The 10 Best "Everybody Loves Raymond" Episodes

Picking your favorite Raymond episodes ultimately comes down to “which Everybody Loves Raymond do you like best?” Don’t get me wrong: unlike a lot of long-running series, Everybody Loves Raymond has no dramatic shifts in focus or approach. No new showrunner comes in at the halfway mark hellbent on “righting the ship”; there are no late-stage casting shake-ups designed to goose the ratings. The core characters in the pilot — sportswriter Ray Barone and his wife Debra, plus his parents Frank and Marie and brother Robert, who live across the street (thaaat’s right) — are the core characters in the finale. (Monica Horan, a recurring presence for seven seasons, is elevated to series principal near the end, but that stems from story-line, as her character marries into the family.) Showrunner Phil Rosenthal and writers Tucker Cawley, Steve Skrovan and Lew Schneider are there at the start and there at the end. Kathy Ann Stumpe pens her first script early in Season 1 and sticks around for five years; Aaron Shure and Tom Caltabiano come aboard a few seasons in and never leave. Stability in every department — nine years of it — is paramount to Raymond’s success.

And yet…

And yet, for a show that (rightfully) prided itself on its consistency, the peaks and valleys — and the sometimes dramatic shifts in tone — are there for anyone to see. Raymond takes a while to find its way. The characters are clearly defined from the start — or at least four of them are. (It takes the writers a season to figure out how to make Debra funny.) But what is the show going to be about? What we now take for granted about Everybody Loves Raymond — its great gift for holding a funhouse mirror up to our lives, amplifying yet illuminating our relationships with our spouses, our parents and our siblings — takes time to develop. The characters feel novel, but the early plots — which include quite a few capers — rarely distinguish the show from a half-dozen other sitcoms then on the air. It’s not until a late-season entry when the family gathers to play a board game — and innocent questions yield unsettling answers, because the characters are fairly buckling under the weight of their own baggage — that you get a real sense of what the show could be.

Like so many sitcoms, the series hits its stride in Season 2. Looking back on that season now, I remember being dazzled by how the show was growing more confident each week, forging something hilarious, distinctive and undeniably relatable. Season 2 concludes with a string of episodes that are among the show's best; the jokes are landing, the characters clicking, the actors being challenged and rewarded — and it’s speaking to you in a language you’ve never quite heard on the small screen before.

Does Raymond ever get quite so winning again? Well, yes, but you have to be patient. Watching the top of Season 3 originally, I felt that the opener, “The Invasion,” never nailed the payoff that was promised, and that Ray’s screaming fit at the end of “The Sitter” belonged on a more conventional sitcom. The childish pranks in “Getting Even” — including a soda can exploding in Robert’s face — seemed a bit juvenile. The show had been moved to CBS’s Monday night tentpole slot: a prestigious time period whose predecessors had included such Top-10 hits as I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H, Kate & Allie and Murphy Brown. Were the writers trying too hard to embrace a broader audience? Or was there some other reason they couldn't hit their marks as precisely as they had late in Season 2? And what seemed clear to me at the time was that the promotion of Will Mackenzie to principal director was ill-advised. I’m rarely one to linger on directors; my primary focus lies in the writers’ room. But Mackenzie’s comic timing felt slacker, lazier than that of his best counterparts; he was not — as Debra once described Ray, sarcastically — a brilliant farceur. (I remain flabbergasted how often he struggles to properly frame the 6’2” Ray Romano and the 5’2” Patricia Heaton in the same shot.)

Seasons 3 and 4 occasionally feel hampered by the very lessons learned in Season 2. Season 2 episodes like “Marie’s Meatballs” had shown that sometimes you didn’t need anything more than the core characters — alternating between their two homes — to tell a great story. The best plots ricocheted among the five principals, exposing all the cracks in the family foundation. Seasons 3 and 4 often seem determined to restrict the storytelling to the core characters; you sense that a good pitch has come to be seen as one that requires no additional players — even when a few extra characters might vary or strengthen the story-telling. There are other issues. A lot of Debra-centric episodes in Season 4 lack punch and a proper payoff. And some longer-term story elements feel questionable or contrived. Isn’t Robert being chased by a rampaging bull a little too — what’s that word again? — juvenile for a series this sophisticated, and isn’t his ensuing need to move back in with his parents merely a plot-driven device to undo the progress he made in Season 3, because the confrontations flow more freely when all five characters live across the street from each other? These are all reservations I had when I first watched (and — to be fair — enjoyed) Seasons 3 and 4, and I should note, they weren’t shared by the audience at large — at least not as it reflected in the ratings, which kept rising.

But for me, the nervy brilliance that had distinguished the latter stages of Season 2 doesn’t re-emerge in full force until Season 5. Maybe the two-part trip to Italy that begins the season reminds the writers that the premise isn't diminished by letting the core characters share the stage with the occasional featured player, and actually leave the house every once in a while. (It feels like a blessed relief when the family attends a wedding — surrounded by dozens of other guests — in the early-season entry “The Walk to the Door.”) But Season 5 also benefits hugely from the return of Gary Halvorson to primary directing duties, and the addition — through the course of the season — of some wonderful new helmers, including David Lee and Jerry Zaks. Season 6 is in many ways a continuation of Season 5, but it’s brasher, bolder. 9/11 happens in the hiatus between seasons, and TV audiences are craving laughter. (Sitcom ratings soared after 9/11.) The Season 6 writers sacrifice a bit of Raymond’s soft center for a harder edge, but it feels like a reasonable trade-off. If the show isn’t as warm as it had been, it’s still populated by characters you enjoy spending time with. And the ratings continue to surge, with the show hitting its highest viewing figures in Season 6.

