S02.E06: Big Baby Ball

[maraleia]

 

When Mr. Meller singles out Adam during a game of Dodgeball, Beverly intervenes to protect Adam and gets Meller fired. But soon, Murray and Adam see him in a new light, so Beverly tries to get his job back…will she succeed? Meanwhile, Barry can't accept Erica is better than him in a new board game… Trivial Pursuit.

 

[Rhetorica]

My first time watching. It was cute. Nice to remember the 80s, especially the big hair...

[tvnerd]

I loved this episode, Erica pullng out Trivial Pursuit Jr on Barry I laughed out loud when they showed the logo, oh and Barryoply classic. I kind of felt bad when the P.E class ganged up on Adam. Nice to see the drama teacher again.

[bunnyblue]

I just got into The Goldbergs this past week by marathoning this season's first 5 episodes. I love it!! I was right around Adam's age in the '80s, so this show is full of glorious nostalgia.

 

Dodgeball has got to be the worst kid's "sport" ever invented and I totally sympathized with Adam's suffering in gym class. And what in the world was scooter-ball?! Mr. Meller totally reminded me of the gym teacher in "The Wonder Years".

 

I've read criticisms of Beverly's overbearing smothering, but she cracks me up. I love Wendi McLendon-Covey's over the top portrayal. 

 

Has Barry always been portrayed as such a loser? His mother lets him win at arm wrestling? Jeez. It's painful seeing how his entire family gives him obvious wins yet the sad sack doesn't catch on.

 

I want to watch season 1 but I have to wait until Amazon Instant Video lowers the price. :-(

[biakbiak]

And what in the world was scooter-ball?

 

We totally played scooter-ball in elementary school though it was more handball than the version we played.

[Shermie]

All those games was a great trip down memory lane. Finally receiving Life for Christmas was the best! And we loved Operation and Trouble.

And we used to play Trivial Pursuit in teams - guys vs girls - and one guy couldn't stand it when the girls won and accused the owner of the game of memorizing the cards? As if.

I can't believe scooter ball was a real thing? The hell?

[alexa]

I love this show....  As for the scooter ball if you would have asked me about it without seeing them doing it, I would have had no idea what you were talking about.  But seeing it brought back some far memory in my brain, so I must have played this in gym.  I saw it and was like OMG!  That is too funny.  My husband was the same way....he kind of remembered something like that after seeing it.

 

I love all of the 80's references, and yes Trivial Pursuit is almost impossible for a lot of people because of all of the categories :-)  We always found ways to play it so it could be finished more quickly.  I do kind of miss the days where people played more games together...that was fun to see.

[readster]

Oh yes, Scooter Ball, the wife and I were heading down memory lane a lot of this one. I laughed so hard at Over the Top reference. Good times.

[jww]

In my jr high class (mid 60’s) we would play a game on rainy game similar to scooter ball when we had to share the gym with the girls.  We did not sit on any scooter board but would have to scoot on the floor on our butts, hence the game’s name-black butt and the balloon ball was really big maybe 4’/5’ in diameter.  My eyesight was bad- 20/200 but I always took off my glasses before class and left them in my locker. The coach should have been fired for permitting students to wear glasses when they likely would be hit in the face with a ball.   You would have to be nearly blind to not see a ball from 20 feet without glasses.  I have never understood how a person could play Trivial Pursuit more than once since you have heard most of the questions.

[monakane]

I loved this episode, Erica pullng out Trivial Pursuit Jr on Barry I laughed out loud when they showed the logo, oh and Barryoply classic. I kind of felt bad when the P.E class ganged up on Adam. Nice to see the drama teacher again.

 

Trivial Pursuit was played at every party I went to in the 80's.  I own 4 editions of the game.  Sadly, they now collect dust in my attic.  I love the nostalgia I feel when I watch this show.  I lived in Jenkintown, PA in the late 1970's and still live in the Philly area.  My one pet peeve is that the WaWa store in the show sells alcohol.  Pennsylvania has a state-owmed liquor store system, so you can't buy any alcoholic beverages in a WaWa.  I love the shout-out to WaWa, but it always takes me out of the story.

[drmka9]

Has Barry always been portrayed as such a loser? His mother lets him win at arm wrestling? Jeez. It's painful seeing how his entire family gives him obvious wins yet the sad sack doesn't catch on.

There was one episode - I think the first season finale - where Barry admits that he isn't nearly as cool as he tries to portray himself. It's kind of a nice running characterization with him.

 

I have never understood how a person could play Trivial Pursuit more than once since you have heard most of the questions.

I've been playing it off-and-on for a few decades and still haven't heard most of the questions. One deck has something like 6000 questions, and you can (or could, at one point) buy additional decks.

