Hershey Park flew right into my all time favourite Goldbergs episodes list. The humour was on point, as were the storylines, we got Coach Mellor, Mr Glascott and the funniest scene involving Geoff since he blew a casket at the dinner last season.
This weeks A plot centered around a theme I’m pretty sure most of us will know well; parents chaperoning a field trip. When you’re a kid having your parent chaperone feels somewhat cool, since you can be one of those who stays behind after everyone’s gone as your parent is already there with you. Need more money to buy stuff? Just ask your parent. Kid giving you a hard time? Just complain to your parent. As we get older though the joy of having your parent chaperone becomes more of an embarrassment. You can’t really go off and do things with your friends because you just know your parent will yell at you, if you’re the one that’s bad they have no problem ripping a strip off you, and who really likes to acknowledge their parent in public, let alone be seen with them?!
As we know Beverly Goldberg is the smother to end all smothers. She absolutely loves being involved in all aspects of her children’s lives, including field trips of course. For this school trip, Adam’s going to Hershey Park. I’ll admit it’s not a place I’m familiar with, but I’m going to guess it’s on par with the types of theme parks we have in the UK like Thorpe Park and Chessington World of Adventures. Adam’s looking forward to the idea of having fun with his friends, but that’s very much not going to happen with Beverly chaperoning. Whilst Dave Kim, Emmy, Jackie and Johnny have all managed to make their parents stop chaperoning, Adam isn’t so lucky. They encourage Adam to stand up for himself and he’s fired up enough to make the proclamations, but they all know he’s just going to lie to Beverly about the trip being off.
She’s naturally devastated, Adam laps up the devastation and baked goods that come with it, his friends are all stunned by just how good Adam is at this, and level complete, Adam’s home and dry and everything’s great.
Except when Beverly turns up for the PTA meeting, she discovers they've been bumped for Coach Mellows to have a meeting with chaperones about the trip. Beverly tries to tell him the park has been closed due to an accident, and is soon corrected by the other parents. They inform Beverly that Adam’s lied to her because he doesn’t want her on the trip, and try to tell her not to feel too bad since they’ve all been through it. Kids reach a certain age they just stop communicating with their parents or really wanting anything to do with them, and you can either accept this and just move on to the next phase or fight it.
Because this is Beverly Goldberg? She’s obviously going to fight it. She whips out one of her guilt letters, and Adam is soon begging her to be a chaperone on the trip, much to the other parents shock. They all want to know Beverly’s secret. Beverly does not want to reveal her secret, knowing the house of cards will soon fall down. With a little begging though she soon breaks, and the parents are having a secret meeting in the Goldbergs basement where Beverly reveals all; guilt letters.
As the title would suggest, they’re all about how your children have wronged you, everything you’ve given up for some including your hopes and dreams, and designed to make your children feel completely and utterly terrible about how badly they’ve treated you. The other parents are torn between shock and horror over how Beverly can write such mean things to her kids, and she’s full of bashfulness over her proud work. I doubt many of us have ever been a victim of guilt letters, but most people have probably had to deal with parents guilt-tripping them into doing things that they want. Guilt is quite a powerful emotion and with the formula of Beverly’s letters in their grasp, the other parents are instructed to write their own and guilt their kids into submission.
The guilt-trip does work but unfortunately all the parents have written the exact same letter, and it doesn’t take Adam long to realize the game Beverly has been playing with him. He and the others are soon turning on their parents with their own guilt letters, and Beverly is horrified her master plan has been undone due to plagiarism, but I guess extremely fortunately writing horrible things about their kids isn’t something that comes naturally to them.
I’ve long said one of the things I love about The Goldbergs is being a rare comedy that has character progression + continuity, and also takes moments to acknowledge the fact this family is crazy in the best way. Last season one of the best examples of this was Geoff calling them all out on their behaviour over dinner, and here we have it with the parents struggle over guilt letters. Obviously we know that Beverly doesn’t mean the terrible things that she writes to her kids, and the show isn’t in any shape or form condoning essentially emotionally manipulating your kids into submission. The other parents have long accepted that their kids are growing up, and with that don’t talk to them as much, and they’re just glad for any interaction they can get, which is something a lot of parents deal with. But for better or worse Beverly’s whole life revolves around her family which is why she does crazy stuff like this.