Then the writers commit a tactical error. Late in Season 6, they decide to try something new: to take a routine squabble between Debra and Marie and extend it across four episodes. It basically amounts to self-sabotage. Part of what people who hate sitcoms complain about is that everything is settled in 22 minutes; it feels pat and phony. Everybody Loves Raymond turns that contrivance into a virtue; more to the point, it embraces it as the very point of the series. It asserts that 22 minutes is, in fact, the perfect measurement by which to chart the resentments that flare within a family. On Raymond, those 22 minutes represent every family conflict that’s smoothed over, but never fully resolved. We pray that family feuds will lead to breakthroughs, but we know full well that breakthroughs are unlikely — so we patch things up as speedily as possible and content ourselves with catching our breath before the next blowup. (And folks who loathe sitcoms grumble about the episodic format as well – that the events of one week are forgotten by the next. On Raymond, it’s critical that yesterday’s fight be swiftly forgotten; how else would we steel ourselves for tomorrow’s?)

The traditionally static nature of the sitcom was tailor-made for Raymond’s exploration of the unchanging, unyielding dysfunction of family life. Immediate conflicts get speedily resolved, yes, but the returns are minimal, because the underlying issues remain. But the fact that the immediate conflicts do get resolved makes these flawed and arguably abrasive characters worth revisiting week after week; their ability to achieve fast, effective, clever resolutions makes them admirable and entertaining. But the minute Debra and Marie launch into a multi-episode fight, the appeal of the show is undermined. Suddenly there are just two hostile women locking horns week after week, with no end in sight. It negates the premise and unspoken promise of the series. It’s a dreadful way to end Season 6, and although the feud ultimately gets resolved in the Season 7 opener, the acrimony that’s been on display starts to permeate the series. Everybody Loves Raymond gets nasty in Season 7. The yelling overtakes everything. The bitterness between characters, the mockery: some weeks you have to strain to remember what you liked about these people in the first place.

No one connected to the series admitted at the time how far afield the show had gone in Season 7, but there’s a clear effort in Season 8 to restore the warmth. But even as that’s happening, you can sense a certain writers’ malaise setting in. Phil Rosenthal always maintained that he wanted the show to wrap before they ran out of ideas; that date is rapidly approaching. And so, when the network convinces him to bring the show back for a final season, he agrees — if he can limit it to 16 episodes. (That’s as many fresh stories as the writers can devise.) And the truth of it is, although the show is still garnering high ratings (it was TV’s #1 comedy in its final season) and still earning hearty audience applause, the subtlety has faded from the performances, a lot of jokes go to the most predictable places, and certainly Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle — then 80 and 70, respectively, and him suffering from heart disease — look tired. You would never say of Raymond that it limps to its conclusion, but it is indeed — as Rosenthal predicts — time to go.

So which Everybody Loves Raymond do I like best? You’ll find I gravitate a lot to Seasons 2, 5 and 6 (I like the sense of discovery in Season 2, the expansiveness of Season 5 and the assertiveness of Season 6) — but there’s no denying that there are countless pleasures throughout, even in seasons I find weaker or more problematic. Below, my top 10 Everybody Loves Raymond episodes, plus — as I am wont to do — another 10 that I highly recommend. I trust you’ll see a few episodes you like, and maybe be surprised by a couple of my choices. I certainly hope the list — and the bits of dialogue I’ve included — will bring back some good memories. And if it does none of these things — if you’re in fact not at all eager to revisit one of TV’s classic comedies — then jeezaloo, what in hell’s bathroom are you doing here?

10. Cookies: A last-minute addition to my countdown, the one I waffled on including until I rewatched recently, and my husband Philip kept laughing from the other room. He didn’t even need the visuals, and he was multitasking besides. Steve Skrovan’s “Cookies,” in which the head of Ally’s Girl Scout troop gets under Ray’s skin, igniting his competitiveness, boasts a steady barrage of good lines tied to a propulsive plot. It’s a good example of the Season 6 house style, which is so focused on serving up laughs that it doesn’t take time to breathe — but it’s a brash style that continues to play very well today. There’s some great pantomime (Romano gets to do his patented “discomfort” routine upon entering the troop meeting), a terrific spit take, an effective running gag about Hitler, and a tremendous block comedy scene at the end, where a folding table becomes a casualty of the combativeness between Ray and Ally‘s troop leader Peggy. Best of all — and least expected — is the roasting of Ally by her own grandparents. Whereas in any other family, Ally would be the apple of her grandparents’ eye, it feels wonderfully apt — and delightfully sadistic — that they’re just as hard on her as they are on the rest of the family. When Peggy and her daughter show up at Marie and Frank’s to sell them cookies, they charm the elder Barones. (“That little girl’s hair, with the lovely braids,” Marie muses after they go: “She was darling”), and Ray is left having to stand up for Ally: “More darling than your own granddaughter?” “Of course not. We love Ally,” Marie reassures him: “You are going to do something about her teeth, though, aren’t you?” (Frank is less diplomatic when Ray insists they buy cookies from Ally too: “Braid her hair, fix her teeth and come back next year.”) But mostly it’s an episode about Ray’s fixation with Peggy; ostensibly an episode about his issues with strong women, it nicely muddies the waters by making Peggy subtly manipulative, in a way the other family members don’t see — until Debra does, leading to a climactic confrontation. Amy Aquino proves so striking as Peggy — such a perfect foil for Romano, and like him, so adept at strong yet surprising line readings and admirable physical comedy — that she’s rewarded a return appearance every season. “Cookies” is the first in a series of five splendid episodes, only the last of which, “Talk to Your Daughter,” I don’t mention here. It’s probably the best run of episodes since late in Season 2. Also worth a look: the fourth in the series of five, Lew Schneider’s “The Skit,” in which Ray and Debra agree to do a little performance for the anniversary of Marie and Frank’s best friends, Lee and Stan. Their format: comparing Lee and Stan’s classic marriage to Marie and Frank’s (which is — as Debra puts it — “less classic”) by doing impressions of both couples. Frank and Marie love the roasting, but will Ray and Debra be such good sports when Frank and Marie step up to impersonate them? (“Oh, I hurt my pinky when I was typing,” Frank whines, as Ray. “Oh stop, Ray,” Marie protests, as Debra: “I’m trying to heat soup from a can, and it’s very tricky.”) On one level, the episode makes no sense, because nothing about Frank and Marie over the years has indicated the level of self-awareness they profess to here. (Marie, in particular, has always been clueless about how she comes off to others.) But none of that matters, because the skits are so ingenious. The actors ensure that their impersonations are only as accurate as their characters could realistically manage, and the writers see to it that the impressions — rather than striving for authenticity — offer a subjective look at how the two couples view their counterparts. It works on so many levels, it’s a bit dizzying.