[Traveller519]

Hoooo that's a lot of Bananas... and beats

[HyeChaps]

They did that Junior Trivial Pursuit switch on Family Guy.

[jumper sage]

I want to watch season 1 but I have to wait until Amazon Instant Video lowers the price. :-(

Bunnyblue - check out your local library.  Mine carries it.

[Taylorh2]

I wonder what year public schools banned 'Dodgeball ?  lol

[pivot]

Dodgeball has got to be the worst kid's "sport" ever invented and I totally sympathized with Adam's suffering in gym class. And what in the world was scooter-ball?!

I've read criticisms of Beverly's overbearing smothering, but she cracks me up. I love Wendi McLendon-Covey's over the top portrayal.

Scooterball was the greatest game ever invented. We played it like soccer on scooters.

And there is a worse game than Dodgeball, Pinball. It is just like Dodgeball except there are 3 bowling pins on each side in the back and 1 person has to stand in front of the pin and guard it and the game doesn't end until 1 side's pins are all down. So what inevitably happens is that one team ends up with just the pin guards left on their side and the other team lobs balls at them and they are not allowed to move to dodge them. I was always "picked" to be a pin guard because I sucked at throwing balls. It was basically exactly what happened with Adam in gym class with a ton of people targeting just you with balls. Gym class was brutal back in the 1980-1990s.

And I love Wendy's Beverly too. She is hysterical.

Now that we have young kids in the extended family we've been bringing out the old board games to play again. They love Trouble. I forgot how much fun playing boards games is.

Edited November 13, 2014 by pivot

[Perfect Xero]

We played "pinball" when I was in school too, of course I was pretty decent at it in the sense that I was reasonably agile and had a decent throwing arm.

Honestly, I've never understood the way Dodgeball is shown on TV ...

I was definitely one of the "loser" kids at middle school age, but I don't recall ever experiencing it as this viscous blood sport where packs of popular kids are out for blood and the "weak" kids are legitimately getting hurt and bruised. Maybe we used softer balls or something?

 

Has Barry always been portrayed as such a loser? His mother lets him win at arm wrestling? Jeez. It's painful seeing how his entire family gives him obvious wins yet the sad sack doesn't catch on.

Barry was portrayed as legitimately being very good at hockey last season, but that's about it.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Perfect Xero

[Traveller519]

I'd basically completely forgotten about those scooters until this episode.

[dcalley]

Oh hello. I did not see you sitting there.

 

I love this show....  As for the scooter ball if you would have asked me about it without seeing them doing it, I would have had no idea what you were talking about.  But seeing it brought back some far memory in my brain, so I must have played this in gym.  I saw it and was like OMG!  That is too funny.  My husband was the same way....he kind of remembered something like that after seeing it.

 

I love all of the 80's references, and yes Trivial Pursuit is almost impossible for a lot of people because of all of the categories :-)  We always found ways to play it so it could be finished more quickly.  I do kind of miss the days where people played more games together...that was fun to see.

I had the same reaction to seeing scooter ball! I would not have remembered it at all, but once I saw those damn scooters and the kids ramming into each other, I recognized it. It's so weird to have something dredged up from your brain like that. It also made me remember matball. I always thought it was such a stupid activity. We only played it when it rained and we were stuck inside, so I guess that didn't help.

 

There are a ton of new games out now and even large chains like Target and Barnes and Noble sell some of them, though it's best to support a local game store. I recommend Wil Wheaton's Tabletop show for seeing how some of them are played, but it's not necessarily a family-friendly show. I also like the site Board Game Geek. Anyway, people are out there playing games still!

 

I have never understood how a person could play Trivial Pursuit more than once since you have heard most of the questions.

There are hundreds of cards, each with 6 questions. My husband and I still play it on occasion, but we have a version from the '90s, so a lot of the questions are dated.

 

Another problem with dodgeball is that those of us who were not athletic and hated the game could just intentionally get out right away and go sit in the corner. I appreciated it at the time, but that's not good physical education.

 

This was good, but nothing beats The Wonder Years and Freaks and Geeks for their handling of gym class, in my opinion. To that, you might say potato potato. Or potato tomato.

[ajsnaves]

We never played scooter ball, but we did something with those scooters when I was in elementary school.  We had a whole school Olympics every spring, where we all had to compete for the honor of our class. There was something with scooters.  We played with a parachute (had to get a ball in the hole in the middle.  I remember something with a huge rubber ball that we had to pass back and forth over our heads.  And we ate oranges.  And then the whole thing ended with a song.  I am sure the neighbors loved hearing a thousand 3-10 year-olds singing at the top of our lungs.  Dodge ball was also played in gym, but I think we used nerf balls.  But I also remember being hit by those rubber kickballs too.  My least favorite thing we had to do was climb the rope.  Let's see if he can get 9 year old kids to climb to the 25 foot ceiling, hoping he doesn't fall onto the 1 inch mat. But I did like swinging on the rope.  I was good at that.

