I review Everybody Loves Raymond.
Everybody Loves Raymond is a gem among sitcoms. It’s not about
bratty adults, usually post-collegiate, with messy relationships
(Scrubs, Friends, Graey’s Anatomy [which might as
well be a huge medicine joke], How I Met Your Mother, House, The
Office). It’s about a family, but not about kids (Fresh Prince,
Two and a Half Men, George Lopez, The Simpsons, and the list
goes on). It’s about adults in a family, which isn’t dysfunctional,
which is as apparent as the difference between its finale shot—in
which the family sits down for dinner—and the Arrested Development
finale, pre-teaser shot—in which Michael and George-Michael sail away
from their soon-to-be convicted family. It’s one of the last sitcoms
that’s not afraid of love. So many shows treat love as a ten-foot high
dragon with a bad breath and a crippling social awkwardness. It’s “he
might love me, he might not” or “should I commit” or “doesn’t
everybody deserve second chances” when you flip past prime-time
sitcoms about relationships. And it’s annoying that writers can’t
approach love with any kind of sentimentality or tenderness or even
realism because it has to be frigging dragon with a frigging
flamethrower on top of a frigging castle. In fact, the show that
anywhere approaches this level of frankness in dealing with love is
Pushing Daisies on ABC, and it’s being canceled after this season.
(Editor’s note: Fuck you, ABC.) ELR is refreshingly, retrospectively
different. Debra loves Ray, despite their flaws; Marie loves Frank,
despite their flaws. The family loves each other. It’s one of the few
TV shows where I’ve watched all the entire series more than four
times. Because it’s radically different comedy, where you can turn on
the TV and not think, “Ha ha, what horrifyingly emotionally disfigured
people these are” but “What a lovely place to be.”