If you loved shows like The Cosby Show, ALF and especially The Wonder Years....this show is nothing like them at all.
There are no after school learning experiences here involving drugs or alcohol, no warm family moments that make you want to repeatedly throw up over and over again until you are nothing but a dehydrated husk of a person. This is pure, unadulterated 80's family. This is my family in the 80's, this is your family in the 80's.
The father is always yelling at you, the mom is freaking out over every little thing and overly controlling every moment of your life, and your sister....she's bigger than you and she beats you up (all these things literally happened to me, especially the sister thing).
The best part about this show, its based on real life scenarios that the show's creator, Adam F. Goldberg, actually filmed from his childhood in the 80's. All the characters are based off of his neurotic, overly-controlling, crazy family (with the exception that for some reason they turned his oldest brother into his sister).
While this may not reflect some of the shows of the 80's it does indeed reflect what growing up in that era was like. I'm an '83 baby, I know this to be true!
The show follows the family from September 3rd, 1985, and follows their follies and strides in life. It's like 'That 80's Show' except you know actually good and not attempting to base it's success off of a predeceasing show.
Also geek extraordinaire Patton Oswald narrates! How can you lose?
Aside from the original premise of basing a TV series about the 80's off of an actual family from the 80's, the show has some pretty good tongue-in-cheek writing and some definitive laugh out loud moments that only a truly comedic sit-com can provide.
The Goldbergs will most definitely bring you back to the world that all us who were born in the 80's and before miss, a world of possibilities, new technologies and mind blowing 8-bit!!
I look forward to the series actually going back to having Halloween and Christmas specials, just like all my old 80's favourites.
I will definitely be tuning in Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on ABC and if you want to rekindle your love affair with the 80's I would suggest you do as well.
By: James Bowler