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161 reviews in total

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53 out of 82 people found the following review useful:
I am loving this!, 14 October 2002
Author: elizabethbennett from United States

This show is by far one of the best comedies I have seen in a long time! Great acting, writing....everything and what makes this show so good is the fact that it is based on the life of Ray Romano (unless you KNOW it, do not write it). I consider this family to be the poster children for dysfunctional families but are so funny and entertaining in the process. Loving this!

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34 out of 45 people found the following review useful:
This series took me ages to get into, 5 January 2006
Author: fee_tambo from United Kingdom

...but now I'm hooked, and I've even bought 5 DVD boxsets of it! Its weird because its both subtle AND sharp humour.

Its about Ray Romano, a sportswriter who just wants a quiet life...but he has 3 kids (a girl and twin toddler boys) and Debra (his wife) who struggles to juggle housekeeping and being a mother because Ray just will do anything to stay out of her way and not help! Debra is not your typical sitcom mum. She's independent and opinionated, and a very good match for Ray - she keeps him in line!

His Italian American parents (Marie and Frank) and divorced 40 year old brother (Robert) stay in the same street and facing across from Ray & Debra's house. And they are never away from there - The parents are very loud, expressive, overbearing people, but they don't mean to be....It's just their way. The brother is quirky to say the least! he's 7 foot tall and has a voice like Eeyore from the winnie the pooh movies (he IS the voice from the cartoon). He has weird little habits and is a little obsessive compulsive and insanely jealous of his younger brother Ray. However, at heart they are good, caring people and the family are extraordinarily close...but you'd never know it by the drama and shouting that goes on all the time! This is where the comedy comes from....

Now, I am married to an Italian man and I know from experience what Italian in-laws are like! so this might be why I find this so funny....watching Marie (Rays mum) is like watching my MIL (only its not so funny in real life, believe me!!)

If you like Seinfeld, King of Queens (another sitcom which took ages to grow on me), CLASSIC Woody Allen movies, the film Mambo Italiano or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, then you'll like this. Give it a go, watch more than one episode and you'll end up hooked like me - I promise!

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25 out of 39 people found the following review useful:
Holy Crap, This Show Is Good!, 5 October 2006

Author: Chrissie Smith (phantom_lover_1881) from United States

I love this show. It's hilarious. It has the weird, over protective, annoying, critical mother, the gross, dim-witted father who yells a lot, the over-looked first born brother, and the "perfect" second born son who writes for a newspaper and has a wife and 3 kids. In one way or another, you'll be able to relate with this show. I get mad when I miss an episode, even if I've already seen it. They're all so funny. The acting, writing, and directing are all wonderful. I think it's one of the best shows out there. If you like comedies about real life that aren't cheesy (like those so-called Disney channel comedies) you'll love this show just like I do.

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32 out of 54 people found the following review useful:
A good reason to quit drinking, 17 September 2007

Author: soulassassinx from Sweden

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is how you quit drinking!

It's ten o'clock on a Sunday morning and I wake up with a bad hangover or at least I used too. This used to happen too may times and then I found the perfect cure. Do not drink the day before, because if you do you are forced to wake up the next day and face the most obnoxious person in TV-history, Ray Romano.

In the end credits we read: "Based on the comedy of Ray Romano". What comedy? I am not an American but I've seen a few stand up acts from USA and most of it is funny, but in not even in the darkest corner of my imgagination can I even begin to understand how Romano's comedy would be like. Is this Romano's comedy? To go on the Leno show or Letterman and cut his pants legs?

Follow this chain of events and you have every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond:

Ray enters his kitchen and the audience laugh for some unexplained reason. He takes a bottle of beverage and starts to talk to his wife about how cool a game would be to watch. His wife says Ray has to do laundry/cut hedges/pick up kids/ or something along the line.

Rays parents enter and the audience laugh again. Rays mother comments the wife's cooking while his father says something funny about bowel movements and how stupid HIS wife is. Enter two twin (Age around)2 and the audience goes "Oww-aahh!" and then enter the daughter of the house. She shows a drawing; it later becomes a centre piece on the kitchen door.

Enter the brother. Ray's brother is called a cowardly, dumb, retarded bumhole by his entire family, yet again for some unknown reason. Ray's wife stands up for the brother.

Classic sit-com. split storyline. Ray want to see the game and maybe his brother has a problem with a date. Now we see every cliché in history of sit-coms evident and then the writers seem to go back to the drawing board, rinse, repeat.

Don't writers have any dignity, introspection, pride.

There is nothing lower in TV-comedy except the two shows that should not barely be mentioned: All of us and the catastrophe USA High.

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35 out of 60 people found the following review useful:
wonderful sitcom, 17 January 2000
Author: Geordie-4 (tnrcooper@compuserve.com) from Oakland, California, USA

I'm not a big fan of TV. I think most of it is terribly contrived and has very little to do with the lives of normal people. This show is different. The fights they get into, the disputes, everything is true and funny. Ray is the beleaguered protagonist and his parents and brother are absolute scene stealers. This show is just wonderful. The writing is good and I can really see these sorts of things happening in my family. It is much easier to watch when it is someone else's family though.

