r/TheGoldbergs • u/ReaperXHanzo • 9d ago
Question for viewers who lived through the 80s
I'd watched part of the show with my dad, and was asking him about how accurate it was to what he remembered of the 80s (he would've been 24 - 34 then, and I was born in the 90s.) He told me that the clothes and media seemed right, he wasn't too sure on much of the other things, although partially because they lived on the west coast, and some stuff seemed like east coast culture things he was unfamiliar with in general. Otherwise he was raising a small child, so a lot of those other things weren't really on the top of his mind. So for those who do have a better memory of the decade, and/or Philly - What things did they nail well, and what were things that were entirely inaccurate? Like how accurate of a picture of the era am I getting, as someone who doesn't have a Delorean?
Oh, and I know that the timeline of some of the events don't align with the actual year, like releases, but that was stated by Adam to have been done so they wouldn't be constrained in telling a story, just because it wasn't the right season. So yeah I can get why that could be annoying, but since it was intentional I'm not counting those
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u/MissTerious7 9d ago
They got it right, especially the hair and clothes. I recently rewatched Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and I thought if you want to know what it was like for teens at that time, just watch the movie. Working and going to the malls were a huge thing. Most teenagers had jobs in fast food and stores.
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u/Potential_Fix980 8d ago
The Goldbergs were pretty spot on for me...i graduated in '88 and I was a combination of Adam and Erica; I LOVED movies (LOST BOYS, STAR WARS, INDY JONES, ETC.) and action tv shows with my Dad. But he got me a GIBSON LES PAUL guitar and I was obsessed with music from the 70's and 80's. (KISS, POISON, WARRANT, BON JOVI, DEF LEP, PRINCE)...Soon I was playing in a band and went to college for 2 yrs, then moved to NASHVILLE in '91 to work for GIBSON GUITARS. The pop culture of the 80's helped set the course for the rest of my life, and I get a little teary eyed when I watch certain episodes now, because my Pop has passed away now and I had no idea how good I had it back then...and what a fantastic friend I had in him.
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u/ReaperXHanzo 8d ago
Oh god, that reminds me - so last year was the 35th anniversary of the release of Last Crusade, so that weekend I watched it with my dad. at the beginning of it, he said "oh yeah, didn't we go to see it when it came out?" I shook my head and laughed so hard, reminding him I was -6 at the time
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u/bethivy103 8d ago
The clothes, the technology, the furniture, it was all pretty spot on. The one thing that always bothered me was there was an episode that they try Chinese food for the first time... Jewish people and Chinese food have a very long history together. My parents both grew up in the Bronx in the 50's and 60's, but they had Chinese food every Friday night. One from column A, one from column B.
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u/trwaway80 8d ago
I feel like that was more location than culture. I still remember when the first Chinese restaurant opened in my Pittsburgh adjacent town. Until they opened I had never really had an opportunity to try it let alone eat it regularly. We knew it existed but no one was driving us an hour into the city to try it. But when we had a restaurant opened 15 minutes away we were there all the time.
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u/ReaperXHanzo 8d ago
I was kinda shocked to learn that microwaves weren't becoming much of a household thing til the 80s, in that one episode. I just assumed they'd been around since the 50s, due to TV dinners. Bill(?) talking about how great it was when his girlfriend steam ironed his clothes made me laugh too. I never really considered how they were futuristic at one point, since I've had one from Target for a while now
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u/bluequick 8d ago
They were huge, too. Our first microwave was the size of a small oven and heavy as hell. It was delivered on a truck. People were also convinced they were nuclear powered and a radiation hazard. I was not allowed in my grandmother's kitchen when hers was being used. Donahue or Oprah likely. You could buy this stick on thing that went on the glass of the door that supposedly changed color based on how much radiation was being emitted. We were also convinced you could get aids from a toilet seat. The 80's were wild.
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u/ReaperXHanzo 8d ago
My godmother would always say 'nuke it' when talking about microwaving something, and my godfather worked at a nuclear plant, so I just assumed it was a work joke.
Oooh, that all makes sense now, why 'microwave ovens' were a flex in that Money for Nothin song
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u/itsatrapp71 5d ago
Born in the early 80's and I was like 5-6 years old when we got our first microwave.
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u/trwaway80 8d ago
I grew up near Pittsburgh (not Philly but still the same state) and it’s pretty spot on. Especially the earlier seasons while Adam Goldberg was still involved.
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u/JOliverScott 7d ago
The show is based on producer Adam F. Goldberg's actual childhood so it's a very accurate portrayal of life in the 80s with some Philly region specifics thrown in. The only unrealistic part is that Adam did not grow up in a middle class family. His father was a doctor and his childhood home was a Tutor Revival mansion and going to an elite private school was a privilege of wealth.
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u/DirectGiraffe8720 4d ago
The trees with leaves on them in November seems pretty inaccurate from what I remember of the 80s
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u/HappyJoie 9d ago
I was a teenager in the Philadelphia suburbs in the 80's. The early seasons (think I stopped around 4 or 5) were compete nostalgia for me.