Review:
Season 3 kicks off with a fantastic episode. Erica, Lainey, and Barry reenact a scene from the 1983 Tom Cruise hit, Risky Business. Within the first few minutes of the episode, Lainey defies her father (mentioned but does not appear in the episode)'s orders by using his Porche and throwing parties without his permission. Beverly (Mrs. Goldberg) finds out about this and tells her father what happened. She lets her know that her father asked her to stay with her for 6 days. Lainey loves this idea but Barry and Erica do what they can to sabotage this because they want to still carry the party on. At first, Lainey is loving their mother's smotherly love until she micromanages her even more including that she must attend college and attend SAT tutoring. Therefore, she teams back up with Barry and Erica to go against Bev? Will it work?
Subplot:
Meanwhile, we noticed that Adam's voice has changed due to him hiting puberty. In the season finale, he found out that Dana's father had a new job, which caused her to move away from him. Therefore, they talk on the phone. However, without all of today's trends like cell phones, FaceTime, etc, it's costing money. Adam does everything including using the fax machine without permission at the school to using a rap video recorded with Barry to keep his relationship with Dana. What will Adam do now?
Ending:
Barry, Erica, and Lainey go against Beverly by having a party at Lainey's father's house. Everything is going well until her father's trophy almost gets broken. It doesn't happen, however, because of Beverly crashing into the party and keeping the trophy safe. During a sweet scene, Erica thanks and hugs her for coming to the party and Barry and Lainey join in on the hug. In efforts to get the partygoers out of the house, Beverly brings dance horrible moves Bob Seger's hit song, Old Time Rock n Roll. Just as Adam is about to write his breakup letter with Dana, his dad (Murray) comes in and wants him to keep his relationship with Dana by using long distance phone. The catch is that he will micromanage his time to make sure he does not go over 10 minutes. I loved how Pops pointed out that Murray once had a long distance relationship with Beverly before they got married when he was in the ROTC. Pops saved the day in this case. What a sweet ending to this wonderful episode.
My thoughts:
What a fantastic start to the third season of this beloved series. My favorite part was when the guidance counselor (played by Tim Meadows from Mean Girls and Saturday Night Live) explained a long distance relationship he had with Ellen. Her friend, Todd was looking out for her but he realized at the end, she loved Todd instead of him. The one thing that audiences can take out of this episode is that parents may be irritating but they will always love their children.