 

I loved Trivial Pursuit, and eagerly buy new editions when they come out.  I remember the first Genus edition.  It is surprisingly hard now with all the old pop culture stuff, and out of date questions.  My brother and I used to play it when we were kids. So all in all, this was a great episode for making me feel nostalgic.

[Shermie]

Ha, the genus edition. Everybody called it the genius edition, in seriousness. Because it was hard, I guess.

jww, have you every played Trivial Pursuit? Because there's no way you'd hear all the questions after playing once, not even after playing a dozen times. Each card has six questions, one for each category, so after you read one question, it goes in the back of the box, the other five questions unread. You never get through the whole box in one game.

It's a great Canadian game, by the way.

[Kromm]

I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason I didn't like this episode much. Dunno why yet.

[jww]

jww, have you every played Trivial Pursuit? Because there's no way you'd hear all the questions after playing once, not even after playing a dozen times. Each card has six questions, one for each category, so after you read one question, it goes in the back of the box, the other five questions unread. You never get through the whole box in one game.

 

No I have not, if was just judging  the size of the stack of cards and I  assumed there were around 100 cards with one question per card.  However,  Barry did demonstrate the game can still be rigged if you have accessed to the cards before the game. Are the cards usually  shuffled before a new game? I do not remember  playing dodge ball in jr/sr high but when we played it in grade school if the ball came anywhere near me I would claim I had been hit and receive much praise from the teacher for showing good sportsmanship.

[TV Diva Queen]

I'm 50, we played scooter ball and Dodgeball.  My kids went/go to the same grade school that I did (in Chicago) and they still play dodgeball.  We had 2 versions, the one we played that is usually shown on TV is what we call German Dodgeball (who in the world thought up THAT name?)  Two teams split up on opposite sides of the gym.  The other dodgeball we'd play was everyone was in a huge circle (our gym floor was marked for this), several balls, one person in the middle.  As I type this....I'm laughing out loud, because it was CRAZY.  

[dcalley]

Barry did demonstrate the game can still be rigged if you have accessed to the cards before the game. Are the cards usually  shuffled before a new game?

The cards aren't usually shuffled, but there's nothing stopping someone from pulling from the middle of the box, as Erica did to prove Barry was cheating. There are 6 questions per card and you're only asked one, which is determined by chance (the roll of the die) and where you move, so it's not easy to cheat for long, especially when there are more than 2 players. I found it a little unbelievable that Barry cheated for as long as he did, but maybe he's got a great memory.

 

The other dodgeball we'd play was everyone was in a huge circle (our gym floor was marked for this), several balls, one person in the middle.  As I type this....I'm laughing out loud, because it was CRAZY.  

That is horrible!

Edited November 14, 2014 by dcalley

[Paron Xanthis]

This was a gem.

 

Adam: (when the kids in his gym class look at him the first time)  What?  It could be any of our moms.

Adam: (when the kids in his gym class look at him the second time) . . . This one's tough to deny.

[chrisvee]

I really love this show. Grew up in the Philly suburbs in the 70s and was in college in the 80s so close enough. :)

We played Dodge Ball with the red kickballs inside the gym. A few people were throwers on the circle and everyone else was in the middle. If you got hit by a ball, you became a thrower. Last kid left in the circle won.

We didn't have scooters but we played some variation of Crab Walk Soccer. Everyone on two lines facing each other in crab walk position. Huge ball in center. Had to push it across the opponents goal with your feet.

[SnarkyMcSnarkerson]

I wonder what year public schools banned 'Dodgeball ?  lol

 

I graduated in 2006 and it was still being played then, although we didn't use the red rubber balls that really hurt. We used smaller, squishy balls that only hurt a little but that you could squeeze and get a good grip on for better throwing. I really enjoyed it, it wasn't nearly as viscious as what we saw on this episode.

 

It also made me remember matball. I always thought it was such a stupid activity. We only played it when it rained and we were stuck inside, so I guess that didn't help.

 

Thanks for the link - I had totally forgotten about Big Base! We only got to play that on Fridays when the teacher thought we were "good" the rest of the week, so it was a treat of sorts, and we had a blast! I was no athlete in any sense of the word, but still had a lot of fun playing it!

[Dilandau]

As someone who hated gym class (and also graduated in 2006!) I actually liked dodgeball because once you were hit you could go sit out. My friends and I would all get hit on purpose at the beginning of the game and then sit down and chat on the sidelines. It was nice, like a free period to relax. 

