Coral

I know nothing about Highlander other than it starring Connery and Lambert and had a Queen song.

Erica's pretty pointless to the show now. Her best friend is gone, she's like 2 years out of high school and unemployed and we barely see her with her BF Jeff.

Is this the last year of the show? With Barry going to college and having it be a struggle to keep Erica around - I'm not sure how they can keep pumping out story lines. They've already exhausted the smothering mother story line about 30 times.

JimRochester

Last night's episode was entertaining but I have to agree. Erica really has nothing to do if Laney or the old roommate isn't around. When they are, they tend to be the funny ones anyway.

I've never nit-picked over the loose timeline but I do have a question. I was out of school in the 70's. My kids didn't go to school until the 90's. Were backpacks a thing in the 80's? Maybe they caught on early in Philadelphia or we were late. I just don't recall them being popular until my kids got to grade school.

Meathead

Most kids had them in the 80's when I was in school.

robin2099

I enjoyed the Highlander references. It was fun having Clancy Brown take part in them, but not having Lambert at least cameo seems like a wasted opportunity. It also irked me that doing the big battle the nerds had shields. That's not very Highlander like.

Paff

In general, or just in this week's episode?

Count Dooku

There is a lot of financial incentive for the show to do a seventh season, but creatively it is really spent.

Barry and Erica need to move on with their lives, and thus be used more sparingly. And notice that George Segal is showing up less and almost always just sitting in his scenes.
Now Adam is at an age where the smothering has become absurd and super-creepy instead of amusing.

Like I said, they'll do another season for the $$. It's too bad they had to change the actress who plays Adam's GF. The original was adorable; this one is bland as oatmeal.

movieguru

I enjoy the show, but I wish they would be a little more accurate with the cultural refferences. The last episode references Erkel as if he's already a household name. Erkel didn't appear on television until September 1989 and was only in three episodes in the 1980's. This would mean that they are only days or weeks away from the 1990's at best. They seem to bounce around quite a bit. One episode they reference something that would have occurred in the very late 80's, then a few episodes later they talk about the premiere of Michael Jackson's Thriller video which would have been 1983.

Paff

Beverly spending Adam's first night at college with him in his dorm room actually did happen though (in the show, it was Erica....I'm guessing they changed that up in case the show never makes it to Adam going to college)

Coral

The show throws the timeline out the window. It's basically the 1980s - that's it... nothing more specific and definitely not chronological.

However, I notice sometimes the characters will use jargon/slang that definitely was used in the 80's. Last night Erica mentioned "sandwich artist" - the first time I've heard that term was in the 2000's at some point.

Also, did Pops move in with family? I remember he got evicted from his condo and moved into a retirement home, but I don't remember him moving in with the family. He seems to be there all the time and I can't remember any more references to his own place.

Paff

I've always understood The Goldbergs to be an amalgam of various 80s pop culture events and not a strict chronological account.

The only times I had issues with continuity and anachronism were when Barry had a run-in with a New Jersey Devils fan and the fan was wearing red-and-black Devils' gear, which the team did not adopt until 1994. Before that it was the infamous "Christmas tree" red-and-green color scheme. The other time was a fairly recent episode where Adam was all excited about the infamous E.T. game for the Atari 2600. And even though that was based on real life Adam F. Goldberg, they've already gone out of their way to show Adam as a Nintendo NES user, plus he seemed to be a little too old to still be an E.T. fan. So the only error there is that it should have been done earlier in the series' run.

sportsfan64

One of the things that always gets to me is when they say "It was February 20, 1980-something", and everyone's walking around in short sleeves, no coats, and all the trees are green. It's kinda cold and snowy in Jenkintown/Philly in February. They did do a "snow day" show when the kids were listening to the radio for the school closings and they built a snow fort, but that was only one time.

Rex Fenestrarum

Mine was the New Kids on the Block episode. It just didn't make any sense at all. Turns out Adam was a big NKOTB fan. OK, kinda strange, but whatever: it was the 80s and weird things happened. But then Erica - who seems to swerve from mainstream to alternative as the plot requires - admits that she was a huge New Kids fan when she was younger. She even shows him a video she made when she was a kid, gushing over NKOTB and showing her room covered in NKOTB posters and pillowcases. But NKOTB weren't founded until 1984 and weren't really known outside the Boston area until 1988. So... let's say that the episode takes place in 1988. Erica, who appears to be at least 5-6 years younger in her video, liked a band that didn't exist yet? And somehow had access to a video camera in 1982? And Adam doesn't remember any of this?

