The Goldbergs: “Why’re You Hitting Yourself?” Review

The Goldbergs has finally hit its stride. It will never be groundbreaking. In fact, the show thrives on mining youth culture and television’s past. For some, this is tiresome, but others may find it charming.

The episode “Why Are You Hitting Yourself?” focused on Adam and his relationship with his older brother, Barry. Barry likes tackling Adam and forcing Adam to hit himself in the face, which makes their relationship very strained. They end up seeing eye-to-eye and bonding when they find scrambled porn. There are definitely people who can relate to the story. However, anyone under 25 won’t be able to relate because access to porn is no longer a problem thanks to the Internet. At least, it shows that times change, but brothers with a large age difference have always had trouble bonding.

While Barry is busy bonding with Adam, his mother, Beverly, is busy finding her father, Albert, the perfect woman. She’s disgusted with his proclivity toward sleeping with easy women. Beverly wants her father to find a nice woman and settle down. She’s not looking for a replacement mother. She just wants her father to be happy, which she doesn’t think sleeping around does.

Eventually, Beverly finds out that Albert doesn’t want to settle down because Beverly’s mother was one of a kind and no one can replace her. Beverly understands, but she’s not the type of person who takes no for an answer. She ends up surprising her father with his “perfect woman,” who she had spent the entire episode on the phone trying to find.

In the past, Beverly was a grating character. She puts herself into situations she doesn’t belong. Now, she has finally admitted it and apologized to her father. While it doesn’t make her behavior acceptable and she’s still annoying, having her admit her flaws humanizes her and makes the character more tolerable. She only wants the best for everyone. Sometimes this causes her to overstep her boundaries. Hey, we all have our flaws. Although, it would be nice, if a television characters flaws didn’t make you want to scream.

Adam’s father, Murray, and his sister, Erica, weren’t really featured in the episode. Murray said the occasional line pertaining to Beverly’s talent for finding the perfect partners for people and describing Albert’s ideal woman, but he didn’t play a major role in any of the story lines. It worked well and made Beverly seem less irritating, even before she acknowledged her weaknesses. Erica’s role in this episode was solely to make sure Adam and Barry didn’t kill each other. She succeeded in that and made Adam realize that Barry doesn’t have the guts to do much more than tackle and slap Adam with Adam’s own hands.

The Goldbergs continues to be The Wonder Years rebooted. Once you get used to it, it’s not a bad thing. Even so, The Goldbergs isn’t must see television because the show is the type of thing you’ll watch when there’s nothing better on.