Geoff Needs to Get the Hell Away from 'The Goldbergs'

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 21, 2022 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 21, 2022 |

I waste a lot of time sh*tting on a 10-year-old family sitcom that has no business continuing to be on the air — from the way it wrote out Jeff Garlin to what a terrible mother Beverly has become — but there is someone I genuinely like on The Goldbergs.


I suspect that all of the actors on the series are good people (now that Jeff Garlin is gone), but I am a big fan of Hayley Orrantia, who plays Erica on The Goldbergs. I don’t spend much time on TikTok, and I only follow three people (including my kid), but Hayley Orrantia is one of them. I am mostly a fan because of how unexceptional it is — she sings sometimes (she has a great voice), takes videos of her cats, and mostly hangs out with her fiance Greg Furman. They are an adorable couple — and not in the celebrity sense. They’re just kind of goofy and fun.

@hayleyorrantia Thank you @joesantagato ♬ original sound - hayleyorrantia

Furman’s presence, unfortunately, did not redeem the episode. It took Adam Goldberg years to graduate high school on this show, but apparently, Erica’s pregnancy lasted only four or five weeks before she had a baby, which is to say: The series really needed a new plot device to expand the story possibilities because five weeks into the season, they were already done with the pregnancy storylines.

What does Erica giving birth mean for the B-plot? It’s Uncle time! Barry and Adam are going to be uncles, and what better jumping-off point than Uncle Buck? “He’s a menace and you root for him … he’s recklessly hilarious. No one is safe from his antics!” He makes giant pancakes!

So, that’s what Adam and Barry do: They try to learn how to become good uncles by not following the advice of their Uncle Martin, played by Dan Fogler who collects an occasional paycheck here to support his theater work (those Fantastic Beasts movies aren’t gonna last forever!). Like everyone else, Uncle Martin has become a bad parody of himself, although in typical sitcom fashion, after Martin proves to be a perpetual f*ck up, he saves the day. He helps Adam and Barry drive Beverly to the hospital two hours away where Erica is giving birth because she and Geoff decide to have a babymoon to escape Erica’s smothering mother.

Of course, once Beverly arrives in the hospital, Erica insists that she stay because Geoff isn’t enough. Geoff is never enough. Poor Geoff: He’s as attentive as Beverly and only a fraction as annoying, and yet he gets no respect. He’s a walking doormat for both his wife and his mother-in-law and sometimes Barry. Yet he’s decided to live in Erica’s childhood bedroom and sleep in her childhood bed and raise their baby from his mother-in-law’s house, where he will probably never get to spend any time with the infant despite never otherwise going anywhere outside of The Goldbergs home. Geoff is a punchline and even though Erica realizes how often she takes him for granted every third episode, she continues to do so.

I don’t know whether I feel sorry for Geoff, or if I am disappointed in Geoff for allowing his wife and overbearing mother-in-law to treat him like sh*t. Stand up for yourself, Geoff! And not just at the end of every seven episodes when you’ve been pushed to your limits! Stop backsliding. BE A MAN, GEOFF.

Remember when Erica and Geoff broke up for half a season? It was because even Erica felt bad that she was taking advantage of his constant generosity because she was sad that Geoff put her interests over his own. You have a kid now, Geoff! Don’t let the unemployed, overprotective lady rob you of your role as a father. Put your foot down, tell Bubby to back-the-f**k off and maybe go find you, your wife, and your baby a house of your own. People may like you now, Geoff, but this is how you end up becoming Jerry Gergich on Parks and Recreation and how you end up dying of a fart attack while all your friends stand around laughing.

Run, Geoff. Run.

Anyway, they named the baby Muriel Allison Goldberg Schwartz, after both Murray and Pops (Albert). I’m mostly surprised that Beverly allowed the baby to keep Geoff’s last name.