Face it, Thanksgiving holiday expectations rarely match up to Thanksgiving reality. Those warm, supportive conversations between family and friends you hope for often devolve into arguments about politics, and the fantasy of someone dancing out of the kitchen carrying a warm apple pie becomes your alkie aunt staggering around the dining room, hanging off of every eligible bachelor in the place.

Sure, jamming copious amounts of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry jelly down your gullet provides a brief respite from the drama, but what happens when dinner is done? Even if things smooth out, I know you don’t want to waste a good turkey and carb buzz on conversation with family members.

Millions of American households turn to football on Thanksgiving Day to avoid interacting with each other, but really, how boring is that? Personally I prefer a more effective drug to dull the senses, and, when I run out of Vicodin, there are always the Thanksgiving Day TV marathons and specials.

I’ve listed a few choice holiday pain killers below (you can snag a full listing over here) to help minimize emotional and dinnerware damage this year — so eat up, zone out  and tune in.

The Highlights

• The awesome HBO series Band of Brothers runs all day on Spike.
• Despite hating the new spelling of SyFy, I’ll be checking out the James Bond marathon they’ll be running.
• Borderline geeks should check out the Mythbusters marathon on Discovery and tune into Punkin’ Chunkin’ on Science at 7:00 PM.

The Lowlights

• Serious masochists will want to know there’s a Brady Bunch marathon on TV Land that they can watch while they’re waiting for the Real Housewives of Orange County marathon to start at 4:30 on Bravo.
• Folks that can play hours of “Guess how many fingers I have behind my back?” (or want to save on the cost of a lobotomy) can tune into the Deal or No Deal marathon on GSN.
• If you can pry your finger out of your nose long enough to tune in to VH1 at 11:00 PM, you’ll be able to lower your IQ a few more notches by watching the Larry The Cable Guy Christmas Special.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Thanksgiving Day TV Highlights & Lowlights