Thanks is a short-lived historical comedy about the Plymouth Colony. The main characters are shopkeeper James Winthrop, his wife Polly, mother Grammy, oldest child Abigail, middle child Elizabeth, and youngest child William.
Thanks provides examples of:
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Abigail is self-centered and whiny.
- Conspicuous Consumption: After Cotton makes money by selling tobacco to all the people of Plymouth, he replaces his regular pilgrim clothes with a gaudy red and gold outfit that clearly costs a lot more than the drab clothes everyone else wears.
- Depraved Dentist: Since the show takes place in 1621, Elizabeth's trip to the dentist is guaranteed to be painful.
- Dirty Old Woman: Grammy gets excited when she talks about women being raped by pirates. Later, she refuses to marry Burnaby without first finding out how good he is in bed.
- The Ditz: Cotton is the dumbest person in Plymouth and is called the village idiot by Grammy.
- Epic Fail: When Cotton tries to patch a hole in the Wintrops' roof, he burns the house down while heating the tar.
- Extreme Omnivore: When Polly criticizes her own cooking and says no one likes her stew, her youngest child William says he likes it. She responds with, "Thank you William, but you eat mud." He then excitedly asks if they're having mud.
- "Getting My Own Room" Plot: One episode revolves around Grammy getting sick of never having any privacy and James building her a room.
- Gossipy Hens: When Grammy gets her own room, she and the other women in the sewing circle use their privacy to gossip about the neighbors.
- Hunter Trapper: Marcel and Phillipe are trappers who sell their pelts in Plymouth.
- Ladykiller in Love: Burnaby is a world-traveling merchant who's been with countless women. When he meets Grammy, he wants to settle down with her.
- Lethal Chef: Grammy sees Polly as this, but Polly's tendency to burn food is justified by the difficulty of cooking over an open fire.
- Mail-Order Bride: Cotton orders a mail order bride from England to help on his farm, but she turns out to be too skinny to be a good farm wife. The marriage is eventually annulled and she marries John the blacksmith.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Elizabeth apparently thinks this. When she writes to an old friend in England and describes the first Thanksgiving, she inserts a part where James talks about how she's his favorite child.
- Nemean Skinning: Marcel the trapper has a crude coonskin hat.
- Never Learned to Read: Grammy is the only member of her family who can't read or write. In the final episode, Elizabeth teaches her how to write her name.
- New England Puritan: This applies to everyone in Plymouth, especially Reverend Goodacre. When James and Polly see him for marriage counseling, he suggests an exorcism.
- Parent with New Paramour: When Grammy shows a romantic interest in a traveling merchant, James is not happy.
- Parental Abandonment: Cotton's mother dumped him off at a parish when he was thirteen.
- Rich Bitch: Polly's cousin and her husband are wealthy businesspeople from Jamestown who look down on Polly and everyone else in Plymouth.
- Sexless Marriage: James and Polly love each other, but they have a sexless marriage because they can never have their tiny house all to themselves.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: When relatives from Jamestown introduce Plymouth to tobacco, it's portrayed as a disgusting habit. When their supply runs out, all the smokers suffer from withdrawal and storm the Winthrop house in anger.
- Stock Punishment: The Winthrops are put in stocks as punishment for going to a party.
- Talking in Your Sleep: Grammy talks in her sleep, which lets her family know how much they annoy her.
- Tastes Like Chicken: When Cotton eats a cricket, he says, "It's kind of like chicken...with six small, spindly legs that I can feel moving inside of me."
- Thanksgiving Episode: The final episode takes place during the first Thanksgiving.
- When I Was Your Age...: When Cotton asks Grammy about how to have a happy marriage, she insults his generation for always looking for happiness. She says, "When I was your age, happiness hadn't even been invented yet. On a good day, you had despair, and you were glad to have it."
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: The Tungsleys can't think of a name for their 12th child, so they open the Bible, point at a random page, and end up naming their child "Oxen".
