Maybe everybody does love ‘Raymond’

Work woes and family fun
In the first season, Ray’s sportswriting career resulted in brief and generally irrelevant guest appearances by sports stars including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Tommy Lasorda. But after the second season opened with Raymond embarrassing himself on a sports-talk TV show, his occupation became less and less relevant, and he became a head-of-the-house who never leaves the house (a condition known as “Ozzie Nelson Syndrome”).  Stay-at-home mom Debra rarely mentioned her previous work in public relations, and she only took an outside job twice in the series, both times lasting only one episode.

On the other hand, Robert’s life outside the immediate circle of family was the subject of many plotlines. His future wife Amy first appeared midway through the first season, but the couple didn’t tie the knot until the end of season seven. The producers didn’t have to worry much about losing actress Monica Horan to another show; she’s the real-life wife of Phil Rosenthal (which makes her part of the real-life inspiration for Debra).  And since Amy’s family has been introduced to the show, they have become central to almost a third of the episodes (easily exceeding the appearances of Debra’s family over all nine seasons — and providing a readily-available cast for the long-rumored “Robert” spin-off).

The episodes in which Ray’s wife Debra and mother Marie were in direct conflict are among the most memorable in the series. From the first Thanksgiving episode, in which Debra tampered with tradition by making fish (setting up Thanksgiving dinner episodes as a tradition), to Marie teaching Debra to make her famous meatballs, their best scenes seemed to happen in the kitchen. On the occasions when Debra chose to confront Marie directly, Ray’s absolutely panicked reaction was always among his most extreme and funniest. Nothing showed more how Robert’s marriage changed the show than when Marie and Debra fought for new bride Amy’s allegiance.

He's no Homer
“Everybody Loves Raymond” could be considered a low-impact comedy show.

Unlike Homer Simpson, Raymond never fell down a gorge, got crushed by a lady wrestler or glued his head to anything. The show's most spectacular visual image comes from the episode in which Marie drove her car through the front of Ray’s house (two seasons after Frank, off-screen, ran into Robert’s parked police car). Debra’s strongest visual moment was an accident with a curling iron. Robert had his scenes with a puppet named “Traffic Cop Timmy,” and Frank’s Halloween Frankenstein costume was the most obvious in-joke (Peter Boyle had played the monster in “Young Frankenstein”) for a show that usually avoided them.

“Everybody Loves Raymond” was the first situation comedy to have a declarative sentence for a title since “Father Knows Best,” although co-creators Romano and Rosenthal were haunted by the fear that the audience might mistake its sarcasm for self-aggrandizement. So, in the show's early opening title sequence, in which Raymond's family passed behind him on a conveyor belt, it was repeated every week by brother Robert.

No claim was ever made that Raymond knew best; Romano’s nervousness about his lack of acting experience was integrated into his character. And among a very skilled cast of experienced character actors, in nine years of situation comedy, Ray Romano has earnestly earned his show's title.

Wendell Wittler is the online alias of a writer from Southern California.

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