9. The Mentor: Peter Boyle was the only Raymond principal denied an Emmy win, but it’s hardly a mark of his talent. Boyle was beyond reproach, but let’s face it: how many Emmy-worthy episodes can you devise for a man who is — as Debra once put it — “about as disgusting a creature as God has ever dropped onto this planet”? Frank was unlikely to succumb to a tender moment at story’s end; he was more likely to shoot from the hip than speak from the heart. (The episodes that set out to humanize him — Season 3’s “Frank's Tribute,” Season 9’s “Boys' Therapy,” the latter a fine effort by Rosenthal — flirt with becoming “special episodes.”) And it’s those tear-inducing epiphanies that Emmy voters love to reward. The success of “The Mentor” — one of the two episodes Boyle chose for Emmy submission in Season 8, and to my mind, the best Frank-centric script — is that it doesn’t try to soften Frank, or explain or excuse his terrible parenting. It flips the script by suggesting that his terrible parenting skills might not be so awful after all. Maybe they didn’t work on Ray and Robert, but who’s to say someone else wouldn’t have benefited? Enter Sam “Sammy Boy” Gilula, who — back in high school — worked part-time at the same company as Frank and has long considered him his mentor. (Ray: “You don’t mean tormentor?”) Being reunited with someone who reveres him, Frank instantly treats him like family, and his own family is at a loss to explain any of it: who this fellow is, and how Frank could possibly have made such a positive impression on him. It’s got some sweet turnabouts, as when Ray opens up about his father's lack of affection (“What is he doing hugging this guy? You know when he hugged me? The closest he ever came was when he wrapped his arms around me to drag me away from a cake he wanted. And it was my birthday”) and Debra, seeking to comfort him, is the one to suggest sex. It climaxes in a great bit of physical comedy in which the three wives force their husbands into an awkward hug, Frank’s head nestled between those of his two sons. (Ray: “All right, could we stop? The smells from my childhood are starting to come back.” Robert: “Did we have a monkey?”) And in the final moments, as Sammy reappears, now saddled with business woes, we see exactly how Frank’s abrasive parenting style might be seen as useful and even inspiring, especially when the alternative is hollow praise. “The Mentor,” from freelancer Tod Himmel, is probably the dark horse of all the episodes I chose for this top-10 list. It’s possible that you don’t share my affection for it, or worse, that you’re dismayed by its inclusion — in which case, all I can say in my defense is, “Well, suck it up, Nancy, and get off your pity pot.” Also worth a look: another Season 8 winner, Aaron Shure’s “Misery Loves Company” (perhaps the sitcom’s most quotable half hour), in which Robert and Amy throw a dinner party to celebrate their three-month anniversary. It takes a while to get going, and the opening scenes between Ray and Robert, and then Ray and Debra, feel like nothing you haven’t seen before. But once the six principals gather for dinner, and Amy makes the cardinal mistake of handing out marriage manuals (Marriage Is an Amusement Park), the episode takes off. (Marie: “Why would you get us a marriage book?” Frank: “Yeah, I'm not interested in that subject.”) Amy merely wants to help with what Robert calls “all the yelling,” prompting Ray and Debra to counter, “You think you’re not going to yell?” “Amy, there's gonna be screams coming out of you, and they won't be because you're on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride” — and leading Marie to deliver an eloquent monologue on the institution of marriage, with apt insertions by Frank. (“We've been married 46 years. We've seen the lows, and we've seen the highs.” “What day was the high?”) The episode ends with the three couples raising their glasses to marriage; it cuts to credits without words or music, for one of the few times in the series’ history. The writers gamble that after 174 episodes, they can let the subject matter speak for itself. Their gamble pays off.

8. Marie’s Meatballs: Patricia Heaton basically spent the first season of Everybody Loves Raymond playing straight man — the comic foil, the calm center of the storm. It was a show about four crazies and the sane woman who had to deal with them. The writers even devoted an episode to Debra lamenting that she wasn’t an eccentric like the others in the Barone family; she nailed some laughs in doing it, but it still didn’t address the underlying issue. Season 2 comes to Heaton’s rescue right away. As reimagined, Debra is no longer the outsider who has been untouched by the family lunacy. She’s become immersed in the dysfunction; she’s become, as she puts it late in the season, “one of them.” And it’s in great part because the show finds a use for Heaton, with her slow burns and fast jabs, that Season 2 of Raymond routinely falls into place in a way that Season 1 didn’t. Heaton energizes it. She gives it a pulse. “Marie’s Meatballs,” from staff writer Susan Van Allen, is about Debra coming to accept that she’s a lousy cook, and wishing she could make one meal that pleases her husband the way his mother’s do. And it’s about Marie’s fear that if it weren’t for her cooking, Ray would never visit her, and the lengths to which she goes to ensure she doesn’t lose her hold over him. (Those lengths include sabotaging the recipe she gives Debra by gluing an oregano label over a bottle of tarragon.) It’s both down-to-earth and outrageous, in the best Raymond manner. It weaves together at least three common truths of family life, plus there’s the uncommon scene between Debra and Robert, in which they bond over their insecurities and perceived inadequacies. And it’s got a knockout monologue for Heaton near the end, when Debra realizes the full extent of Marie’s machinations and calls out Ray on his misplaced allegiance: “You know what I don't get? I don't get that you couldn't see my side of this. You're so busy defending your saint of a mother that you make me out to be some kind of ungrateful nutcase! Well, who's the nutcase now, Ray? Who's the nutcase now?” In later years, Debra’s character will get angrier and angrier, until that becomes her dominant trait. (Multiple characters will refer to her as “mean” — even peripheral characters who barely know her. It becomes more than her personality; it becomes her reputation.) Here, thankfully, she’s still so multidimensional — and typically so calm and levelheaded — that her outrage comes as a surprise, and brings down the house. Also worth a look: Kathy Ann Stumpe’s “The Letter.” It’s the first Debra vs. Marie plot, 11 episodes into Season 2, and in retrospect, it’s startling it takes so long for the writers to go there. Although a lot of early Season 2 episodes are very good, it’s here that you see the series fully and finally take shape. Marie intrudes on a Tupperware party Debra is hosting for her friends, and Debra decides to pen a letter to Marie, to let her know exactly how she feels about her. The first 10 minutes or so — consisting of the party, and Debra’s determination to put her thoughts to paper — are well scripted, but it’s in Act Two, set entirely in Frank and Marie’s kitchen, that the episode — and the series — spring to life. It’s here that the letter arrives, and each character gets a chance to react to its contents, their lines ricocheting off each other like pinballs at a penny arcade. And the genius of “The Letter” is that after Debra and Marie talk things through, and reach a resolution, and even dissolve into happy tears, the episode flips the script in the tag, as Marie retrieves the letter (which Frank has tossed in the trash) and locks it in a kitchen drawer: “You don’t throw this away. Not ever. Not. Ever.” And that’s the moment when Everybody Loves Raymond finds itself, in recognizing that the core characters can hash things out and hug and seemingly bond — and nothing will change. Because family dynamics are set in stone.

