I’m not a fan of all these reboots and remakes that Hollywood has forced upon us in recent years, and based on the comments I receive from our readers whenever I write about something related to that topic, most of you aren’t either. They’re never all that good, and many are just downright terrible. Do something original for goodness’ sake.
Plus, one of the things that made these old TV shows so great is that they weren’t a victim of our current woke, far too politically correct culture. (See: the “Roseanne” debacle.) I’ve been rewatching “Friends” at night over the last few weeks, and I’ve noticed several lines and scenes have been removed from the original airing — lines that were fine when I was growing up in the 1990s but are apparently too controversial for young folks today.
Of course, if you hop on Reddit or some other social media site where people under the age of 30 are talking about the show, they act as if it’s the most offensive thing to ever make the airwaves. Oh no, they made gay jokes! Oh no, the main characters are white! Oh no, they were mean to each other sometimes! Oh no, they don’t tell us their pronouns or how they identify! Oh no, why are there no trans characters?
Can you imagine what would happen if they watched “All in the Family?” But I digress.
Anyway, I’m happy to report that there’s at least one sacred cow in Hollywood that will never see a reboot: “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
Earlier this month, the show celebrated its 30th anniversary at the Paley Museum in New York City, and the two main stars, Ray Romano, who played Raymond Barone, and Patricia Heaton, who played his wife Debra, made it clear that even attempting to reboot the show wouldn’t work because of the deaths of Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts who played Raymond’s parents, Frank and Marie Barone. Boyle died in 2006, and Roberts died in 2016. Another cast member, Sawyer Sweeten, who played one of Raymond’s sons, died in 2019.
“Without them, I don’t know what the dynamic is,” Romano told the New York Post. “We love the show too much, we respect it too much to even try to do it.”
“To try to do it again without the cast members that we’ve lost would be a disservice to the show,” Heaton agreed.
And if you ever watched “Everybody Loves Raymond,” you know exactly what they’re talking about. The dynamic between Frank and Marie and their sons and daughter-in-law made the show as funny as it was.
Heaton added that the network wanted the show to continue for three more years, but its creators felt they’d “done all the stories” and didn’t want to “run the show into the ground.”
“You shouldn’t try to go back and redo something that is pretty much perfect,” Heaton went on. “We need to just leave it there and let people enjoy it for what it was,” she added.
Brad Garrett, who played Raymond’s brother Robert, agrees. “There is no show without the parents. They were the catalyst, and to do anything that would resemble that wouldn’t be right to the audiences or to the loyal fan base,” he told People magazine earlier this month, adding, “And it was about those two families, and you can’t get around that.”
“Everybody Loves Raymond” wasn’t necessarily my favorite TV show, but I did watch it. My parents were huge fans, and I’d often watch it with them. They always cracked up at Frank and Marie. And I’ll admit I saw a little bit of my mom and dad in those characters. As a matter of fact, I was just reading the comments on another article, and viewers agreed that the show was often relatable, and that’s what made it work.
I’m a fan of both Romano and Heaton independently of the show, and I’m glad they have the integrity to go on and create and star in new, original content. (If you haven’t, you should check out Heaton’s show “The Middle.”) That’s a rare thing in Hollywood these days.
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