The Goldbergs – Pickleball

By starrymag | January 21, 2020

By: Ariba Bhuvad

 

 

In the 1980s acid wash jeans and Swatch watches were all the hype. However, Adam (Sean Giambrone) felt one colorful wool piece of clothing was the most important–a letterman jacket. This thought occurred to him especially after seeing Dave Kim (Kenny Ridwan) and Jackie (Rowan Blanchard) wearing one because of participating in sports at school.

 

Adam doesn’t have one, but he’s not worried because he doesn’t need one to get into film school. However, Principal Ball (Stephen Tobolowsky) says that’s not the case because Adam needs to round out his personal journey with some athletic challenges. As a result, Adam gets worried that he won’t get into film school now so Principal Ball introduces him to a sport known as Pickleball. Principal Ball shows him an old picture from he when was on the team before, but Adam still insists that it was never a thing. Nonetheless, Adam decides to play and soon learns that it looks a lot like ping pong. 

 

With Murray’s (Jeff Garlin) 51st birthday coming up, Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) really wants to plan something for him. For his 50th birthday she went all out but he fell asleep and missed the whole thing. Since he forbade her from throwing him a party, Beverly is making Murray multiple scrapbooks filled with memories and pictures. She even picked up a box of stuff from Murray’s dad, Pop Pop (Judd Hirsch), where Erica (Hayley Orrantia) finds Murray’s birth certificate. It turns out the birth certificate shows that Murray is actually turning 50 and not 51!

 

This is more than enough for Beverly to decide she’s going to throw him a second 50th birthday party as a re-do. She’s under the impression that Murray will be excited over this, but instead he’s frazzled to learn that his birthday is wrong and that his whole life has been a lie. He decides to confront Pop Pop about it as Beverly hands him a birthday invite to give to his dad. 

 

Not being a sports person, Adam goes to Barry (Troy Gentile) to ask for his help with Pickleball. He guarantees that Adam will become an expert and has him do all sorts of activities to prepare. Things he suggests are throwing pickles at Adam while he’s blindfolded and having him do “wax on-wax off” on Barry’s car to clean it up. As suspected, Barry had never even heard of Pickleball and just used Adam for fun and to do his chores. 

 

Barry suggests that they go to coach Rick Mellor (Bryan Callen) for help, but he hasn’t been around much since he quit coaching. The only other option is to go to Rick’s brother, the other Coach Mellor – Nick (Bill Goldberg). 

 

Murray confronts Pop Pop about his birth certificate and finds out that Pop Pop noticed the error when Murray was twelve years old but didn’t do anything. He doesn’t really seem to care and isn’t willing to apologize to Murray for lying his whole life. As always, Pop Pop is not empathetic towards Murray at all and tells him to stop complaining and shuts the door on his face. After meeting with Pop Pop, Murray is down about his birthday and asks Beverly not to do anything and goes away to the shed.

 

Barry and Adam find Coach Rick Mellor who is still down in the dumps and has even hung up his whistle. They ask him for help with Pickleball. After making fun of Adam for a little bit, Coach Mellor decides to help. 

 

Meanwhile, Beverly refuses to give up planning Murray’s birthday and attempts to hold a committee to plan. The brainstorming session doesn’t go as planned though because everyone’s ideas are outlandish. Beverly asks everyone to leave as she figures things out and tells them to just come back for the party 

 

Coach Mellor starts teaching Adam Pickleball who struggles to keep up. He isn’t able to figure out the sport. However, after Coach Mellor gives him a beet smoothie Adam seems to significantly improve and starts playing really well. Back at school Adam plays the worst player on the team and only manages to make one point. Adam is scared that he won’t get into film school, but Principal Ball finally admits that he just made that up to get more players on the team. Nonetheless, Coach Mellor is disappointed in himself for failing as a coach, so Adam decides to go and thank him for always believing in him. Coach Mellor has always been an inspiration for Adam to which Mellor admits that while Adam isn’t good at getting an actual workout he sure knows how to give Mellor’s heart one. Overwhelmed by the love, Coach Mellor hands Adam his letterman jacket. 

 

As expected, Beverly pulls off a spectacular birthday party for Murray with his favorite snack (pretzels and milk), the Channel Five weather guy who plays the chimes, a dining and reclining room, Lee’s Hoagies and even the baseball team mascot Phillie Phanatic. Erica is retty impressed with how amazing the party is, but when Murray walks in he just goes upstairs defeated and sad. 

 

Beverly goes to check on Murray to see if he’s okay and apologize that she didn’t listen to him about the party. It turns out Murray loved the party and he’s just disheartened about his father lying to him. He missed so much, but he realizes that he has a great wife and a great life now. 

 

In the end everything works out with Adam sporting a letterman jacket. Even Pop Pop shows up to Murray’s birthday party and gives his son a transistor radio as a present (something he always wanted as a kid).