7. Baggage: Everybody Loves Raymond’s most reliable writer, Tucker Cawley, took home an Emmy for this episode, and deservedly so. Across Raymond’s nine seasons, Cawley wrote many of the best scripts; it was pretty much assumed that if you saw his name on an episode, it would be a good one. And in fact, the first Raymond episode that really gives you a taste of the show to come — the late Season 1 entry “The Game” — is Cawley’s. Season 7 is a tough season to sit through. Everything that was exultant and bold in Season 6 turns sour and mean-spirited; there doesn’t seem to be any love left in the scripts or on the set. The characters seem to be put on the stage specifically to fight; they’re reduced to the worst versions of themselves. And indeed, “Baggage” does suffer from a noticeable lack of warmth among the core characters (the only affection on display is between Debra and Marie — how many episodes can you say that about?), but what it lacks in warmth it makes up for in ingenuity and universality. An instant classic when it first aired, it was one of those episodes that married people could point to and say, “Yes, I’ve been there.” “Yes, we’ve had that fight.” It’s about the petty standoffs that couples reach; here, the bone of contention is a suitcase that Ray and Debra took on vacation, that got left on the landing when they returned home. Neither is willing to be the one to carry it up to the bedroom; they're each waiting for the other to do it. The deadlock continues for three weeks, and even Ray filling a compartment with cheese, then departing on a business trip, isn’t enough to persuade Debra to move it. (“Ray doesn’t get to win because of this,” she informs Marie, when they discover the source of the aroma that's stinking up the house: “If smells bothered me, I would’ve left him a long time ago.”) It falls to Marie to offer some guidance, recounting the very first fight she and Frank had, over the big fork and spoon that have long hung in their kitchen. (And indeed, that fork and spoon have been there since Season 1; it’s rather astounding that Cawley pitched this episode — from an argument he and his wife had had that very week — and then managed to tie it to an established piece of set dressing.) The big fork and spoon, it turns out, were a wedding present that Marie and Frank wanted to return, except each wanted the other to do it — and ultimately, their refusal to compromise led to them nailing the offending items to the wall. “Every time I come into this kitchen, it reminds me of that fight,” Marie admits to Debra: “Go. Go move the luggage. You be the bigger person." Her advice becomes a maxim: "Don’t let a suitcase filled with cheese be your big fork and spoon.” (It’s become one of the show’s best-remembered lines.) But when Debra gets home, and Ray has returned — guilty over the cheese incident but still unwilling to budge — she realizes she’s had enough: “I’ll get it. I’ll be the one who got it.” And then the battle changes, to which of them will claim the moral high ground by moving it. It’s a brilliant script, and a tough episode for anyone who’s been in a relationship not to relate to. A few years after it aired, my husband and I caught ourselves — at the end of a long week, in a discussion of who would drive to the store to pick up some ice cream — wearily insisting, “I’ll get it. I’ll be the one who gets it.” Only after we said it did we realize we were quoting Raymond. Also worth a look: another Ray and Debra standoff, in Season 2’s “T-Ball.” If Tucker Cawley was the most dependable staff writer, Lew Schneider was the least; quite a few of his contributions miss the mark. Among the exceptions: “The Skit,” as noted above, and this entry. It’s weakened only by Patricia Heaton having laryngitis that week and noticeably straining for volume, in a script that frequently calls for her to go on the attack. But it’s another episode, as with “Baggage,” where spouses everywhere can relate. Here, Debra doesn’t bring the “approved snacks” to her daughter’s T-ball game (it’s an arbitrary list created by a volunteer, who’s an optician), and when Ray is too insistent on people pleasing to stand up for his wife, she lashes out:

Debra: I cannot believe that you took his side.
Ray: Well, he has a point. I mean, pretzels weren't on the list.
Debra: Ray, I don't care if I put out a bowl of rocks today, OK? We are married! If somebody talks to your wife that way, you're supposed to support her!

Once in Rye, New York, Philip and I had much the same argument — “you’re supposed to take my side” — when we were getting ice cream, the server overcharged us, and only one of us spoke up. (Note to self: why are all our fights about ice cream?) There really has never been a TV show that spoke to married couples in the way that Raymond did. No wonder the ratings kept rising.

