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Welcome to The Goldbergs: Episode XXII
“Sunday Matinee: It’s like wearing someone else’s wedding dress”
Spoiler Alert: This post contains scenes and content from the May 6, 2014 episode of The Goldbergs
As Adam’s quote above clearly explains, seeing the theatrical release of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi on opening night became the pinnacle of his existence. And, as all good younger brothers do when they’re in a life-altering quandary (speaking from personal experience here), Adam blackmailed his older sister into waiting with him in line to see this new epic space tale on the silver screen at the local theater.
Obvious success, right?
Think again.
A long line + a long time waiting (Forrest Gump-level soda’s consumed by the excited Adam) + sitting in between a 46 year-old man with a talking Yoda puppet and another grown man sitting on a life-size Tauntaun (no joke) + Erica’s friend walking by with two “cool” guys not into Star Wars = an epic betrayal and two cinnamon rolls/swirly muffins.
We’ll come back to this brother-sister equation a little later.
In the meantime, middle child Barry was busy embracing all things Hulk Hogan (as we all do). Unbeknownst to Barry though, the WWF wasn’t real. After several (yes, it took several) warnings that slamming your opponent over the head with a folded chair was not a legitimate aspect of real wrestling, Barry was training to do whatever it took to impress his crush. For him, this meant earning a varsity jacket. Hilariously, the only person standing in his way was his over-protective mother Beverly Goldberg with her countless stories of fellow teenage boys who all seemed to have tragic mishaps with absolutely everything she didn’t want her son to do.
The stories were totally believable, though. I mean, we’ve all seen a mom carrying the head of her son around the grocery store with her son’s vital organs perfectly functioning from his neck after a freak wrestling accident, right?
Okay, maybe Murray had a point about that one…
Growing up with siblings, there are those special moments that arrive with all the excitement and fanfare of a new Star Wars movie: the instance(s) when an older sister just might become a friend. It’s as rare as holding a real-life lightsaber and it should be treated with as much precision and ecstatic jubilation as waving Luke’s trusted sword made of blue light. This moment occurs during the older sister’s teenage years, which can be difficult because this is when she’s trying to leave behind childish indulgences. This includes dressing up like Princess Leia and battling her then much younger brother dressed as Darth Vader in their basement recorded on VHS (ie-Adam’s winning bargaining chip). As this sitcom does so perfectly, this plot line really hit home for me. My two older sisters and I used to build forts and act goofy all the time in our younger days before the necessity to be “cool” became the undisputed priority of all things important.
For me, it wasn’t Star Wars, but a compendium of events with my two older sisters: It was riding bikes to UDF for ice cream during the summer, playing football with one of my older sister’s friends one Saturday, learning clever and edgy jokes while sitting in an Asian airport while on a family vacation, being “kidnapped” by my sister and her friends for my birthday, trick-or-treating with my sister and her friends, visiting both of them at college and laughing at old-style SNL humor found in Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2.
The relationship between siblings is fascinating and special to say the least, partly because the seemingly unfiltered honesty. We can be blunt with comedic “burns” and it works somehow. We can blackmail our older sister with pictures during her first boy-girl party ($5 a pop!). A comfort level and understanding grows between brother and sister(s), even to the point when Erica finally realizes that after bailing on her younger brother to spend time with her cool friends while he went to the bathroom and therefore lost his place in line, she knew the real reason why Adam coaxed her to seeing Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi with him: the hope for sibling friendship.
Cognizant of her little brother’s sincere motivation, Erica did the unthinkable: she dressed up like Princess Leia (again), fully equipped with cinnamon rolls/swirly muffins on her ears and bribed an usher with a date at the local theater to sneak them into Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi!
“Star Wars: It gave us lightsabers, the force and Billy Dee Williams in a cape.”
And a fun day at the movies between brother and sister.
At school, Barry heeded the wrestling advice of his dad Murray. After suffering defeat on the mat to his mother in front of everybody (don’t mess with Thunder Bev!), he embraced his WWF character (also named Barry from Philadelphia) and dominated his opponent with the support of his family looking on with pride.
Victory!
As his crush looked on with smiling approval, Barry messed that moment up like only Barry could, which led to a halted chair-over-the-head of his opponent finale.
But don’t worry, Big Tasty will be surely be back for another round…
The Goldbergs: Return of the Family.
Tirer-Votre Famille
“What are you going to do when the Ruski invaders storm the suburbs of Philly?”
Spoiler Alert: This is a Recap of the April 1, 2014 episode of The Goldbergs
What does a pull-up, Red Dawn, a complete misunderstanding of the French language and a letter from President Reagan (but not really) all have in common?