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36 out of 65 people found the following review useful:
Funny, with good dialogue., 12 January 2001
Author: DancingPotato from Jonquiere, Canada

This show is about a man named Raymond Barone, a sports columinst, who has a wife (Debra) and 3 kids. He lives in a big house, makes money, has beautiful kids and wife. No problem, right? Wrong. He lives across the street from his parents and brother. The family from HELL. (Wou-wou-wou-wouuuu)

His mother is always complaining about Debra, his dad is going senile and his brother is a jealous giant. This show, on paper, seems weird, but is actually fairly normal. It deals with real life problems (of some sort) and the characters are pretty realistic.

The show has above-average acting, especially from a standup-turned-TV star. Peter Boyle, as Ray's dad, has by far the funniest moments, followed by 6 foot 8 Garret as his brother.

The only real problem I can find here is that almost every episode starts out the same.(But unwinds differently.)

A good show that you should probably check out,if you aren't already.

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23 out of 40 people found the following review useful:
Marie's 'representation' of seniors, 26 July 2006
Author: smooth_op_85 from United States

Someone once posted a comment about Marie being a disappointment for seniors everywhere. The big part of it is this, that Raymond's mother is an exaggerated form of Phil Rosenthal and Ray Romano's Mother also, I don't get why people believe like with The Cosby Show (as far as black representation) that the seniors on the show have to represent ALL seniors or the majority of them.

In Seinfeld, I know a couple that was similar to George's parents, but that doesn't mean that they are the representation or the unique representation of seniors everywhere. It is a TV show that is based on the families of the writers and the creators of which Phil Rosenthal and Ray Romano are. Also, my mother isn't as overprotective as Marie is but I don't go around yelling about how Marie isn't like her. TV is representative of not only people but of the way writers see them as well as the characters and how they act. Good writing takes this and makes it known to the audience.

Thank you for reading

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29 out of 52 people found the following review useful:
Very bad, 27 August 2006

Author: lpokeefe from The Twilight Zone

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

A show where nothing ever goes right for the main character is a sitting duck. The plots are guaranteed to be thin and repetitive; the acting is guaranteed to be bad; the writing is guaranteed to be flat; and the characters are guaranteed to be mean. Shows where things don't work out for the main character rarely succeed. "Married... with Children" fell flat on its face because of this, and this show falls just as badly.

Ray Romano was never funny at all. Gearing a series around him was a bad idea, but then the producers/writers/whatever inserted the notion of nothing ever going right. As if this wasn't clichéd enough, the writers gave him a vicious wife, cutesy twins, mean parents and a somewhat stupid brother. Then they hired television standbys to "act", put in plots where everybody blames Ray for everything, and skipping down the path they went, not realizing that the path was the Hellbound road.

I am typically not of the sort to laugh about somebody else's misfortunes. Many comedies have been based around this idea, but the best of them- "Sanford and Son," "NewsRadio," "Seinfeld"- have always provided some sort of comedic foil to offset the misfortunes of the main character. In "Sanford and Son", typically either Fred or Lamont would be in trouble, and the other one would make fun of him. Thin, but it worked. "NewsRadio" gave you the powerhouse quartet of Bill, Jimmy, Matthew and Beth to provide comedic relief whenever Dave was in a tight spot. "Seinfeld" gave you the insanely out-of-luck George on one hand, and Kramer, Newman and Uncle Leo on the other. Balance and equilibrium.

"Raymond" doesn't do this. It gives you one guy who does everything wrong, and a bunch of snotty, selfish, intensely self-assured people to totally hate. And yet you're supposed to sympathize with Raymond, despite every force telling you otherwise. Any series that does something like this puts itself in a bad spot. Because of all the negative elements about it, I'm willing to call "Everybody Loves Raymond" one of the worst series of all time.

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16 out of 27 people found the following review useful:
Great!, 2 December 2002
Author: buff5575

Ray may be a little silly, but the whole show is funny. It never fails to make me laugh. The cast was well chosen, and the writers are well-educated and have a big sense of humor making family issues a laugh-fest every Monday Nights.

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25 out of 45 people found the following review useful:
Timeless humour in the classic mould., 8 April 2003
Author: John (opsbooks) from Blue Mountains, Australia

It took me a long time to get into this show because most of my friends kept putting it down. I'm now addicted to ELR and bad luck if nobody else I know admits to watching it! Apart from 'Becker' no other current American comedies really appeal to me.

What do I like about ELR? The way Ray sets off events without knowing how, then stands back and watches the results of his unconscious actions. Both the cast and the scripts are first-rate. Robert of course has to be my favourite character; he reminds me in some ways of Jack Benny. Favourite episode has to be the one in which Ray's parents back the car through the front wall. One of the great moments of television!

Long may this series continue.

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