6. Traffic School: In Seasons 1 and 2, Robert gloomily intoned “everybody loves Raymond” during the opening credits; he was the ignored older child, whose accomplishments were forever overshadowed by those of his younger brother. (As he summarized his life once, “Have you read my biography? You’re in the Way: The Robert Barone Story.”) The writers handed him a few good showcases in those early years, but it’s safe to say that no one was prepared for this late Season 2 entry: the audience was no doubt as shocked as his onstage family. Kathy Ann Stumpe’s “Traffic School” delves into the demons that drive Robert Barone. Robert typically buried his rage and resentment. His parents didn't take kindly to criticism; what would it take for him to bare his soul, to rise up against his elders? (For Debra, it would be a Tupperware party gone wrong; for Ray, a Christmas gift left unopened.) Here, Robert is teaching traffic school to pick up a little extra cash, and failing miserably. (Robert: “It’s all about relating to people.” Frank: “You’re a dead man.”) His family grudgingly agrees to be a mock class, so he can get the practice, but of course they can’t keep their worst habits in check; they know how to push Robert’s buttons, and the temptation is too great. The brilliance of “Traffic School” is that as you watch the first half, you think you’re seeing the thrust of the episode, and it’s enough. It’s more than enough; it’s hilarious. (Robert, to his reluctant family of students: “I am Sergeant Robert Charles Barone. 16 years, NYPD. And you are?” Ray: “Hated by God.”) And later:

Robert: Now I would like to direct your attention to the board. You will see “speed limits,” “pedestrians,” “signs and signals of the highway.”
Ray: Things that are boring!
Robert: “Urban vs. rural driving.”
Ray: Things I don't care about!
Robert: “Insurance.”
Ray: Terribly boring things!

But that’s just preamble. Robert exits in a huff, wounded by his family’s lack of support, then reemerges with a puppet, Timmy, that his partner uses to teach children about safety. And using ventriloquist dummy Timmy as his mouthpiece, Robert is finally able to speak up.

Timmy: Now, when you get into the car, what are you supposed to do before you begin driving?
Marie: Oh, I know that. You buckle your seat belt.
Timmy: Good.
Marie: And you check your mirrors.
Timmy: Correct.
Marie: You look to the left. You look to the right. You look behind you.
Timmy: Very good. Anything else?
Marie: No, I think that's it.
Timmy: Oh, that's it. She thinks that's it.
Robert: Isn't that everything, Timmy?
Timmy: Oh, yeah, sure, that's everything. But how about making sure your firstborn child is in the car before you pull out of a gas station in New Mexico?
Ray: Wow, that's awfully specific. Is that in the binder?
Marie: Robbie, that was 30 years ago.
Robert: I don't have a problem with it.
Debra: Uh-oh.

(Best “uh-oh” in TV history that wasn’t uttered by Lucille Ball’s mother.) In the end, Robert gets the catharsis he craves (“Timmy’s mean,” Ray observes, as the family sits shell-shocked), then he and Ray bond over the challenges of their childhood. One was neglected, the other smothered, but they come to realize they’ve been damaged in similar ways. And we come to realize exactly what Brad Garrett is capable of. The writers do too. Also worth a look: “What’s With Robert?,” another Garrett showcase, this one from Cindy Chupack, and easily my favorite episode from Season 4. It gets a little flabby near the end of Act Two, in a scene typically cut from syndication prints. But the rest is a riot. When Amy breaks things off with Robert because of his unwillingness to commit, she prompts the family to question his sexuality. (It’s the kind of plot-driven episode that crops up a lot in Season 4; here, Amy basically splits up with Robert so the writers can do an episode about the family suspecting he’s gay.) The episode is frank about Frank’s homophobia, but manages to ease our discomfort — and amusingly expose his hypocrisy — by giving him a backstory about an intimate Korean War experience with another soldier. An insanely progressive episode, it ends with Ray — here elevated to the voice of reason — noting that all men at some point wonder if they’re gay: an astounding statement for a sitcom to make in 2000. (I’m not sure any sitcom has dared say it since.) Full of exchanges that manage to be both funny and revelatory, turning what could have been an issue-driven plot into a character-driven one, as when Ray tries to discern if his mother’s outlook matches his father’s:

Marie: Forget it, it's no use. I've seen how your father acts in front of people who happen to be homosexual. He's the same ass he is in front of us.
Ray: You know some homosexual people?
Marie: Of course we do! My second cousin Frieda.
Frank: What?
Marie: You knew that.
Frank: I most certainly did not.
Marie: Why do you think she never got married?
Frank: Because she looks like a pit bull.
Marie: She even brought her girlfriend to our anniversary party.
Frank: That blue hair who ate all the meatballs?
Marie: They've been together for years. Midge.
Ray: And you have no problem with this?
Marie: It would have been nice if she left some meatballs for the other guests.

5. Lucky Suit: During the first few seasons, Robert turns his persecution complex inwards, but “Traffic School” (above) changes all that. As the years go by, he becomes more inclined to act out — to cast blame and play the victim. He morphs from a sad sack into what Ray in Season 9 jokingly calls “a bear in pants” — an apt metaphor, because there’s something ferocious, almost animalistic about Garrett’s later performances. And never more so than in “Lucky Suit,” which finds Robert interviewing for his dream job, a position with the FBI. Tucker Cawley’s script puts Garrett’s height and bearing and increasingly fierce delivery to good use, and because the stakes for Robert are so high, Garrett takes his typical performance level and kicks it up about 10 notches. And it was kicking it up those 10 notches that won him his first Emmy Award, so is it any wonder he continued to broaden his character for the remainder of the run? By the final season, Garrett can’t seem to sustain the characterization and regresses into a lot of mugging, but at this point, midway through Season 6, he’s quite the marvel, and the writers — no doubt seeing how impressive and imposing he is when unleashed — make more frequent use of his full dynamic range. But there’s more to “Lucky Suit” than Garrett’s outstanding, oversized performance. Cawley’s script doesn't just turn on Robert’s interview, but on Marie’s seeming obsession with undermining it, which — in standard Raymond fashion — restores the focus to the family unit. First she burns Robert’s lucky suit while ironing it, then she faxes a note to the FBI asking them to ask Robert to forgive her for burning his suit. Robert brands her a saboteur, but Marie denies any ill intent — until she turns up at the FBI with a batch of cookies and is profiled by one Agent Tom Garfield:

Garfield: I'm just looking at the evidence.
Marie: What evidence?
Garfield: Well, you did ruin his lucky suit.
Marie: That was an accident.
Garfield: Or part of a pattern of behavior.
Marie: Yes, love love love.
Garfield: Then you wrote this letter which you said you scribbled out in a hurry.
Marie: That's right.
Garfield: Mrs. Barone, I spent a year teaching handwriting analysis at the Academy.
Marie: I always got A's in penmanship, so I don't know where you're going with this.

