A defense of Everybody Loves Raymond

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Rosenthal also bucked the then-popular trend of cramming the show with storylines, a trend prompted by the success of Seinfeld, which placed four storylines—one for each character—in nearly every episode. Friends told at least three stories and sometimes six. Arrested Development, a show that would pop up toward the end of Raymond’s run, would sometimes attempt nine stories within its running time, often spreading them over multiple episodes. Indeed, the trend since the ’70s had been toward more and more stories, even as the running time of sitcom episodes grew shorter.

Raymond deliberately returns to the formats of the sitcoms of the ’50s and ’60s, focusing on one main storyline that involves all of the characters and allows each to comment on the action. A minor event—say, Ray’s daughter asking him about God—will spiral outward, until the entire family is examining why it isn’t more religious. If a storyline is about Ray’s brother Robert (Brad Garrett) or one of the parents, Ray won’t be shoehorned into it where he doesn’t belong, essentially becoming a supporting character for that half-hour, before returning to the show’s forefront in the next episode. This gives the show a deliberately classic feel, which Rosenthal enhanced by stripping out as many contemporary references as he could. When other shows were straining to cram their episodes as full of incident as possible, Raymond was giving its jokes room to breathe.

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