During the last season of The Goldbergs, the ABC sitcom ran into a significant problem when Jeff Garlin exited the show in December 2021 after being the subject of several HR investigations into his on-set conduct. As Garlin portrayed Murray Goldberg, the family patriarch, this put the series in a significant bind, considering the ninth season featured the oldest daughter, Erica, getting married. With Garlin gone, the show had to quickly get creative, which unfortunately resulted in a weird CGI abomination that went viral for all the wrong reasons.
Despite Garlin’s claim that his exit would lead to the end of the show, The Goldbergs is officially returning for Season 10, and the showrunners already have a solution to their Murray problem: Kill him off-screen. In a new interview, Alex Barnow and Chris Bishop confirm that Garlin’s character will have died off-screen, and the characters will be going on with their lives. Via Entertainment Weekly:
The family has already grieved, unlike Pops [George Segal] and the premiere of season 9 where they’re dealing with it sort of very freshly. This is going to be a family that has not reconciled the fact that their father’s gone but has sort of moved on and has dealt with a lot of that. So we’re starting with optimism about a baby coming and looking forward to the future. It’s an opportunity for this interesting emotional basis for the way people are behaving. But Jeff won’t be in the series this year, and so far the stories have been largely about looking forward rather than looking back.
While Murray’s sudden death will no doubt be awkward, Garlin’s co-stars were not exactly shy about the fact that he clearly checked out of The Goldbergs a long time ago. After the CGI scene went viral, Wendi McLendon-Covey defended the creative team and threw Garlin under the bus for throwing the season into turmoil.
“This season threw us for a loop because a.) it’s hard to incorporate someone who doesn’t want to be there and wants to leave mid-scene, and b.) we werent about to re-write the 2nd half of the season,” McLendon-Covey tweeted. “We’re doing our best.”
The Goldbergs Season 10 premieres September 21 on ABC.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