Until finally she cracks: “He's a year away from not being a police officer, which means I could stop worrying about him every second of the day. I want him to be safe. Now he wants to go from one dangerous job to another? How long do I have to walk around with a knot in my stomach? Forever?” It’s Doris Roberts' finest performance. She fully convinces you that this woman — who has spent a lifetime ignoring her eldest son's accomplishments – cares for him so deeply that she'll go to any lengths to keep him safe. And then she nails the turnabout that follows, when Marie discovers that the FBI has chosen to pass on Robert’s application, and her fear turns to fury: “All right, let me tell you something. My Robbie’s too good for you. That's right. He’s too good for this place. And maybe you could use a lucky suit, because that’s a horrible color on you.” As in countless Raymond episodes, a tender moment near the end — in this case, the reconciliation between Robert and Marie — is followed by a comic button that keeps the format in check: this one a slice-of-life remark about a slice of pie. The episode was one of two that both Garrett and Roberts used as their Emmy submissions that year, and both took home the trophy, deservedly. (It was her second consecutive win.) Also worth a look: Roberts’ other Emmy submission that year, “Marie’s Sculpture.” Jennifer Crittenden’s script was itself Emmy nominated, and at the time, seemed like a series high point, as Marie takes an art class and comes home with a six-foot high, V-shaped sculpture that looks, as Ray puts it, “a little lady-like.” And of course, Marie doesn’t see it (“It’s an abstract,” she announces, prompting Ray to wisecrack, “Not abstract enough”), nor does Frank. (“I gotta tell you, I don’t know what the hell this is, but I love it.”) Marie deposits it in Ray and Debra’s living room, a situation that’s far from optimal. (Debra: “I’m seeing it in my sleep. I see it, and I know it’s your mother’s, and we have to get rid of it.”) In 2001, you were dazzled by what the writers were getting away with — Raymond was not known for being risqué — especially when they folded a pair of nuns into the mix. Now that twenty years have passed, it’s easier to see “Marie’s Sculpture” for what it is: a great episode, but perhaps not a top-10 classic. It’s the sort of episode — like The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s “Chuckles Bites the Dust” — that’s best seen unawares, as an unlikely, wicked surprise.

4. The Canister: With Easter Sunday approaching, Marie asks Debra to return the canister she lent her, but Debra insists she already did. And when Marie presses her, Debra erupts in frustration and anger, prompting Marie to set things right: “You're right. I'm sorry. I don't want this. I mean, a holiday is a time for family. I love that canister, but I certainly don't want you feeling like this. I want us to have a wonderful Easter. OK? Oh, I'm sorry, Debra.” And then of course, the moment she leaves, Ally turns up with the canister, which Debra had given her to put her crayons in — and Debra is not about to let Marie know she was right: “She apologized to me. The whole balance of power shifted.” “The Canister,” from freelancer David Regal (and no doubt heavily revised in the writers’ room) has it all: a plot rooted in the relationship between two core characters; great sight gags, including the canister — which Debra a day earlier had thrown in the outside trash — magically reappearing in the house, tumbling down the stairs and toppling onto the landing; a bit of farce thrown in for good measure, as Debra convinces Ray to sneak it back to Marie and Frank’s underneath a ski parka (Debra: “We’ll hide it in her house, and she’ll just come across it someday, and she’ll realize she was the one that was wrong.” Ray: “Except she wasn’t wrong.” Debra: “So you’re saying you don’t love me?”); and a sweet ending — in which Frank takes the rap for Debra — that never dissolves into sappiness. It won Heaton her second consecutive Emmy, and in retrospect it’s somewhat surprising she chose it as her Emmy reel, as Debra basically disappears for the final third. But she clearly knew it was such a crowd-pleaser that the Emmy voters wouldn’t even notice. And they didn’t – or if they did, they didn’t care. Boosting her Emmy chances, no doubt, was the fact that “The Canister” is the episode of the series where Heaton most seems like the star, and everyone else a supporting player: The Debra Show or Here’s Debra! or something to that effect. It doesn’t always play fair with her established character, and in fact, if you only read the script, you might well wonder how and when the harried but levelheaded Debra Barone got replaced by this frazzled housewife with her harebrained schemes, but Heaton — to her award-worthy credit — makes any arguable inconsistencies seem like a byproduct of her momentary frenzy. And it’s that frenzy that inspires some of Debra's best zingers, and some of Heaton’s most surprising deliveries. “I could have sworn I gave that back to your mother,” Debra muses to Ray, in a tour-de-force monologue that probably clinched Heaton the Emmy: “I mean, I don't know what happened. Well, here's what probably happened is that, you know, I'm doing a million things and the kids are always at you and asking for stuff, and Ally probably came up to me and asked me for something and I didn't really hear. And as long as I don't hear the word ‘gun’ or ‘knife,’ I just said, ‘Yeah.’ So, yeah, that's probably what happened, I'm positive. Because, you know, I'm doing like a million things, and you know, I've gotta do everything here myself, and if you would pitch in a little bit more, Ray...” — but Ray refuses to take the bait: “Oh, no no! Don't look at me! This is what drowning people do, they pull you right down with them.” Which infuriates her, and then Robert infuriates her further:

Robert: You know what's really bad? She apologized to you even though she knew she was right.
Debra: Oh, shut up! Why do you come over here, to state the obvious? Is that what you're here for?
Robert: I must say, Debra, this is not your most attractive side.