Just another day in the Goldberg household.
Gym class in middle school can be a tortuous occasion (especially when wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with your name written on it in black marker). The embarrassment of not being able to do physical activities in front of all your classmates can be life-scarring, with the added bonus of the mispronunciation of your last name by your gym teacher. Still, the most fearful stage of the Presidential Fitness Test of the 1980s was that steel bar hanging high above the ground, shining with intimidation like a spotlight in the middle of the gymnasium for the muscle-intensive pull-up.
How does one lift their head over that bar when athletic ability is not your best friend or third cousin? For the terrified Adam Goldberg, it had something to do with a pool…
“Bienvenue à Philadelphie!“
Erica happily welcomed a bit of European culture to her family (plus croissants!) for a few days with a visit from her pen-pal from France. As Barry quickly gathered, Erica’s guest was a beautiful brunette fille. And, as Erica quickly gathered, this translated into a bevy of hilariously customized music lyrics and morning pleasantries as exclaimed with pride by both Barry and Philly’s own Big Tasty.
The older sister pranks always seem to have that extra qualité spéciale.
While Barry was unassumingly communicating crazy things about cats to the Goldbergs’ wildly confused French guest, Beverly was busy smothering her baby boy Adam with love and a promise to obtain an executive order from President Reagan himself to skip the Presidential Fitness Test.
Conversely, Murray chose to take a stern stance on Adam’s participation.
“Every kid in America has to take that test!”
“But what does that have to do with my Adam?”
As Adam was preparing to stick to admiring the action of Red Dawn on the silver screen, his father Murray sat his youngest son down for a talk about the importance of his youthful experience with learning to swim and trying his hardest no matter what. Inspired, Adam put on his “Mighty Thor” t-shirt and sweatbands to train for that dreaded “pull-up.”
Then, after a comical interpretation of what the local Comptroller was and inter-governmental revenge for a sister, Beverly Goldberg had achieved what nobody had thought possible…
A letter from President Reagan excusing Adam!
Well, it was a letter from a friend-of-a-friend of a colleague of a cousin or someone in Philadelphia that happened to have stationary with the presidential seal and print that excused Adam Goldberg from the Presidential Fitness Test. Ecstatic, Adam dropped from his practice bar and grabbed his letter in pure relief.
FYI-Beverly Goldberg’s calendar doesn’t have an April 1st. Nobody fools Beverly Goldberg (yes, it’s a borrowed/altered joke, but it absolutely fits with yesterday’s episode and date!).
However, as Adam stood outside the doors into the gym at school, he heard his father’s voice. Actually, it wasn’t strange at all because his dad happened to be standing right next to him. Murray couldn’t let his son avoid trying something tough, which led to the admission that he never learned to swim as he had originally told his son. It was his biggest regret. And it was in this rare heart-to-heart moment that Adam chose to exert every single ounce of energy in his body for the most awkward and ugly looking pull-up of all-time (with the help of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”).
But, he did it! He pulled himself over his fear and onto the front lines of battling those Ruskis!
And Erica, feeling bad for tricking her brother after he revealed his difficulty with talking to American girls and feeling better with taking a shot with someone from another country, again purposefully misread a thank you note for a sweet admission of attraction from her pen-pal. Fluent in French (he was in the war!), Pops applauded his granddaughter for her sincere act of love for her dejected brother.
Unexpectedly and in true Barry-fashion, this led himto park in a no-parking zone and run through the nearby airport to the gate to completely confuse Erica’s pen-pal and receive a customary kiss on each cheek as she departed. Oblivious to French customs, Barry was (once again) left happy in his own reality.
And car-less.
Plus, thanks to a solitary pull-up, Murray found himself in a literal pool of his own fears and a doggy paddle of a shot at swimming with his son ready to rescue him if he were to falter.
You know, that’s kind of like rescuing your fellow soldier in Red Dawn…
P.S. You remember those PSAs.
Parachuting into a Girl’s Heart
“Now we’re parachute pals!”
Spoiler Alert: This is a recap of The Goldbergs from January 21, 2014:
For a young man in junior high, there comes a moment that happens but maybe once in his lifetime that transcends the very meaning of his existence on Earth.
What is this magical instance?
It’s the one time when a guy tries to be funny around a girl he likes and, as if the Gates of Heaven begin to open its doors, the girl genuinely laughs. She laughs! Then, by some miracle, she continues this miraculous event with a casual request “to save her a dance.” Inside a guy’s head, it might as well be the Fourth of July combined with Christmas!
