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"Pops" has Crimson Tide connection
Screenwriter and playwright Adam F. Goldberg, whose new hit ABC television sitcom "The Goldbergs'' is based on his experiences growing up in the 1980s and 1990s in a Jewish family from the Philadelphia suburbs, gained inspiration from another Jewish playwright and writer-for-TV - Neil Simon.
"When I was in high school, I wasn't a great actor but I was in 'Brighton Beach Memoirs' I studied the structure and it influenced my writing. It was funny, heartwarming and based on his own life experiences," said Goldberg, 37. "I would write a play a week growing up. Much of what I wrote was based on my experiences and the people in my life. You write what you know. It's so special and sometimes surreal to think that our family's stories and memories are on national television," at 8 p.m. Central every Tuesday.
Though he grew up in the Philadelphia area, Goldberg has a family tie to Alabama. His grandfather on his mother's side, "Pops," who is played on the show by George Segal, earned his pre-Med degree at the University of Alabama in the 1930s. "This was at the time that there were quotas on Jews entering medical schools in Philadelphia. Only the rich families got their kids in. So he went to Alabama then to the University of Missouri Medical School," said Goldberg.
Growing up in the Philadelphia suburb of Jenkintown, where "The Goldbergs"...