The Goldbergs

2013 - 2023

Set in a Philadelphia suburb (not the one I live in⁠—⁠it's next to that one) in the 1980s, this series follows the everyday lives of the Goldberg family through real life stories from creator Adam F. Goldberg's childhood, narration by Patton Oswalt, and clips of real Goldberg family home movies.

Note: This show is not related in any way to Gertrude Berg's show of the same name that was on the DuMont network in 1954. It's just a coincidence.

Stars: Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile, Hayley Orrantia, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Jeff Garlin, George Segal, Sam Lerner, Patton Oswalt, Stephen Tobolowsky, Judd Hirsch, Richard Kind
Created by: Adam F. Goldberg
Tags: family, self-parody
See: "The Goldbergs is basically Moone Boy in America. Prove me wrong." on the Rerun Rewind Blog.

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Episode Tropes

Season 1

Pyramid Scheme: Episode 9, "Stop Arguing & Start Thanking" (2013). Murray's brother, Marvin comes over for Thanksgiving, and he asks Murray to invest in a cosmetics business, which turns out to be a pyramid scheme, and it makes Murray so angry that their fight almost ruins the holiday.
Housewife Rebellion: Episode 10, "Shopping" (2013). When Beverly takes too much advantage of Erica's employee discount at her new job, Erica frames her for shoplifting, and the ensuing argument results in Erica basically telling her mother that her life is meaningless. To prove how important she is to the family, Beverly goes on strike and stops cooking, cleaning, and shopping.
Election: Episode 13, "The Other Smother" (2014). Beverly's nemesis, Betsey Rubenstone, brags about her son Michael's extracurricular activities, so Beverly tries to compete with her by making Barry run for class treasurer. She thinks he's a shoe-in because he'll be running unopposed, but then Barry tells her Michael Rubenstone is running against him, and Beverley amps up her campaign.
Dance Lessons: Episode 14, "You Opened the Door" (2014). Adam's crush, Dana, asks him if he's going to the dance and tells him to save a dance for her, but he doesn't know how to dance, so he asks Beverley to teach him.
Language Lessons: Episode 17, "Lame Gretzky" (2014). When Beverly finds out that Erica's test SAT scores are high enough for her to get into Stanford, she tries to sabotage her so she won't move across the country by giving her flashcards for fake vocabulary words, but it doesn't take long for Erica to catch on.
Intervention: Episode 21, "The Age of Darkness" (2014). Barry gets addicted to playing Punch-Out!! at the arcade, and when he's not playing it, he's scrounging for change so he can keep playing. It becomes such a problem that Adam and Pops hold an intervention for him. They try to invite his friends, but they can only get one guy named Roger.

Season 2

Will You Marry Me Again?: Episode 3, "The Facts of Bleeping Life" (2014). While preparing to watch the royal wedding, Beverly begins to regret her and and Murray's wedding because Murray sat down through the ceremony, so she decides she wants to have a vow renewal. She insists that she and Murray write their own vows, and when she realizes Murray plagiarized his from the theme song for The Facts of Life, it threatens to ruin her special day.
Let's Pretend We're Married: Episode 15, "Happy Mom, Happy Life" (2015). Adam and Dana are assigned to pretend to be a married couple and take care of a Cabbage Patch doll for school, and Beverly keeps mixing in.
America's Funniest Home Videos: Episode 20, "Just Say No" (2015). Barry is obsessed with American Gladiators, and he asks Adam to help him make an audition video, which is mostly just Adam hitting him with things. His clumsy antics are so funny that when Adam sends the tape to America's Funniest Home Videos, Bob Saget actually shows it on the air.

