it, eventually causing the pyramid of cans to collapse!
- What the Hell, Hero?: Mikey to his fellow fourth graders when their competitiveness causes all the cans to fall and spill out their food, rendering them useless for the homeless.Mikey: Look what you've all done! Now, nobody's going to have a good Thanksgiving!
