Friday, August 22, 2008

From the archives: 'Raymond' writers' recipe for comedy

Last dip into the archives for the week, with a feature on Phil Rosenthal and the rest of the "Everybody Loves Raymond" writing team, and their obsession with lunch.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

wonder if the "family matters" writers had that same "doing it for nick at nite" thought in the backs of their heads.

Karen said...

Oh my lord, how I hated this show. The relationship between Ray and his wife was so horrifying to me; she seemed hellbent on emasculating him at every turn and he was terrified of her.

Maybe there was more to it than that, but not in any of the dozen or so episodes I managed to sit through. The wild success of that show, with its dismal depiction of marriage over two generations, was mystifying to me. That show always seemed to me to be a greater threat to the institution of marriage than same-sex unions could ever be--why on earth would anyone ever want to get married with that example before them?

Anonymous said...

Karen...

I totally agree. I did find the shows funny the first time I saw them, but after watching reruns, I started to take more of your point of view.

jazzfan360 said...

Nice feature. I've heard many, many stories over the years about how ELR had the greatest writers' room in television, and how writers would fight to get in there and then, amazingly, never want to leave. We should all be lucky enough to work for a man like Phil Rosenthal.

BTW, Karen, I used to hate the show too (and there are still a few eps I can't watch because Debra is just too much to deal with) but I came around eventually because it's just SUCH impeccably structured situation comedy. I couldn't deny it.