![]() ![]() "Well," squeaks Romano in a ten-year-old's voice, "maybe that's what I want."Įverything stops dead right there. "But you gotta understand, Ray, that that's not a wife-that's a mother." If we could just figure it out, you and I could be happier." I don't think it's that you're just lazy-I think there's a deeper reason behind it. "Of course," his wife says to Ray, ignoring her mother-in-law, "but why is it such a battle to get you to do anything?" And Ray's TV mom, hovering nearby, tells his wife, "Raymond is a very hard worker and sometimes needs to relax." "Can't I sometimes watch TV?" Ray whines, pouting. The most painfully poignant TV moment I've seen in years-not counting Jason Alexander's first ad for KFC-came during an episode in which Ray's wife is trying to get him to at least consider marriage counseling because she just can't seem to nag his sorry ass off the sofa. His show's funny, but it ain't pretty it isn't edgy, but it cuts deep. I'll take Ray Romano, the leading man of weenie, the maestro of morose. I'll take the mama's boy who-in real life-was still living in his parents' house at age twenty-nine. I'll take the nebbish who can't get laid, won't grow up, and doesn't want anybody mad at him. Well, you can have the depressive brute with the cash-stuffed duffel bag and the endless string of yielding, wet-lipped women. Maybe if you're gonna watch any show about an East Coast Italian clan stuck in the sludge of love and hostility, it'll be the stiff, gassy corpse of The Sopranos, where the mope-opera Grand Guignol bushwa is so untrue to life, it makes ELR play like a newsreel. Maybe you think his show, despite its Chekhovian probing of the delicious miseries of marriage and family, is a bit too Bea Arthur for a hipster like yourself. Maybe it's the Edge Factor, that thing HBO milks so well: It's Not TV Because Someone Just Said "Cocksucker." Hell, maybe you don't love Raymond, either. Twenty million people watch the show every Monday night, millions more dig it in syndication, and I don't know any of 'em. ![]() Everybody Loves Raymond, yo-check it out. I love him like sunshine and tell my friends to look for him. ![]() A guy who makes me laugh, I owe him somehow. He'll take care of you.Ī comedy maestro? That's solid gold, brother. You brag him up to all your friends: He's the best. Plumber, barber, shoedog, chef-you know a maestro when you find one. They don't work the job they work wonder. ![]()
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December 2022
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