The whole episode makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

brayzie

Yeah, that seemed weird to me too. Couldn't they have just had Erica like a similar group or band that came out 5 years prior and compare it to Adam's fandom?
Barry being such a big rap fan seemed weird since some of the episodes take place in the early or mid 80s, and most of the suburban white kids I knew seemed to get into rap in the late 80s because of MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice.
Overall though, I think the series has done a pretty good job.

OldBoy

you guys are really dissecting an extremely silly, but fun show, loosely based on creators' life? news flash: tv too, sometimes contains minor inaccuracies

JimRochester

Starting with Eric being Erica. I'm not too worried about the timeline unless it's pretty glaring. When they are incorporating things that really didn't come into play until late 80's or 90's it kind of takes you out of the moment. So much of the show is supported by his home movies. I guess he was lucky his mother really was an overprotective asshole. It made him rich.

Rex Fenestrarum

No kidding. While I can deal with an episode where Erica takes Adam to see Return of the Jedi (1983) while Beverly stays at home and discusses Madonna's new Like A Virgin album (1984) with Barry, who is wearing a "Bo Knows" shirt (1987)... the entire premise of the NKOTB episode didn't made any sense at all.

Count Dooku

Fair enough, but I don't have a clue when NKOTB were popular outside of late 80s or early 90s, so I did not give a shit about the timeline accuracy.

How much of this show's audience is under 30? So they don't have any memory of any of these fads and references, except that it all happened before they were born or started elementary school

mrhan

I don't watch all the episodes and catch an episode once in awhile but isn't the kid that's bullying Adam older in previous seasons? I thought he was closer in age to Barry and Erica? Or am I totally wrong?

Count Dooku

He could be in Barry's grade, and so still in HS, or he could be even older and held back. Good for him that he does graduate and go to that Janitor College!

Coral

I'm pretty sure Johnny Atikins is the same age as Erica, as I remember he was in the same class as her. So he was probably left back quite a few times.

And Erica's apparently 2 years older than Barry and her boyfriend Jeff - as this is her second year out of high school and this is Barry/Jeff's last year.

Paff

VERY "meta" episode last night, although since I'm currently enjoying 80s video games, I got a lot of nostalgic laughs. They even mentioned the oft-criticized time inacccuracies of the show, since the opening narration of "1980-something" is clearly missed by so many viewers.

Love having Dan Mintz (aka Tina Belcher on Bob's Burgers) as the computer teacher, hopefully he'll be back.

windom

Adam should have gone into computer game programming/design if he was able to get that kind of quality graphics and animation out of an Apple IIe in such a short time.

My DVR cut off the very end. What was it that Adam started to say about a Star Wars prequel? That would have been at least 10 years away at that point.

Paff

Wow. Nitpicking the game-within-the-show for being unrealistic now.

While the graphics and animation were more advanced than they should be (I particularly noticed the opening screen having the same logo and image as the actual Goldbergs show, and being exceptionally detailed), it's for the story. I mean, how funny was the Barry character running the same way the real (in show) Barry does? But other than that, it looked to be mostly a text adventure game with images. And that's what we did with the computers in high school in the 80s. Do some drawing, only on graph paper, and then enter it in, pixel by pixel. Tedious? Of course, but it wasn't like we had anything else to do. Plus, with the primitive graphics, you were only entering in a couple hundred pixels at the most.

Coral

I had some nice nostalgia with the latest episode. I played "Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizards" - it was fun-racy at the time... and I also remembered the Carmen SanDiego game - but never played it.
I liked the self-referenced mocks of the show - the broken timelines, always sunny in the winter, and changing Erica into Eric (opposite of the show's real life change).

It's obvious Adam couldn't have developed a game that looked that good in a short amount of time - especially since there's never been any mention of him being into programming, let alone having the tools to do it. But it fits with the care-free attitude of the show with regards to accuracy. As Adam stated - it's just a dumb game (ie. show) - it wasn't supposed to matter this much to anyone.

Wonder how the actor who plays Andy feels playing a 17/18 year old when he's really 32. He really does look like he's 17.

Bandoman

This show is still firing on all cylinders. Any inaccuracies in timeline/technology are irrelevant. It's about the characters, story and laughs. This show really catches the feel/mood of the 80s. I still love it. I also loved Murray's reaction to the game. He knew he was being made fun of, but said he didn't care because it was done with love. That's what I think about the entire show - Adam is making fun of his family, but out of love. The real video and interviews with the real-life people connected to Adam's childhood are my favorite parts of the show.

Schooled is doing much the same with the 90s. Also a great show.