The Goldbergs season 10 will kill off Murray after Jeff Garlin's controversial exit from the show. As the character of Murray Goldberg, the patriarch of the titular family, Garlin had been with the ABC show since its 2013 debut. But late last year, The Goldbergs was caught in an off-camera controversy as it was on December 16 that Garlin had exited The Goldbergs in a mutual agreement with the production company Sony Pictures Television. The decision came after an HR investigation into his on-set conduct, which several crew members reportedly found to be aggressive and unwarranted.
The investigation stemmed from several years of complaints. In many cases, crew members said they experienced instances of Garlin using inappropriate language. And in one example, Garlin allegedly berated a married couple that worked on the series. Although he had become less central to The Goldbergs in recent seasons, questions remained about how the sitcom would handle Murray's absence in the long term.
Now, according to EW, Murray will be killed off when The Goldbergs season 10 premieres on September 21. Alex Barnow, the co-showrunner of the comedy, says that the character will have already died when the new episodes begin. In his quote, which you can read below, the co-showrunner discusses how Murray's absence will change the family dynamics and previews some of the other storylines that viewers can look forward to.
Well, [Garlin is] not going to be on the season, obviously. [Murray] will have passed, and we are sort of starting from a place of multiple months removed from his death. 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.
It's probably for the best that the coming season addresses Murray's death directly. To get around Garlin's firing, the show relied on the use of off-camera dialogue and unused takes in addition to images of Garlin. Though this approach made sense as a brief fix, it didn't work well in execution. The sitcom would regularly go viral for perhaps the wrong reasons, as Twitter users and others poked fun at how unconvincing Murray's presence was. And, in any case, it's clear that Barnow wants to focus on the new episodes which are being described as a reboot for the ABC staple.
The Goldbergs season 10 will likewise feature newlyweds Erica (Hayley Orrantia) and Geoff (Sam Lerner) welcoming their first child. As is often the case in real life, the sadness for The Goldbergs clan will also see some moments of happiness. There will also be the usual cameos and hilarious conflicts that the fans have come to expect. It will be interesting to see how the show handles that bittersweet balance as it enters a milestone that relatively few comedies reach anymore.
Source: EW