A Danger to Your Children

This isn’t news. In fact, this article should have been written a long time ago. I’m sure ones like it have, which is good. The issue I’m addressing needs as many voices as possible. This might be late, but it needs to be said. My rage may be new, but it is fervent, glowing, and righteous. I loath Everybody Loves Raymond.





As far as I can tell there are three interrelated reasons why Everybody Loves Raymond is the worst television program in history, despite its longevity, popularity, and seeming omnipresence.
First, and most blatant, is simply that it isn’t funny. It’s supposed to be, but it isn’t. It fails. Now, I’m by no means a Raymond connoisseur, thank heaven, I haven’t seen every episode. I don’t think I’ve seen five. But really, how many chances are you supposed to give a program? Be wary of any television show with a laugh track. If you need a prompting to know what’s funny, chances are it isn’t.
(Seinfeld may be the only surefire exception.)
Secondly, and this is correlated to the above, it is repetitive. It has a formula and it sticks to it like a Pharisee. Every episode is a tradition that can’t be disturbed. This makes for horribly insulting television.
In the office where I sit, they were just waxing nostalgic about other TV programs from their childhood. Three’s Company came up. I never liked it. The golden colours, the faded sets, the unrecognizable hairdos, the palpable sexual innuendos that I wasn’t quite able to grasp, all combined to make me feel embarrassed and slightly guilty whenever I tried to watch it while waiting for Batman: the Animated Series to come start on RDTV. But John Ridder’s break out television vehicle was still important to me. I remember it distinctly as the first show I saw where I was able to recognize a clear formula. Without a doubt, the shows that I had been watching previous to, and around the same time as Three’s Company equally relied on formulas- I don’t think Growing Pains, The Facts of Life, or Visionaries were bastions of television creativity, but some reason I didn’t notice any formulas until Three’s Company. Always there was a misunderstanding with zany repercussions, always somebody misheard somebody else, always there was a crisp resolution in the 22 minutes allotted. In a way, Three’s Company helped awaken my media consciousness and me as a critic and writer.
Maybe Everybody Loves Raymond will have that kind of back handed benefit for some other child, because heaven knows it is ten times worse than any Three’s Company farce.
Finally, I’m not usually one for using this argument against entertainment of any kind. I usually feel that if a film, or a television show, or even a magazine is offensive to any group than that group should just ignore it, because one should never seek to impose their values on others. My conception of family doesn’t necessarily comprise of a whacking people and infidelity, but who am I to judge. I simply won’t watch. But sometimes a program airs that is so detrimental to any and all definitions of family values that to ignore it is tantamount to destroying the very structure of the family- any family. Everybody Loves Raymond is such an offender.
Ironically, because of the inclusion of Caucasian, heterosexual extended family, and the exclusion of naughty words, Everybody Loves Raymond has always been seen as a family friendly show. It’s on all day, on any channel. The kids never have to leave the room.
But they should. The should.
Despite the sheer lack of any minority, ethnic or otherwise, which can only lead to small mindedness and dangerous cultural naivety, Raymond displays a constant assaults to the happy home. The very formula, the one that makes the show not funny, is fighting. The marriage we see isn’t happy. Raymond can’t communicate, his wife only gets offended. Extended family is intrusive and inappropriately involved in their affairs. Both husband and wife are compulsively selfish, mean, competitive. They are either ruining the other’s big plans or punishing the other for doing so. There is no respect for mothers, father, or each other. Theirs, fictional though it may be, is a home full of judgment, sarcasm, and impatience. Everything a home, of any conception, shouldn’t be.
I’d rather my child of the future watch a show about the crazy hijinks of a transsexual, single father raising his prostitute, crack addict daughter, so long as there is genuine respect and love on display, than them catching a glimpse of the passive aggressive undermining comedy of Everybody Loves Raymond. Because despite what some might contend you are affected by what you watch. And I’ve seen a home influenced by Everybody Loves Raymond, and it’s the saddest place in the world.