It’s been years since ABC aired The Wonder Years and tonight, they’re premiering another “flashback sitcom” called The Goldbergs. Will this one also have a long a run? Is it worth watching?
The Goldbergs follows an American family in the 1980s. The youngest son, Adam, documents their lives with his video camera and narrates his memories as an adult. The show features the talents of Wendi McLendon-Covey, Jeff Garlin, Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile, Hayley Orrantia, and George Segal.
Sound interesting? Here’s what the critics think:
NY Daily News: “It’s not just that they’re caricatures, or that even the most prominent piece of ’80s music used in the pilot makes you wince. It’s the way every move and sentence feels like the easiest path to predictable gags.”
USA Today: “When The Goldbergs sticks to its loud, abrasive but loving family, it’s fine. It’s when it switches its focus to the ’80s, complete with a voice-over designed to point out every difference between that decade and our own, that it gets into trouble. Jokes about big hair, bad clothes and REO Speedwagon tapes can be amusing for a while, but as subjects for sitcoms, they don’t have the staying power of families and their struggles to grow without growing apart.”
TIME: “What it needs to make it a lasting family comedy and not a VH1 special is heart and a sense of its characters as individuals. It shows signs of the former, but the latter gets lost in the deafeningly loud pilot and the pop-culture-reference humor. I’ll check back on The Goldbergs, but what I’m seeing so far is too much like the kind of broad family sitcom I’d hope we’d left behind in, well, the ’80s.”
THR: “Between McLendon-Covey and Garlin nailing the parents, everything else is really gravy. As the narrator, Oswalt gets all the funny lines that speak mostly to nostalgia and the humor that comes from the way we were, how goofy the era looks in retrospect and all the love that seemed a little bit like torture at the time. Here’s to The Goldbergs not only bringing back the ’80s but adding some much-needed laughter to the fall lineup.”
What do you think? Have you watched The Goldbergs? Will you watch again? Would you recommend it?
the Goldbergs was a pathetic attempt to make slapstick and buffoonery provide people with a sample of the Jewish sense of humor even in serious family situations…unfortunately, the actors were given terrible material and come across as unpleasant fools…none of the them was able to rise above this handicap and, indeed not a single actor comes across as someone who is even Jewish, , they seem to be a disconnected group thrown together under the same roof and told to be stupid…simply awful!!!.I would expect that the Jewish audience will hate this and there is nothing special to attract anyone… Read more »
Rick – This also was the one new show my wife and I were most excited for… mostly for nostalgia reasons. The Wonder Years was my favorite show growing up and didn’t see much of a similarity between the two… if any. We also felt disappointed by the end of the show. The show was funny, but we had seen most of the big jokes already in the commercial spots leading up to it’s debut.
We’ll be giving the Goldberg’s a few more chances, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t make it past the end of the season.
Out of all the comedies this is the one I waited for, and it left me disappointed!! It’s the Wonder Years do over..Really we have to go and rehash that show, for ideas?? Very Lame to me.