The Goldbergs - The Scrunchie Rule - Review

Scrunchie rule, o scrunchie rule, where would we be without the scrunchie rule? The Goldbergs returned from yet another mini-break, and with the return came Valley Erica, Lainey, the Mellor brothers and tons of fun.

With Beverly fully immersed in the Bevaloution (and I again give props to the show for continuing with a previous storyline since most comedies don’t), she’s slacking a little bit on the smother duties. Case in point usually she’s there to march into the school, and insist that Adam can’t participate in physical activities during gym. He loves and pretends to hate her for this, and when Coach Mellor orders Adam to climb the rope during gym? It’s usually Beverley’s cue to march in.

But she doesn’t, Adam is forced to climb the rope, he’s terrible and is soon falling onto Coach Mellor, resulting in him being knocked to the ground.

Bryan Callen is a fantastic actor and Coach Mellor is one of my favourite recurring adult characters on the show. I continue to hope and pray the spin-off is green-lit in May, because I really need more Coach Mellor on the screen.

Coach Mellor tries to shake off his injury, but it’s extremely obvious that he’s been badly hurt. He’s soon in gym class with a neck brace on and informing the class that he has a sprain, which makes it difficult to do anything including sneeze & blowing his beloved whistle. The class are soon laughing at Coach, who demands to know who laughed as he couldn’t see since he’s unable to turn his head. They continue to laugh, Adam feels bad & Coach Mellor is soon tripping over his gym balls.

It’s an extremely sorry sight and with the kids all away for the weekend (more on that shortly), Beverly realizes she has an empty house. Murray is pleased with this, but Beverly starts to panic and when it’s mentioned that Coach Mellor is injured? You know what’s coming.

Beverly goes to visit him. His home is a mess, as is Coach, and Beverly is soon offering him a room for the weekend. After a small bit of persuading, Coach Mellor agrees and Murray thinks the whole situation is crazy. Beverly doesn’t care though, as she’s soon making Coach food and basically smothering him.

Deciding that an intervention is needed, Murray brings Coach Nick to the house. He’s hoping that Coach Nick will take Coach Mellor away. Though Coach Nick admits he’s sad Coach Mellor didn’t call him since they are brothers, he’s soon admitting that his wife has kicked him out and he’s sleeping in the gym. Murray’s plan completely falls apart as Beverly tells them both that they’re staying in the empty kids rooms for the weekend.

Murray points out to Beverly she can’t replace their kids with the Mellor brothers, but Beverly’s too deep down the smothering train again to listen to reason. So Murray brings out the big guns, and fetches Adam back from his weekend at Dave Kims. He’s not exactly happy with this, but bows down to his father’s wishes and soon sounds the smother alarm. It does the trick as Beverly comes running to him, followed by Coach Mellor & Coach Nick and Beverly quickly sees the error of her ways.

She gives the two Coaches a nice snack, before Murray sends them on their way. Beverly admits she fell of the wagon and is a bit annoyed with herself for doing son, but Murray assures her that they’ve got time to get used to the kids being away and they’ll get there. He also admits in this process that he to worries about having an empty house, but puts on the front because he doesn’t like change and it's easier to say he wants the kids gone than to admit he'll miss them, and is soon whipping Beverly up a nice meal.

The second storyline of the episode (and the reason for the empty house) is all about the two Erica’s. Where they began this season tolerating each other as you do when you first move to College, they eventually became friends, but now that friendship is strained.

The reason for this? They’re very much getting on top of each other. It starts out with eating each others food partly out of spite, and partly out of drunkenness, and escalates to Valley Erica playing musical instruments whilst our Erica is trying to read, and then putting a scrunchie on the door when all our Erica wants after a long day is to sleep.

There are the type of issues everyone can relate to. Being away from home for the first time and having to make nice with complete strangers is a daunting experience at first, but then everyone sort of just groups together & gets on with things to make it that little less straining. It has been said and is extremely true the worst thing you can do to your room-mates at college is eat their food. Sometimes knowing you’ve got that last slice of pizza or ice cream waiting for you after a long day of lectures, is all that really gets you through the day.

Our Erica is extremely annoyed with the whole situation, and the fact she’s been kicked out of her room. Geoff informs her that the only thing that over-rides the scrunchie rule, is having an out of town guest. Erica thinks that’s a brilliant idea and Geoff is expecting her to ask him to tag along, but instead she asks Barry. She figures if he annoys the heck out of her 90% of the time, he can put his annoying skills to good use.

Unfortunately the only thing that ends up happening is Valley Erica & Barry bonding over how much our Erica annoys them, and they’re soon hooking up. You could see it coming as soon as Erica offered the invite, but it doesn’t make it or her disgust at the hook-up any less amusing.

Following in her father’s footsteps, Erica knows the big guns are needed to resolve this situation. And what bigger gun can she bring than Lainey, aka Barry’s ex-girlfriend, aka the love of his life? Barry is stunned and quickly finds himself torn between the two ladies. Lainey is a little annoyed at how quickly he’s moving on from her, and the fact this is why our Erica’s dragged her along. Valley Erica is annoyed at being dropped so quickly for Lainey. Barry is soon begging both ladies for another chance, our Erica just wants to sit back & enjoy the chaos, but that’s difficult when everyone is then angry with her.

Trying to get his own back, Barry invites the JTP to be his over-night guests. Everyone fully acknowledges that a guest bringing an over-night guest doesn’t make sense at all, and I do love Barry saying he’s kicking the girls out of a room that isn’t even his. Trying to one-up her brother, our Erica invites Geoff along, but whilst he comes, he’s annoyed he wasn’t our Erica’s first choice. So everyone is once again sitting in awkward silence, and truly scrapping the bottom of the barrel, our Erica invites Johnny Atkins over for a ‘party’ that he is extremely disappointed to discover isn’t an actual party.

With both of the Erica’s at their wits end, they both decide to complain about each other. Our Erica then accidentally hurts Valley Erica’s feelings by declaring her to be a stranger she’s been forced to put up with. Everyone sick of their arguing, Geoff puts a scrunchie on the door and locks the two Erica’s out so they can work through their issues.

Our Erica apologizes for hurting Valley Erica’s feelings and says she’s more than just some stranger. Valley Erica apologizes for eating Erica’s food, and they both agree to be nicer to each other. Knowing they need some way to make it up to the others, our Erica decides to throw a massive party in their room. I’ll look past questioning how on earth so many people managed to fit into a small dorm room, because it is such a nice moment and a lovely way to end the episode.

The end credits scene features the real Coach Mellor, and I will never get tired of the real life counterparts cameoing on the show.

The Scrunchie Rule probably isn’t the funniest episode that the Goldbergs has produced, but it was much better for me than Adam Spielberg. It had some nice moments, Beverly going all smother on the Mellor boys was funny, as was the whole scrunchie rule situation at college.

Up next for The Goldbergs is ‘Colors’ which airs next Wednesday at 8pm on ABC.