Now, the difficult part. Learning to dance…
Adam’s conquest of securing his first dance with a girl can be viewed (in its initial stage of moving to his own rhythm courtesy of a television show) as a traffic accident in the middle of a busy intersection. Fortunately for him, members of his family were traveling on roads around the scene of this crash. But only one would have the jumper cables to provide the spark for Adam’s own Saturday Night Fever.
Who knew the best help kit would involve something tailor made for a skydiver?
Erica was busy on the phone with her own emergency, which involved her friend’s new car and the color yellow.
Got it. Enough said. No further questions needed.
Time to reluctantly seek some sort of “wisdom” across the hall. And Barry doesn’t disappoint. The older brother is confident, yet clueless. Or so it seemed…
Adam is left with his only option: television and a snuggie, plus some rad moves!
Sneaking up behind her adorable son awkwardly following the dance show he was mimicking, Beverly Goldberg tries to persuade her sweet little Adam to let her teach him to dance. He, as expected, refuses with the power of a thousand suns. Until he, to his pure shock, witnesses and comes to grips with what a star dancer his Mom was with moves comparable to John Travolta himself.
After mastering the first seven chapters or so, the money dance had arrived in his living room like the Publishers Clearing House knocking at their door. But would Adam open the door and accept the check?
Despite multiple formal and informal protests, Adam was eventually persuaded by his Mom to…(deep breath) slow dance. Adam and his Mom knew that this was the real dance he wanted to learn to impress the girl of his dreams.
How did it go?
Let’s put it this way: It was embarrassing, uncomfortable and a little more embarrassing, but it was solving his problem.
Until…
Beverly then pulled her son in close in the most hilariously creepy yet adorable way possible with the rationale, “You smell like the dryer!” It was a successful dance lesson, but it was definitely over.
Despite a moment that was more awkward than A Flock of Seagulls haircut, the mission was mostly complete. Adam learned how to dance, while also maintaining the mental image of Barry dancing like the fourth, white member of Run DMC on a large piece of cardboard in the basement.
Then, when things couldn’t get any better, Beverly gave Adam parachute…the 1980s version of wait for it…pants! Yes, it happened! Combined with the perfect stone washed denim jacket, Adam was ready for takeoff. That was until his Mom popped out from the kitchen the day of the dance with the exact same outfit and the breaking news that she was a chaperone.
Elvis cannot leave the building.
In a panic, Adam implored his sister Erica to help distract their Mom with a photo album project (all he had to do was stop saying he ” loved her” for this favor). Hours would be needed. Success was on the horizon. But this is Beverly Goldberg we’re talking about and she pieced together a photo album for the ages in no time.
Literally.
Shell-shocked and impressed, Erica was powerless to stop her Mother from going to Adam’s dance. Something big was going to happen…
While all of this was occurring, Barry was pretending not to know anything about “the birds and the bees” to his Dad because he was upset Murry never sat him down for “the talk” or anything else like that (thank goodness Pops was there). But Murry was strong-armed by his wife to finally give him “the talk.” Enter hilarious baseball analogies concerning Mike Schmidt, Wade Boggs and the dual sport athlete Bo Jackson. Plus a Fraggle reference.
“Bo can be a girl’s name.”
“They (Fraggles) dance their cares away!”
At the school dance, Adam speaks to his Mom and forces her to go away out of embarrassment. Devastated, Beverly listens and slowly makes her way out of the gymnasium. While this is happening, Adam meets up with his crush, but she’s too humiliated to dance because her Mom (also a chaperone) was dancing in the middle of the dance floor.
What now!?
A quick realization of what his Mom had done for him with the dance lesson and awesome clothing, Adam ran out of the gym to his sulking Mom and begged her to return. And being the star Beverly was, she not only returned, but she brought everyone (including her son’s crush) to the dance floor with her Travolta swagger and “The Safety Dance” (fitting for Adam’s car wreck of a beginning to dancing).
Then, as the music for the slow dance came on, Beverly cleverly maneuvered her fellow chaperone to the sidelines for her son’s and her daughter’s magical moment.
The dance had arrived and it was perfect…except for his Mom mouthing, “I love you” with emotional hand motions from the large door window only 30 paces away.
After realizing he had never had any of “the talks” with Barry, Murry finally decided to teach him something now. His lesson turned out to be much more than just a party trick to open a bottle to Barry…and Murry.
There is no “official” manual for parenting, which brings to mind a cause for celebration when creativity randomly flourishes from the minds of a Mom or Dad in the form of parachute pants, Fraggles and Wade Boggs.
“I was living for a dream, loving for a moment, taking on the world, that was just my style…”
Jimmy's Daily Planet 