Ordinary People

Left to right, Marie (Doris Roberts), Ray (Ray Romano), Robert (Brad Garrett) and Frank Barone (Peter Boyle) on Everybody Loves Raymond. Courtesy Global TV.

Everybody Loves Raymond had a trick that it played very well, making the comfy-slipper comedy the boomer sitcom of choice for most of its nine seasons. The show’s singular achievement was allowing both its characters and audience to enjoy the illusion that life remained much the same as it was back when the biggest care in the world was arguing with your brother over the last breakfast pancake. The trick ends Monday, May 16 with the show’s finale, although Raymond is destined to last forever in syndication.

There won’t be much hoopla surrounding the finale, CBS promises. No hour-long summation like Seinfeld. No football huddle-hug as in the teary conclusion to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Just as Ray Barone seldom tucked in his shirt, Raymond never went in for a lot of fancy frills. That’s why everybody loved Raymond; at Ray’s, you could relax and forget the world.

I loved the scene in every episode where the show’s writers allowed Ray Barone — a sports journalist who never seemed to be on deadline — and housewife Debra to forget about the world. A few weeks ago that moment came when Ray breezed into the couple’s Long Island suburban home, shoulders high, relaxed.

“How was work?” Debra asked, enjoying a magazine on the couch, her living room so clean that you could almost detect a scent of lemon through the TV screen.

“Great,” Ray replied. “How are the kids?” (They have three.)

“Oh, I sent them over to the Parkers,” she trilled.

Quality time: Ray (Ray Romano) and Debra (Patricia Heaton). Courtesy Global TV.

And with that, every real care most married couples experience disappeared. No anxious discussion over what was and wasn’t happening at work. No wrenching conversations about a momentarily wayward child. Oh, that all parents had neighbours like the Parkers where they could park their children at inconvenient hours.

What topic made the top of the Barones’ news cycle that day? Ray breakfasted across the street at his parents’ house that morning with brother Robert. And mom gave Robert more blueberries in his pancakes.

It should be mentioned that these two brothers and their wives are all crowding 50. Still, they hover close to mom and dad, adult kids trapped in a classic ’60s sitcom — shows like Leave it to Beaver, where no one knew what dad did for a living and every episode revolved around a manageable family crisis. For instance, what the heck are you supposed to get your wife for her birthday? (Ray blew it that episode, if memory serves, buying Debra a space heater.)

I hope that doesn’t sound snarky. There is surely a place on television for comfort entertainment, and Everybody Loves Raymond deserves its place in syndication heaven. The Barone boys (stand-up comedians Ray Romano and Brad Garrett) managed the practised antagonism of too-close siblings with just the right measure of malice and fun. Ray and Debra were even more interesting together. One way the show managed to stay young was the consistently fresh performance of Patricia Heaton, whose relish for mischief and offhand sexuality kept Ray spinning in a revolving-door state of teenage anxiety.

Television advertisers surely liked seeing Boomers portrayed as big kids at play. The show’s ads seem tailored to reach still-frisky middle-aged consumers. During commercial breaks in an episode in early May, we had Gene Hackman doing voiceovers for barbecue sets, Carly Simon belting it out for Canon copiers and — say it ain’t so — Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life being used to sell Caribbean vacation cruises.

Three Barones: Robert (Brad Garrett), Amy (Monica Horan) and Ray (Ray Romano). AP Photo Chris Pizzello.

Everybody Loves Raymond was never hot, never received a lot of magazine attention. The only time the show made the cover of Entertainment Weekly was the week it called it quits. And the closest Raymond came to introducing a catchphrase into the pop culture lexicon was papa Barone’s (Peter Boyle) exclamation “Holy crap!” — a variation on a polite Catholic curse (“Holy smokes,” “Holy mackerel”) that was thought to have died with Pope John XXIII.

Nevertheless, Raymond remained a consistently top-rated comedy. And Romano was the highest-paid performer on TV, taking in $45 million US a year. The show could have gone on. CBS certainly wanted a 10th season. So did all the cast, except Romano.

Perhaps he’d run out of preferred memories to share. The show was really his life, nicely told. Romano grew up in Billy Joel country — Long Island, N.Y. He lived with his parents until he was 29. His brother, a cop like Robert Barone, moved back home after getting divorced.

Of course, there was a disconnect there somewhere. Ray Romano was a comedian who moved to L.A. to make a TV series; Ray Barone was a sportswriter who never left home, not even for a road trip. And there is evidence that Romano felt uncomfortable about playing America’s favourite next-door neighbour. After the series hit it big in its third year (1998), Romano phoned David Letterman, whose Worldwide Pants company produces the show, asking to change the title. He never liked the “Everybody Loves” part. Letterman just laughed.

From the taping of the final episode of the show. From left: Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, Doris Roberts, Peter Boyle, Brad Garrett with his two children, Sullivan Sweeten, Madylin Sweeten and Monica Horan. AP Photo/CBS Richard Cartwright.

What with Romano calling it quits, you will see a lot of stories predicting the next great sitcom hit. It’s quite likely there won’t be one. Not like Everybody Loves Raymond, anyway. Sitcoms began with glad, reassuring family comedies — the daft Ricardos, Lucy and Ricky on I Love Lucy. Then came Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, The Cosby Show and Roseanne.

But the family-friendly sitcom, which originated in ’30s radio serials (Fibber McGee and Molly, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show) as a safe format to sell household goods, has calcified and blown away. The only domestic comedies other than Raymond in the top 25 of the current U.S. Nielsen ratings are cartoons: The Simpsons and Family Guy.

As suggested, Everybody Loves Raymond got there on the strength of a well-performed trick — by pretending that life hadn’t changed much since My Three Sons except for a declining birth rate. (Maybe Romano should’ve asked Letterman if he could change the show’s title to My Two Sons.)

Now that the series is going into permanent syndication, the Barones can finally move into their rightful neighbourhood, a mythic suburbia where lawns never need cutting, moms don’t have to work and every child is as well behaved as Wally and Beaver Cleaver.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.