A Personal Retrospective of The Goldbergs (2013)

 Hey everyone! How are you all doing today? I'm fine. It's a rainy day here, so I'm indoors for the most part. Which is fine because it gives me a chance to write this blog post. Today's topic is going to be the 2013 sitcom, The Goldbergs, which is about to go into it's tenth season and celebrate it's ninth anniversary. So let's get into it

I'd like to preface this overview/retrospective by saying I haven't watched anything from season 9. Though I do keep up with what has been going on through episode synopses on Wikipedia, so most of what I talk about here will be from seasons 1 through 7 and possibly a little bit from season 8, as that's where I stopped watching the show. This was because I felt the show had outstayed it's welcome being that 8 seasons, going into a ninth, was more than enough. There's only so many times we can watch Beverly smother her kids, even though all the kids are now adults at this point (Adam graduates high school at the end of season 9). Especially when the writers completely backtracked on her growth as a character after season 7 and even then it was wonky as to which writer remembered the Bevolution (Beverly's path to growth as a person and as a mother), which was started in season 5 and carried all the way through to season 7. I would like to say that the show isn't bad by any means, it's just started to spin it's wheels in season 7 and only picked up some momentum with the death of George Segal at the end of season 8, resulting in the death of Pops between seasons 8 and 9. But let's go back to 2013 and discuss what exactly The Goldbergs is and why I love the show even though I don't watch it anymore.

The Goldbergs is a fictional autobiographical sitcom based on the childhood of series creator, Adam F. Goldberg, and is set in the 1980s. I say fictional because he replaced his actual brother, Eric, with a fictional sister named Erica and characters such as Dana Caldwell and Lainey Lewis don't exist in real life. There are probably also some other changes that I'm not aware of too. The pilot episode, "The Circle of Driving", aired on September 24th, 2013, though I wouldn't start watching it until episode 3, "Mini Murray" that I started watching it. I don't even remember how I discovered the show. I think my mom told me about it because she saw it in the TV listings or something like that. Regardless I was hooked. 

Funnily enough it wasn't the '80s pop culture references that drew me in. In fact, the '80s setting felt like the background to me. What drew me in and kept me watching week after week, season after season, was the characters. They were so authentic because Adam checked every script to make sure Beverly would act how the real Beverly would act, or how Barry or Murray or himself or Pops would act. There was a bit more leeway with Erica since Adam doesn't have a sister in real life, and she only has a passing resemblance to Adam's brother, Eric. 

Not only that but as ridiculous as Barry, Erica, and Beverly are, there's not a single character I hate on this show even though Barry was very obnoxious during the first two or three seasons. Basically until he started dating Lainey, which I won't even get into right now because of the whole Schooled fiasco, which is going to be a post all of it's own in the future, I promise. My point is that as exaggerated as these characters were, they felt like real people, because they're based on real people, either directly or indirectly. 

I also liked how Adam refused to lock the series down into a particular year. The idea is that the show is set in the '80s, and by leaving it ambiguous as to what year the first season was set in, it avoids the need to end the series at ten seasons if the show began in 1980, and it also avoids the complications that That '70s Show ran into when it began being set in 1976, four years away from the end of the decade, and then ran for 8 seasons, necessitating the show be set in 1978 from midway through season 3 until eight episodes into season 6, and then 1979 until the end of season 8. But, again, that's going to be a post for another time. What this means for The Goldbergs is that they could talk about any movie, TV show, book, music, or comic book that came out in the '80s and not have it break the timeline if a thing came out in 1986 but the episode was set in 1982. 

To this day, season 5 is still my favourite season of the entire show. Maybe because it was my return to the series after having missed most of season 4 due to having major abdominal surgery and being stuck in bed, either at the hospital, or at home, for the majority of the season. But I think it has to do with the fact that this whole season was firing on all cylinders. The writing was consistently good, the characters finally began changing and growing as people, after having stagnated slightly in what I saw of season 4. Plus it was the first season to feature my favourite couple on the entire show, Adam and Jackie. Partly because Rowan Blanchard did an amazing job in the role, but partly because the two got along so well due to both Adam and Jackie being total geeks together, at a time when being a geek was heavily frowned upon.

Even though he's the youngest of the Goldberg children, I identified with Adam the most. He's a geek, I'm a geek, and we share the same interests for the most part. Though I heavily disagree with him about Star Trek (he doesn't like it). Sean Giambrone does such a wonderful job of portraying Adam as a kid and as a teenager, it's spectacular.  

I'm gonna come back and do reviews of the first seven seasons of the show in the future, but I really just wanted to talk about how awesome I think this show is, even if I don't watch it anymore and even though I think the tenth season should be it's last. Especially with George Segal (Pops) having passed away last year, and Jeff Garlin (Murray) having been fired for misconduct on the set midway through the season. Like, I'm sure they're going to write Murray out of the show between season 9 and season 10 simply because Jeff Garlin is fired and they only have so much additional footage to use with him in it.

Anyways, that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So until then have a wonderful rest of your day and I will talk to you later. Take care my friends.