Admittedly, Easter doesn't have the same television bonafides as other holidays, like Thanksgiving (a favorite on "Friends"), Halloween (a "Roseanne" staple) or Christmas (very well-represented across countless shows, from "The Office" to "The OC.)
However, the springtime celebration has served as fodder for entertaining small-screen storylines over the years, especially on TV's best sitcoms. Several top-notch comedy series have taken on Easter festivities, finding hilarity and relatability in traditions and customs like egg hunts, bunny costumes, spirited parades, church ceremonies and family gatherings.
In the spirit of the holiday, we've hunted down seven egg-cellent Easter TV episodes to watch in the days leading up to Sunday's celebration. From the "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" holiday heist to the "Bob's Burgers" rotten egg hunt, here are Easter-themed sitcom eps to add to your festive watch list.
'Parks and Recreation'
If we know anything about Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), the plucky deputy director of the Department of Parks and Recreation for Pawnee, Indiana, it's that she takes holidays very seriously.
(She did come up with a whopping 24 holidays throughout the NBC sitcom, including Galentine's Day, which has since transcended the TV comedy.)
So, it's no surprise that she would go all in on an annual Easter egg hunt to create a sense of community among her beloved Pawnee citizens. Leslie does just that in "Canvassing," the show's second episode of the first season, which cold-opens with Knope festively sporting fuzzy bunny ears while she tries — and fails — to help children hunt for eggs at the local park.
The only problem? Her colleague Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) forgot to hide any eggs, a fact that Tom secretly and hilariously discloses to the documentary crew. The rest of the episode doesn't deal as directly with the Easter holiday, but that cold open alone makes it worth a watch.
Watch "Parks and Recreation" on Peacock now
'The Righteous Gemstones'
Given that the hilariously dark HBO comedy follows a family of Southern televangelists and megachurch pastors, it's only natural that "The Righteous Gemstones" has a great Easter episode.
Entitled "And Yet One of You is a Devil", episode 7 of the show's first season centers on the Easter Sunday telecast, with patriarch Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) informing his adult children Jesse (Danny McBride), Kelvin (Adam DeVine) and Judy (Edi Patterson) that they'll all need to be front-and-center for the big service.
However, things soon go haywire when Baby Billy (Walton Goggins) convinces Judy to sing at his mall church service instead of the telecast, driving a wedge between daughter and father. And adding to the family drama is a full-blown hostage situation, with Jesse and his son Gideon (Skyler Gisondo) ending the Easter celebrations locked inside the church vault.
Watch "The Righteous Gemstones" on Max now
'Brooklyn Nine-Nine'
This one is an Easter episode, yes, but it tacks on Halloween and Valentine's Day, too. "Valloweaster," the 11th episode of the seventh season of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", centers on the annual Halloween heist of the 99th precinct of the NYPD — only, it ends up being so difficult to complete that the heist gets delayed for six months, until Easter Day.
With the squad paired off — Jake (Andy Samberg) with Holt (Andre Braugher), Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz) with Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller), Amy (Melissa Fumero) with Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), and so on — the teams compete for "The Infinitude Gobbler" and things quickly get ruthless. (As in, "Amy hiring an actress to play Jake’s therapist so she can eavesdrop on him" levels of ruthlessness.)
As always, the heists given everyone in the squad license to truly act absurd — by the end of the episode, we've got Easter bunnies rappelling off the roof!
Watch "The Brooklyn Nine-Nine" on Peacock now
'Black-Ish'
Easter is often a day that brings the extended family together at the dining table — that's certainly the case in the season 4 "Black-Ish" episode "North Star".
Dre (Anthony Anderson) and Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) welcome their respective families to celebrate the holiday together, leading to some funny clashes — and, later, some surprisingly moving moments — about holiday traditions, family recipes and where cultural norms come from.
Elsewhere, the younger Johnsons, Jack (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin), try to act like they're not interested in the Easter egg hunt that Junior (Marcus Scribner) is putting on because they want to impress their cool cousins.
Watch "Black-Ish" on Hulu now
'Superstore'
Along with being a big religious and cultural holiday, Easter weekend is also a retail event, so it makes sense that the chain store-set sitcom "Superstore" had several Easter-themed episodes throughout its six-season run.
The season 4 episode, simply titled "Easter," sees Amy (America Ferrera) and Jonah (Ben Feldman) spy on Cloud 9 employees through the security system because she's worried that people are making fun of her in the break room, all while Dina (Lauren Ash) tries to track down an unsanctioned Easter Bunny who's been roaming around the store.
Adding to the Easter-ness of it all is Glenn prepping for his church's Passion play — and having a bit of a freak-out when he realizes that he's playing the ultimate bad guy Judas — and the employees having to deal with customers' holiday-related hijinks (including a small girl who eats a very large chocolate display bunny).
Watch "Superstore" on Peacock now
'Bob Burgers'
The first Easter-themed "Bob's Burgers" episode is entitled "Eggs for Days," which has less to do with the sheer bounty of eggs hidden during the Belchers' annual Easter egg hunt and more with one œuf that goes way, way past its expiration date.
In the season-7 ep, the ever-competitive Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) and Linda (John Roberts) do a little too good of a job putting on an egg hunt for their kids Tina (Dan Mintz), Gene (Eugene Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal). After the couple gets accidentally drunk on park-lot liquor (don't ask), they forget where they hid them all, leaving the entire family desperate to find a lone rotten egg that has gone missing.
As is always the case, plenty of Belcher family ridiculousness ensues, including a family of raccoons and a rendition of “Rock Me Amadeus" by Linda (accompanied by classic Tina dancing, naturally).
Watch "Bob's Burgers" on Hulu now
'Modern Family'
Ty Burrell's Phil Dunphy is a reliable source of hilarity on "Modern Family" — put him in an Easter bunny costume, and even more so.
In the season 11 finale "I'm Going to Miss This," Phil's kids Haley (Sarah Hyland), Luke and Alex (Ariel Winter) decide to throw a party at the Dunphy house when dad and mom Claire (Julie Bowen) are away on a trip. This being the Dunphys, naturally, the party goes awry, and a guest's pet snake lays eggs in the fireplace.
One python egg is left behind during the kids' morning-after clean-up, leaving Phil to mistake it for a giant Easter egg and place it among the other painted eggs that neighborhood kids are hunting during the Dunphys' Easter celebration. When Phil is told of the egg-based blunder, he suits up as the “Easter Bandit” to find the egg before someone gets hurt.
Watch "Modern Family" on Hulu now