Adam rightfully isn't happy at discovering he's been manipulated for years, and Adam is soon trying to put Beverly in her place and go off onto a roller-coaster by himself. Beverly of course joins him on the roller-coaster and the two of them argue their points of view, whilst being completely and utterly terrified, Beverly screaming she's blind as they go through a tunnel and they both end up passing out.
Off the roller-coaster and back on solid ground at school Adam is still annoyed, and Beverly does explain that with all the kids growing older, she’s not as close to them as she used to be when they were younger and that saddens her. With Barry and Erica she’s sort of gotten used to it, but Adam has always been her little boy, and these field trips were her last remaining way of connecting with him still. Because Adam knows his mum, he does get where she’s coming from even if he still doesn’t completely like what she’s done which is something Beverly accepts, and the two of them come to agreement that Adam will try to talk to her more and Beverly will back off slightly.
When Adam does come back home from school, Beverly’s of course in the empty house and greets him by asking how his day was and Adam shrugs her off at first. Beverly’s saddened by this because this is exactly what she’s talking about, and realizing this Adam actually goes to her and they then sit down and talk about his day.
The other storyline for this week focused on Geoff and I loved it. Outside of Glascott and Coach Meadows, he is my favourite supporting character. Career day at school opens his eyes up to the fact he doesn’t really know what he wants to do with his life, as his father has essentially planned his future for him. Some unintentionally wise words from Murray send Geoff off on a journey of revaluating his life.
Geoff’s tired of being the pushover, the one expected to do everything. He wants to live his own life by his own rules, and have freedom over himself, doing anything but working with eyes. That journey of self discovery sees him challenge Barry for leadership of the JTP and eat his gum, refuse to fold Erica’s sweaters which she finds surprisingly sexy, help Murray out at the furniture store and tell his dad how much he hates eyes, and of course blowing a gasket in gym class.
Coach Meadows asks Geoff to clean up the balls like he always does, but Geoff refuses. Meadow’s is slightly taken aback by that and we soon get an interesting argument where Barry is ordering Geoff to do as Coach requested, Geoff ordering Andy to clean the balls up, Matt offering to do it just to make everyone shut up and Geoff swearing at Coach Mellow.
I will never get bored of the show bleeping out characters swearing because it’s hilarious. It was a move first reserved for Beverly, but slowly other characters have been doing it occasionally, and it never gets boring. Coach Mellow’s horror and disgust at a student daring to swear at him makes the whole thing that much funnier, and Murray being called into the school because Geoff was afraid of calling his dad is just the icing on the cake. Murray is soon giving Geoff a reluctant dressing down, and explaining he already has 3 kids of his own and doesn’t want anymore. Geoff’s slightly disheartened that the person who gave him the confidence to be himself is now turning him away, and that sends Murray to Lou’s office.
He's upset that Geoff is pulling away from him, and chose to call Murray instead of him. Murray correctly points out that a parents dream isn’t necessarily their kids dream, and if Lou doesn’t want to lose Geoff he basically has to let him decide on his own future. Whilst Geoff may not be interested in eyes, Barry certainly is. He’s had 3 consecutive episodes focusing on his engagement with Lainey, and the two of them trying to adjust to life as an engaged couple. Thankfully this week Barry was acting as a supporting character in Geoff’s storyline, which kept his screen time at a minimal but still kept his story moving forward. Barry becoming a Doctor is something the show has hinted at every now and then, and this was another step in that direction. Whilst Geoff hates everything to do with eyes, Barry is surprisingly really good at it and bonding with the younger patients. He knows how to make them laugh, take their mind off what’s happening to them and is generally a massive hit. Murray looking at Barry with a younger patient glowing with pride was a really heart-warming moment.
With Halloween around the corner, the next episode of The Goldbergs is of course themed and features an appearance from horror legend Freddie Kreuger. As someone who absolutely hates horror and avoided him like the plague as a kid, that’s not exactly something that fills me with joy, but I have confidence that this show will still be able to bring the laughs.
