The Goldbergs

It has its strengths--most of them derived from the skilled cast--but none related to any capacity for originality.

The Goldbergs banks on nostalgia for its charm, but needs to build on something more for us to really care about this family.

What it needs to make it a lasting family comedy and not a VH1 special is heart and a sense of its characters as individuals. It shows signs of the former, but the latter gets lost in the deafeningly loud pilot and the pop-culture-reference humor.

So far so generic, and I'll decide later once my ears stop ringing.

The characters are all broad types, the '80s references (Gobots, Sam Goody, an REO Speedwagon singalong) mostly feel shoehorned in rather than creating the feeling of the era, and the hostility of the family doesn't turn out to be great fodder for humor.

It is nice but overly familiar in its reliance on pop-culture signposts and snuggly sentimentality. [30 Sep 2013, p.53]

The Goldbergs's ostensibly endearing premise is sadly also its biggest flaw. Goldberg's on-screen representation as prepubescent Adam (Sean Giambrone) fails to complement the voiceover narration and meaningful asides of adult Adam (Patton Oswalt) in any substantial way.

There are a few lively moments--Barry flipping out when he thinks his mom gave him car keys for his birthday when it's really a locket with her picture in it; a montage that collects dad's malapropisms, the better to teach viewers "How to speak Murray"--but it's all too strained, too obviously written, and too dependent on the sort of easy-laughs memory-lane-tripping that VH1 did to death about fifteen years ago.

For all that it springs from original material--a coda to the pilot shows some of the actual home movies, which are indeed hilarious--The Goldbergs--is all style and no substance.

There are some sharp jokes here, but they get lost in the bile. The Goldbergs is like The Wonder Years infected by Married... With Children. It's a half hour of annoying people yelling at one another.