The Real Adam F. Goldberg Previews 'The Goldbergs' Season 3: 'Puberty Is Looming'

It’s 1980-something on The Goldbergs, and the new season of the hit ABC comedy will once again be all over the decade, with pop culture references that will include everything from a major music industry scandal to a Christian Slater crush. There’s also that crazy little thing called puberty, which will shake things up for Adam (Sean Giambrone) and provide plenty of smothering opportunities for Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey). And movies will also be a big theme this season, with the show paying tribute to Risky Business and the sci-fi comedy Short Circuit, plus at least one more iconic ’80s flick.

Yahoo TV caught up with the real Adam, Goldbergs creator Adam F. Goldberg, to get a real-time update on what’s in store for Season 3. And we have to say, it all sounds pretty bitchin’ to us.

What’s the theme for Season 3? 
I‘ve really liked what we did Seasons 1 and 2, so I’m just trying to stay in theme and tone with the last two seasons. It’s gonna be a lot of the same “smothering” that people have come to love, and of course, a lot of Murray [Jeff Garlin] walking around in his underpants.

What can you tell us about the Risky Business-themed premiere episode?
If you’re gonna do Risky Business, you have to do what we call “Tom Cruising” the floor, which is sliding around the floor in your socks and underpants to “Old Time Rock and Roll” as that plays in the background. And we just shot those scenes and they’re really funny.

Watch a sneak peek of Barry getting risky:

You know, we wanted to start big this year, hopefully. Your first episode you usually get the most viewers, so we kind of went all out. We sank a Porsche, we went to a lot of different locations, we’re shooting it over the course of two weeks, which is a week longer than normal. So hopefully people respond to that it’s a big episode and it feels a little bit different than all the other comedies out there.

So Lainey will be a regular character now. How will she become more of a part of the Goldberg family, and did this happen in real life?
I love the idea that we’re gonna explore [in the new season], what it’s like when a character like Barry [Troy Gentile] is in love and has a steady girlfriend. The reality in real life, which I probably shouldn’t mention because the real Barry will kill me, was that my mom helped Barry get his prom date. Barry, one of his complaints was that Barry needed more friends and needed to date more, so at his request I invented this character of Lainey, and we loved the actress AJ Michalka so much that we wanted to keep her around because we feel like she grounds Barry, and it’s a great foil for him be kind of bouncing his comedy off of.

Both AJ Michalka and Hayley Orrantia are real-life singers, and they both sang on a few episodes. Will we get to see more of that this season?
I got really lucky in casting Hayley and AJ. I obviously didn’t cast them for their singing abilities, but what happens on our show as the season goes on is the songs are so expensive and destroy our budget. We’re kind of contained by a TV budget; we don’t have the money that movies usually do. So when we are running low on funds, or one song costs us twice as much, as we discover one song is really pricey, what we’ll do is we’ll have someone sing the next episode, which basically cuts the price in half because you only have to pay for the licensing and not the performance. So we do it out of necessity just because on a TV budget we run out of money in our music budget, so having Hayley or AJ sing, it’s half the price for us. You still get a great song that you know from back in the day, but it’s just Hayley performing it and it’s half the price.

Will Adam still have a girlfriend (Dana, played by Natalie Alyn Lind) this season or did she move to Seattle?
We’re touching on that as well. I mean, look, this year both in real life and the character, puberty is looming. A lot of the episodes this year for Adam are just really hitting head-on, which I don’t think you see a lot on TV, how hard it is to go through puberty. It hit me hard personally, I struggled through those years. Adam’s girlfriend is now long distance, so everything this year is gonna be more of a struggle for that character just because that’s what I went through at that age.

Can you tell us what movie you’ll be paying tribute to this season, or is that still top secret?
The first year I did Goonies, it was kind of my big movie tribute, and last year I did Ferris Bueller, a John Hughes movie, so every year I’m gonna do one huge movie blowout episode — it happens literally at the halfway mark when you’re starting to run out of steam and viewers are starting to kind of go away. So it’s a great way to kind of bring people back in. And this year we decided, and we’re negotiating right now so I can’t really make an announcement because it takes so long to fully get a movie studio on board with doing an episode all about one of their movies. But it’s not gonna be a John Hughes movie. It will be a seminal iconic ’80s movie that everybody knows.

Related: Fall TV Preview: Scoop on 66 Returning Shows

Is anything off limits with your family besides the 10 videos they won’t let you use?
[Laughs.] I’ve talked about… I have a series of videos that are so embarrassing that my family won’t let me use them. Is anything else off limits? Not really. If there’s ever an area of concern, I will call them and ask if it’s OK or warn them. At this point, we’ve got nearly 50 episodes and they love them all, so there’s a lot of trust there that I’m not gonna sell out their characters for the sake of a joke or do something that will really greatly impact their life now. So there’s a really good trust that’s been built up with my family. I only really have to answer to Barry mostly, who just wants his character to be as cool, as awesome as possible, which is in line with the TV Barry, so they are one and the same essentially.

I love that you do 1980-something so you’re not locked into a year. But do some fans get confused by that or point out when you have Princess Diana’s wedding in the same episode as Twisted Sister?
Yeah, of course. Every day there seems to be someone who’s pointing out some kind of a thing, the timeline that I do, then I explain there’s no timeline, and they go, “Oh I get it.” So I think at first it’s jarring but then it becomes the language of the show. And I really maintain and believe it’s the only reason the show is still around. It enabled me to do every episode that I’ve wanted to do and not have to worry about being constrained. And frankly, when I look back at my childhood, I have no idea what I was wearing or who was there most of the time, or even what time it was. I have a vague notion of maybe what grade I was in, you know memories just blend together, so it felt like a cool artistic choice and something you hadn’t really seen before. So yeah, it’s the language of the show now, and storywise it just gives us freedom to do whatever we love and that, it really just makes for great episodes. So yeah, I love the decision. And it could be jarring to people, but I think ultimately people just accept it and move on.

Related: 'The Goldbergs’ Cast Goof Off in Ballsy Gag Reel

Will we ever see [narrator and adult Adam] Patton Oswalt on the show?
Probably on the spinoff show that’s set today, about my wife dealing with her mother-in-law. I feel like that’s a show in itself. If Patton is in, I would love to bring that show to ABC. [Laughs.]

Can you tease anything else about Season 3?
We’re doing a lot of music this season, in addition to referencing movies and TV and all the pop culture stuff. And I’m really excited about the second episode, we’re doing a really funny Milli Vanilli tribute, which I think, it was just one of those big, iconic moments of the late ’80s, and I think it’s gonna be really funny and sweet. And kind of exactly what the show should be and will be.

The Goldbergs premieres Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.