It’s not her most attractive side, but this sort of rattled hysteria is most definitely one of Heaton’s. Mary Tyler Moore — a fan of the series, and particularly of the relationship between Ray and Debra, which she never believed was as sex-starved as Ray insisted — presented the Emmy Award that year for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series, and seemed particularly pleased when she read Heaton’s name. Also worth a look: another episode devoted to a household item, Season 3’s “The Toaster,” from showrunner Phil Rosenthal. Ray comes up with a wonderful Christmas idea for family and friends: a toaster with his family’s name inscribed on its side. Everyone loves it — except his parents, who don’t even see it. They wanted a coffee maker, and returned the gift unopened. “The Toaster” is a first-rate episode, the best of Season 3, but the first half is all set-up, establishing Ray’s paranoia that no one will like his gift, and his in-laws' joy at receiving it. (“It’s so retro chic,” Debra’s mother enthuses.) But it's classic sitcom set-up, nailing all the scenes necessary for the big confrontation that follows to properly land. And land it does, in perhaps the single best scene between Ray and his parents in the series’ nine-year run, with Marie and Frank so wedded to their narrow perspective that they can't give Ray the attention or apology he craves. It contains one of my all-time favorite jokes, when Ray insists, “That wasn't just a toaster, Ma. It said ‘Merry Christmas. We love you. Michael, Geoffrey, Ally, Debra and Ray,’” and Frank, clueless, interjects, “It spoke?”

3. The Breakup Tape: Ray Romano seemed shocked when he won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2002. The industry seemed shocked too. No one should’ve been shocked. Everybody Loves Raymond Season 6 seems very much written and played with Romano’s award chances in mind; it’s basically one long Emmy reel. Is it a coincidence that after his costar Patricia Heaton won back-to-back Emmys for Seasons 4 and 5, she’s so frequently reduced to comic foil for Romano’s antics in Season 6? If I sound like I’m being accusatory, well, maybe I am; it’s hard to ignore what’s on the screen. It’s also hard to ignore that Romano’s Emmy-winning performance in Shure and Caltabiano’s “The Breakup Take” is masterful. Here, Debra has discovered an answering machine tape that Ray held onto for 20 years, of a girl breaking up with him in college. (It’s marked “Karen 1982.”) Who keeps a breakup tape? She merely wants to know why, but inadvertently derails the discussion — because when she notes that she too keeps mementos from former lovers, “but they’re happy things,” Ray becomes obsessed with knowing exactly what these happy things are. He claims it’s all about transparency, but Debra has her doubts:

Debra: I mean, of course I wanna be open. But I don't think you're doing this for the right reason.
Ray: Is wanting to be closer to you not the right reason?
Debra: You are so full of it! But I do want to be more open, and I would like to be closer.
Ray: What am I saying here?

But the more household items she reveals are gifts from old boyfriends, the more worked up he gets.

Ray: What about in here? Huh? Anything in our bedroom? From your past?
Debra (after a pause): No.
Ray: There is. There is, isn't there? What? What is it? (Alarmed) Am I wearing any of it?
Debra: The white picture frame.
Ray: That's around a picture of our children! Wait a minute…
Debra: They're our kids, Ray!
Ray: Really? You sure that they weren't a "gift?"

A simple recitation of the lines doesn’t suggest all the laughs Romano wrings out of them. In Season 5, but even more so in Season 6, Romano starts to manipulate his inflections for maximum effect. They get more animated, more audacious. He takes clever lines and puts his own spin on them; the one-time standup comic returns to his roots. (He’ll frequently split a sentence in two, nail a laugh after the first half, and then — changing his pitch or intensity or approach — nail another after the second.) “The Breakup Tape” is a master class in the art of magnifying laughs while staying defiantly in character. (It’s also, from Heaton’s point of view, a sterling example of how to set up jokes without receding into the wallpaper; she feels just as vibrant as he does.) And what makes “The Breakup Tape” so compelling is that, for all the comic heights to which it aspires, the point of the episode — which doesn’t become clear until the final few minutes — turns out to be one of the dearest to ever emerge from the writers' room. It reinvents Romano’s stylized overplaying in Season 6 as a defensive mechanism: one born out of pent-up confusion and fear. “The Breakup Tape” is a 23-minute showdown that’s rooted in the love Ray and Debra have for each other. She wants to talk about the tape because she knows it’s something he needs to work through; he can’t bear to discuss it because he hasn’t yet solved the riddle of why Karen ended the relationship. (“It's like somebody can break up with you at any time for no reason.”) And not knowing leaves him vulnerable to losing everything. Everybody Loves Raymond scored two Emmy nods for Best Writing in Season 6, the first time that happened; this script was sadly overlooked, but Romano‘s performance, thankfully, was not. Also worth a look: another Ray Barone meltdown, Season 2’s “Six Feet Under” (from Chupack, Skrovan and Caltabiano), in which Ray discovers he’s a quarter inch shorter than he once was and develops a midlife crisis. It’s the most modest of premises, but the vignettes are delightful, and none funnier than Ray determining to keep a journal of “things to do before I die,” and Debra getting a look before bed.

Debra (reading): “Peking duck.” “Goat cheese pizza"? What is this?
Ray: That's — I told you. It's goals and stuff.
Debra: These are your goals? These are restaurant specials!
Ray: I've never had Peking duck.
Debra: So your goal is just to eat things you’ve never eaten before...
Ray: Not entirely. (Points to journal entry)
Debra (reading): “Enlarged prostate."
Ray: See? That's something that I want to avoid, not something I wish to eat.

(Debra shares her own goal: to open a bed and breakfast once the kids are grown. When Ray reacts in horror at the thought of strangers traipsing in and out of their home, she counters, “Yes, Ray, strangers. I'd like to try strangers for a change.”) Eventually, Debra finds a way of bringing Ray calm and closure, by teaching him that — when it comes to growing old gracefully — nothing beats the art of self-deception.

