Robert eventually married his on-again, off-again girlfriend Amy (Monica Horan). Ray and Debra’s three kids grew up. Frank and Marie thought about moving into a retirement village. Things shifted, but glacially.
Television is often seen as somehow more “realistic” because its characters can go on long-term journeys, from point A to point Z and back again. A character can start in one place and become something completely different by the series finale, and you’ll never once question any step of that journey.
But that’s not really realistic, is it? Yes, we have changes in our lives, but by
and large, we spend those lives surrounded by the same people, often in the same jobs, for year after year after year.
The circumstances of our lives remain the same, and we remain the same, but when we look back at, say, a decade of our lives, it still feels like we’ve gone on a great journey.
This, above all else, was Everybody Loves Raymond’s gift. In its non-event of a series finale — an episode that perfectly captures the divide between gratefulness for a life filled with family and love and the sheer mundanity of that life — the show never pushed too hard to make a point other than, “Life is hard. You might as well have people you enjoy in it.”
That is, ultimately, the message of most great traditional sitcoms. The characters might despise each other in the moment, but beneath that is some great undercurrent of love and respect. And these shows remain so
popular — Raymond continues in cable reruns to this day — because we hope, deeply, that in our own lives, we might find people like that too.
Everybody Loves Raymond isn’t streaming anywhere right now, but it’s available on DVD and for digital download. Or you can turn on your TV and find it in reruns somewhere, most likely.
