6 ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ Controversies, From the Premise to the Finale

A great many viewers loved Everybody Loves Raymond when the hit sitcom was airing between 1996 and 2005, and now CBS is celebrating the show’s legacy with a Part 2 of the 30th Anniversary Reunion special, airing tonight, Monday, December 22, at 8/7c on CBS.

But as with many other popular TV shows of its time, Everybody Loves Raymond had its share of offscreen drama and criticism. Here are the Raymond controversies that dampened the laughter…

The gender politics

Like many other sitcoms of its era, Everybody Loves Raymond presents an inept husband and father and a long-suffering wife and mother who has to clean up his messes — and yet the storylines excuse his behavior.

“[Ray Romano’s Ray] is a thoughtless husband and a poor father interested only in television, food, and sex. Cue laughter,” Alison Cameron wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. “He is a stereotyped manchild who spends much of his time trying to shirk his responsibilities.”

In the same article, Dr. Marjorie Kibby, a senior lecturer in communication and culture at Newcastle University, added, “[Ray] is an extremely poor role model, he is an ineffective parent and a bad husband and the program says that it is charmingly endearing to be these things.”

CBS/Courtesy: Everett Collection

The real-life family members’ reactions

As Romano and show creator Phil Rosenthal explained to Entertainment Weekly earlier this year, many of Raymond’s storylines were based on real-life events that happened to one of the writers. And the family members of those writers would be none too pleased to see their stories on screen.

“I remember my parents in real life got separated at one time,” Romano said. “And when I broke my arm — I was 12 maybe — and my father would come over to try and take care of it… he thought he knew what he was doing. And that’s how my mom and him got back together. So we did an episode like that [Season 2’s ‘The Anniversary’] and my brother told me, ‘I told Dad, “Raymond’s doing a thing about when you and Mom were separated and he broke his arm.”’ And Dad just looked at him and went, ‘That bastard will stop at nothing!’”

The lack of diversity

Friends wasn’t the only hit 1990s comedy with an all-white cast. Everybody Loves Raymond also left characters of color largely out of the spotlight, as viewers have noticed.

“The Barones’ world feels unusually small on rewatch,” Jane O’Shea wrote for The Shot. “Apart from brief cameos and Ray’s newsroom colleagues, cultural or racial diversity is virtually nonexistent. For a show about modern family life, its narrow focus stands out sharply against the richer, more inclusive storytelling viewers now expect.”

Brad Garrett’s salary dispute

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In 2003, Brad Garrett walked off Everybody Loves Raymond’s set in a salary dispute. At the time, he was earning about $166,000 per episode, while Romano was reportedly earning nearly $2 million per episode, per Backstage.

Monty Brinton/CBS/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Romano and other profit participants in the show gave up some of their backend profits to give costars Patricia Heaton, Peter Boyle, and Doris Roberts a bigger share of the money, but Garrett held out for a better deal and refused to work. Heaton, Boyle, and Roberts reportedly even called out of work in support of Garrett. Finally, after a two-week stalemate, Garrett agreed to new terms and returned to work.

“The Faux Pas”

In the Season 9 episode “The Faux Pas,” Ray meets the dad of one of his twins’ friends and insults the man by disparaging his work as a custodian. Then Marie (Roberts) assumes the dad is Black when she hears he’s a custodian. In short, classism and racial microaggressions abound.

“This episode is so cringy. And not in a funny way,” one Reddit user wrote.

“I cannot watch this episode,” a commenter added.

The finale episode

“The Finale” — which, aside from a health scare that Ray faces, felt like any other Raymond episode — had fans divided. “I’m afraid to say it’s a bit of [an] anti-climax,” one IMDb user wrote. “I know this was an era where Friends and Frasier ended with big, game-changing finales, but even so, this felt if anything just like a normal episode.”

Rosenthal explained in a 2005 interview with the Television Academy Foundation that he didn’t want to “eventize” the ending to the show. “I thought, ‘What if we did more of a typical episode? We came into their lives in the middle; what if we left in the middle?’” he said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to know that your friends, your family are still there? We go away, but they’re there. … It doesn’t have to end. Families don’t always end.”

Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion, Part 2, Monday, December 22, 8/7c, CBS

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