Edited December 5, 2014 by Dilandau

[Arynm]

DId any of the 80's babies learn square dancing like I did? or sit in rows and bang on the floor with big sticks? We had to learn a song and all do it together? Maybe it was a southern thing. We also had dodgeball and the olympics (which I never won). Those were good days.

[Kromm]

DId any of the 80's babies learn square dancing like I did? or sit in rows and bang on the floor with big sticks? We had to learn a song and all do it together? Maybe it was a southern thing. We also had dodgeball and the olympics (which I never won). Those were good days.

I won't say "nobody North of the Mason-Dixon line Square Dances".

 

However, I have a feeling it's not done in public schools.

[BookThief]

DId any of the 80's babies learn square dancing like I did? or sit in rows and bang on the floor with big sticks? We had to learn a song and all do it together? Maybe it was a southern thing. We also had dodgeball and the olympics (which I never won). Those were good days.

I don't remember the stick thing, but I grew up in Pennsylvania and in (public) elementary school music class we did learn some square dancing moves.  I didn't realize how good my high school gym class was until it came up in conversations with others.  We had archery (out near the parking lot!), golfing (which ended with a round over at the putt-putt place down the road), we learned how to keep score in bowling so we had to then go bowling.  I'm sure we had your normal stuff in between all that too.  In middle school, one session was to either learn wrestling or some dances, so to this day I can do 1 country line dance, the Electric Slide, and the Macarena. Thanks, gym class! And it was only in middle school, but we had Track & Field day in which everyone had to participate (and you "trained" in gym classes for a month or so beforehand).  I sucked at it, but it was an excuse to sit outside with your friends while participating in an event for like, 2 minutes and then going and sitting back on the bleachers with your friends (better if you did all of the same events with your friends).  Honestly, I think they were just trying to see who had any talent for being future members of the high school track team...

[Shermie]

We did square dancing in high school (in Canada) back in the late '70s. I never heard of the stick banging thing, but The Middle used it in an ep a couple weeks ago, and it's set in contemporary times.

[pivot]

DId any of the 80's babies learn square dancing like I did? or sit in rows and bang on the floor with big sticks? We had to learn a song and all do it together? Maybe it was a southern thing. We also had dodgeball and the olympics (which I never won). Those were good days.

I went to school in Minnesota and they made us do a square dancing concert . My partner was insane and swung around so much that my shoes came off in the middle of the concert and he ended up getting drug out on his ass. Man, that was embarassing.

[bunnyblue]

I went to school in Minnesota and they made us do a square dancing concert . My partner was insane and swung around so much that my shoes came off in the middle of the concert and he ended up getting drug out on his ass. Man, that was embarassing.

 

LOL, I can imagine. 

[biakbiak]

Yeah I went to public school in Washington State and we had two weeks of square dancing every year in school. It was always my favorite time of year in gym because you could wear your street clothes and didn't have to take a shower afterwards!

 

Erica pullng out Trivial Pursuit Jr on Barry I laughed out loud when they showed the logo, oh and Barryoply classic

 

I love that Barry is so dim he didn't even realize that the questions were obviously too easy to be the trivial pursuit game he was playing before and that he was so cocky about winning.

[ladyrott]

I had forgotten those scooters (blocked them out, maybe?) until I saw them.  My school did something called Crab Soccer on them and I cant remember how many times my hand got crushed by someone rolling over it on one!  I LOVE the nostalgia on this show.  I was born in 1970 and the 80s are my misspent teen years...love it. 

 

Trivial Pursuit was the coolest game when it came out.  We all gained a new respect for my dad when my family got our first one.  Who knew daddy was such a font of useless trivia?  I can remember us all staring at him in shock as he correctly answered questions like "Who won the best supporting actress Oscar in 1962?"  LOL  My boyfriend's son (who is almost 16 and lives for video games) actually likes to play board games so when I moved in with him, I brought my trivial pursuit games.  Unfortunately, the tv edition I have is from the 90s and then I have the 80s edition so the poor kid doesn't stand a chance against his dad and I.  LOL

[Stinger97]

Just FYI, this episode is being rerun tonight on ABC at 10:30pm. 

[Big Mother]

I actually liked mr. Mellor as the coach and could understand why he was being so tough on the kids. but when he was a total insane raving lunatic at the furniture store I got kind of confused about his personality and normalcy.

[Guest]

On 12/7/2014 at 1:47 AM, Kromm said:

I won't say "nobody North of the Mason-Dixon line Square Dances".

However, I have a feeling it's not done in public schools.

I had square dancing in PE classes in Denver public schools in the 70s.  We also had those scooters.  

We had Trivial Pursuit since the 80s and my oldest sister still loves to play that original genus edition set when we get together.  We tease that she loves it because after 30+ years of playing it she's got the cards mostly learned, which she denies every time, so I laughed at Barry studying them.