The Goldbergs makes you feel bad for Adam Goldberg. Adam may only be 12-years-old, but he’s the only one with any common sense. He and his grandfather’s are the only people who aren’t purposely cruel to members of their family to get what they want.
Adam’s mother, Beverly, will go out of her way to terrify her son in order to get snuggles. In “Mini Murray,” Adam convinces Grandpa Albert to take him to see The Great Mouse Detective, but tricks him into seeing Poltergeist, which Beverly didn’t want Adam to see. Adam ends up being terrified by the movie for days. It is so bad that Adam needs snuggles, something he previously detested and refused to give his mother. Throughout the entire episode, Beverly would put a scary clown doll in Adam’s room, put a walkie talkie into that doll to make it speak, and turn the TV in Adam’s room on and off without him knowing.
Beverly stops torturing Adam when Albert realizes there must be a rational reason for the chest in Adam’s room to begin talking. Albert is the one who finds the walkie talkie. Once the walkie talkie is revealed, Albert and Adam immediately know Beverly is behind it. It’s sad that Adam’s mother thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to torture here son. If Adam didn’t have his grandfather protecting him, he would lose his mind.
While Beverly is clearly a worse parent than Murray, Murray isn’t exactly winning “World’s Best Dad” anytime soon. He cares about his kids and has a soft spot for Barry, but Murray thinks telling Barry he’s a moron is a fine parenting strategy. Sometimes Barry does rise about Murray’s insults and continues expressing himself, such as in last week’s episode when Barry never gave up roller-skating. Other times, Barry loses himself in his attempt to please his father.
Before Barry becomes a “Mini Murray,” he really wants a pair of Reeboks that he thought would make him really good at basketball. The problem is the sneakers are really expensive and Murray refuses to buy them. Instead, he offers Barry a job at the furniture store moving around furniture, which eventually becomes a sales position. Barry has a knack for selling furniture, but Murray fires his son because having Barry become a mini version of him scares him. Murray admits to Beverly that he wants Barry to have better plans than selling furniture for the rest of his life. However, Barry doesn’t find out about how his father feels until after he swears off furniture and empties his room.
In the end, Beverly apologizes to Adam with Bill Murray tickets and they end up making a snuggle schedule. Murray buys Barry the Reeboks he wanted and allows him to pursue his basketball dream, which is never going to happen because Barry is extremely bad, but it’s the thought that counts.
The Goldbergs seems to get worse as Beverly becomes less and less sympathetic. It’s hard to feel bad for a woman who has no qualms about terrifying her kids just to get her way. The fact that her husband is just as out of touch with their kids doesn’t help the show’s case. No one wants to watch a show where the 12-year-old is not so much a know it all, but comes off as one because no one in his family bothers to make it known that they aren’t narcissists and actually care about other people.
I am the editor and founder of “Wait! What’s a Dial?”. I recently graduated from Rowan University with degrees in both Radio/TV/Film and Journalism. My passions are classic and British television, especially when those two are combined.