The Goldbergs Season 11 Wouldn’t Have Worked

While it might seem like The Goldbergs season 11 could have continued into the ‘90s, the show’s spinoff proved that this wouldn’t work. Nostalgia is a tricky thing to capitalize on, despite how easy Hollywood’s endless stream of reboots and re-imaginings might make this process seem. As a phenomenon, nostalgia is a vague, ineffable sensation, and it is hard to reliably monetize something as ephemeral as a wistful desire to return to an imagined past. Even when the creators of TV shows and movies can pull this off, there is no guarantee that nostalgia will remain appealing for long.

As such, the news that The Goldbergs season 10 finale will be the show’s final episode is a fitting end for the family sitcom. Every episode of The Goldbergs opened with narrator Patton Oswalt, as an older version of the show’s hero Adam, intoning “Back in 1980-something.” This opening line gave viewers a clear idea of what The Goldbergs intended to provide. While other family sitcoms might satirize the world of today, The Goldbergs intentionally ignored the political and social realities of the ‘80s to offer a rose-tinted view of the decade as seen through the eyes of a child.

Schooled Proved The Goldbergs Needed 1 Thing

As such, The Goldbergs had to end with its hero entering adulthood in the ’90s. The Goldbergs needed a teenage hero and this was a big part of why the show’s 90s-set spinoff Schooled couldn’t recapture its magic. The appeal of The Goldbergs came from its nostalgic perspective and that didn’t translate to a show with an older lead.

While The Goldbergs supporting star Barry played a role in Schooled, the show’s main characters were all in their twenties, thirties, and forties. While viewers of The Goldbergs could recognize fond memories of the ‘80s in the experiences of the show’s young hero, memories of entering adulthood and the workforce in the ‘90s didn’t spark the same nostalgia.

Schooled Showed That The Goldbergs Need To End

Adam was aging out of adolescence by The Goldbergs season 10, and his siblings were already adults. This means that The Goldbergs was no longer a coming-of-age tale which, as Schooled proved, meant the show was not as sweetly nostalgic anymore. While The Goldbergs could continue without acknowledging Adam’s aging, this would likely look a little ludicrous. Not only is Adam already taking a gap year before beginning college, but Erica and Barry also still need to live in their family home for the family sitcom stylings of The Goldbergs to make sense. Now that Erica is married with a child, this seems increasingly unrealistic.

As such, even The Goldbergs moving on from Adam would not allow the show to elongate its shelf life. Instead, the best thing that The Goldbergs would do was accept that, after a decade of looking back on the ‘80s, the sitcom had successfully spent as long reminiscing over the decade as its hero spent living through it. This is an impressive achievement for any sitcom and doubly impressive for a show centered on something as ineffable and tough to capture as nostalgia, which makes the 10 seasons of The Goldbergs a considerable achievement in its own right.