Season 3

Risky Business: Episode 11, "A Kick-ass Risky Business Party" (2015). Barry tries to imitate Tom Cruise in Risky Business, but he falls on the freshly-waxed floor, then Beverly forbids him from "Tom Cruising."
Ticket Scalping: Episode 7, "Lucky" (2015). Lainey and Erica try to buy concert tickets from a scalper at the Spectrum, and he turns out to be an undercover cop who arrests them.
The Magician: Episode 19, "Magic is Real" (2016). Adam is enthralled by David Copperfield and decides to learn magic to impress girls, but the only way he can get his mom to buy him expensive tricks is to let her be part of the act, and in true Beverly fashion, she ruins it.
Learn While You Sleep: Episode 19, "Magic is Real" (2016). Barry decides to take the SATs, and to help him study, he records a tape of himself reading vocabulary words and plays it while he sleeps. In the morning, Erica asks him what "gregarious" means, and he says, "To be like Greg."
Dungeons & Dragons: Episode 20, "Dungeons & Dragons, Anyone?" (2016). Adam and his friends are upset about always being picked last in gym class, so Adam talks Coach Mellor into letting him pick his team for once, but he pisses his friends off by only picking the best athletes in the class, so the other nerds challenge Adam's team to a game of Dungeons & Dragons, forcing Adam to try to teach a bunch of jocks how to play the game.
What a Dummy: Episode 22, "Smother's Day" (2016). In an attempt to convince Murray to let him go to space camp, Adam decides to find out what Murray's dream was, so he visits Pop-pop, who shows him Murray's ventriloquist dummy, Maury, which looks just like Murray.
Cooking Catastrophe: Episode 22, "Smother's Day" (2016). For Mother's Day, Barry and Erica try to cook Beverly breakfast, but they end up setting the kitchen on fire, spattering food everywhere, and breaking the dishwasher.
Who Brings a Dog to a Leg Funeral?: Episode 23, "Big Orange" (2016). Beverly and Lainey are sick of Barry's favorite shirt, "Big Orange," so they work together to destroy it in a laundry mishap. When Barry finds out, he's devastated, so to cheer him up, the family holds a funeral for Big Orange, for which Pops says missed a real funeral.
Time Capsule: Episode 24, "Have a Summer" (2016). Evelyn Silver (aka mini Beverly), is organizing a time capsule at school, and Erica contributes a New Kids on the Block plate, which she accidentally wraps in Adam's baby blanket, so Beverly insists they dig up the time capsule, but Geoff contributed a tape confessing his love for Erica, so he tries to get to it first and accidentally breaks open a water line, ruining everything in the capsule except his tape.

Season 4

Career Opportunities: Episode 2, "I Heart Video Dating" (2016). Barry takes a career aptitude test that, to his dismay, tells him he should be a bookkeeper. Instead, he decides to become a gym teacher.
Suddenly Psychic: Episode 2, "I Heart Video Dating" (2016). When Barry announces that he's going to be a gym teacher, Murray panics and buys him a "crystal ball" (plasma ball) to distract him. Barry uses it to pose as an "oracle" and tell people's fortunes, but the futures he sees are actually just the plots of movies he forgot he watched.
Write What You Know: Episode 5, "Stefan" (2016). Adam becomes obsessed with Stephen King and decides to write a horror story, and since the scariest thing he can think of is his mom, he writes about a horrible monster that's just like her. Clueless Beverly finds his story and thinks it's so good that she shares it with her book club, who notice the similarities right away. When Beverly realizes she's the monster, she forces Adam to re-write it, Misery style.
Unwanted Surprise Party: Episode 9, "Globetrotters" (2016). Beverly insists on throwing Murray a surprise birthday party, even though he wants to spend his birthday in front of the TV with no pants on, but she tells him about it in advance and demands he pretend to be surprise. Just before the party starts, Murray passes out on their bed, and Erica accidentally piles coats on top of him, so he's MIA for the whole party.
Intervention: Episode 13, "Agassi" (2017). Erica has been depressed ever since she realized she's in love with Geoff now that he has a girlfriend, so the family holds an intervention to tell her they want the old Erica back.

Season 5

Auction Mishap: Episode 2, "Hogan is my Grandfather" (2017). Adam and Pops have a tradition of going to auctions and driving up the prices, but Adam gets carried away and bids $30,000 on a painting that started at $5,000, and no one else bids, so he and Pops have to make a run for it.

Character Tropes

Smother: Beverly Goldberg - Played by Wendi McLendon-Covey.
Frenemy: Dave Kim - Played by Kenny Ridwan.
Black Sheep Brother: Marvin Goldberg - Played by Dan Fogler.
Hard-to-please Father: Ben "Pop-pop" Goldberg - Played by Judd Hirsch & Paul Sorvino