2. Good Girls: One of those episodes where every line feels like a punchline: a character-driven punchline. Sometimes you have to squint to see the set-ups, the laughs seem so self-generating. Here, Marie — who's taken a shine to Robert’s girlfriend Amy — has invited her to cook dinner in her kitchen on Friday night, igniting Ray’s sibling rivalry, which in turns fuels Debra’s exasperation. (“You've cooked over there before, right?” Ray asks Debra — and she rolls her eyes: “What, are you kidding me? Marie doesn't even like me cooking over here.”) But the set-up is just a backdrop for two secrets that ripple through the family: the fact that Amy is saving herself for marriage (Marie calls her a “good girl”), and the fact that Marie prefers Amy to Debra, for precisely that reason. Desperate to remain his mother’s favorite, and receiving only mockery from his wife (“Robbie’s got the better girl, Ray. We're behind. What are we gonna do?”), Ray takes it upon himself to lie to his mother that Debra was, in fact, a “good girl” before they got married. And that of course prompts Marie to reassess her opinion of Debra, to Debra's deadpan disbelief. (Marie: “You and I should make a big meal for the family together. How long has it been?” Debra: “Oh gosh, pretty long. Let’s see, uh: never.”) Naturally, the secrets and lies — and accompanying recriminations — are served up at Friday night dinner:

Frank (to Marie): That's why you like Amy better, ’cause she hasn't been around the block? Why didn't you tell me that?
Marie: It was a secret, Frank!
Amy (mortified): Yes. It was a secret.
Debra: Amy, what did you tell Marie that for?
Amy: I didn't tell Marie.
Debra: Well, I didn't tell her.
Amy: Robert?
Robert (feigning ignorance): I'm sorry. I haven't been paying attention.
Ray: All right, let me fill you in. We just found out that you told Ma —
Robert: OK, Raymond. I'm up to speed.
Frank: How come you told your mother about Amy? You didn't tell me.
Robert: You didn't ask.
Debra (to Marie): You asked?
Marie: I care about people.
Amy: Marie, why would you ask that about me?
Debra: You know, I can explain it. Run. Just run, and keep running.

But that's just the hors d’oeuvres. The main course is the riotous set of revelations that follow, during which we learn that the biggest family secrets — which give new context to everything we’ve just seen — are nearly forty years old. And it’s those revelations that put Marie, uncharacteristically, on the defensive. (It’s one of the show’s most elegant and eloquent pieces of staging, with Ray, Frank, and Robert seated on the sofa, and Marie behind — almost hiding from the truth — as Debra and Amy close in on her from the sides. Phil Rosenthal reveals in interviews that it took quite a bit of time to perfect this particular staging; it was time well spent.) Everybody Loves Raymond typically got good mileage out of episodes where family skeletons are unearthed (five months earlier, Marie and Frank had revealed on their “Anniversary” that they'd separated for a year when the boys were young), as well as episodes where Marie faces up to an uncomfortable truth (“Sex Talk,” “Liars,” and the aforementioned “Lucky Suit,” where the confession is played for dramatic effect). But none of these are as satisfying or successful as this late Season 2 effort by Tucker Cawley. There’s not a wasted word, nor a missed laugh, plus there’s a memorable scene in which Ray grills his mother about her feelings for Debra, and Marie responds like a cagy senator at a congressional hearing:

Ray: Did you say that you like Amy more than Debra?
Marie: I am not…saying that.
Ray: What?
Marie: I am not saying…that I like Amy more than Debra.
Ray: I know you're not saying it now. But did you say it ever? Look, what if I told you that we have a tape of you saying it, Ma?
Marie (after a pause): Give me the tape.

And one of the reasons the episode works so well is that when Marie reassures Ray in that scene, “Honey, I love Debra,” you believe her. She and Debra have their differences, but buried beneath all the rivalry and resentment is a layer of genuine affection — even if it’s a thin layer, even if it’s a layer that’s nearly impossible to locate. (One reason you don’t see the Emmy-nominated audience favorite “The Angry Family” on my list is because of Frank’s angry pronouncement at the end, as to where all the problems in the family stem from: “She [Debra] married him [Ray]! And this one [Marie] still can't deal with it!” It’s not scripted as Frank’s opinion; it’s scripted as Frank spilling the beans. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. Debra and Marie are just one part of a complex family dynamic, and once you attribute all the tensions in the family to those two, the show is lost. Then you have only acrimony; then you have Season 7.) Also worth a look: Season 9’s “Sister-In-Law” (from Tucker Cawley, Frank Pines, Mike Royce and Tim Peach), in which Amy, seven years after “Good Girls,” is still cementing her place in the Barone household. It’s an episode that understands that one of the ways we bond with family members is by dishing the dirt about other family members; it’s how Amy and Ray, who are feuding, reach a détente, and it feels wholly convincing. But it’s also an episode about Monica Horan, and how crucial she is to the show’s success at this point in the run. USA Today TV critic Robert Bianco, who had little patience or affection for Everybody Loves Raymond, complained at one point that the performances had grown “calcified.” I didn’t agree with him when he wrote it (after Season 7, perhaps?), but it certainly happens a few years later. By Season 9, the actors have very few surprises left to spring. There’s never a sense that they’re on autopilot, merely that they’ve said everything they have to say with the characters, and don’t have any fresh spins to put on the lines. But Horan does. Her performance here seems so vivid and spontaneous — swerving effortlessly from animated to deflated, from revenge driven to guilt-ridden — she serves as a reminder of what Raymond had been in its glory days.

1. Christmas Present: Ray wants to go to Myrtle Beach with his buddies for a golf weekend. His plan: to give Debra such a great Christmas present she says yes. And it can’t just be great: it needs to be better than whatever she gives him. But when Debra presents him with a gift so lavish it trumps his own, Ray presumes Debra’s motives must be equally duplicitous. (Ray, of course, is no stranger to getting in his own head. As Debra puts it when she contemplates “Getting Even” in Season 3, “Nothing I could think of could screw you up more than what's already in that beautiful mind.”) But just when you think you know where the episode is going — that once Debra gets wise to Ray’s scheme, as indeed she does, his dreams of a golf weekend are as good as dead — she acquiesces: “You know what? I don't care ..... just go play golf.” And that triggers such guilt, Ray can’t leave well enough alone. He encourages her to take time for herself (as he intends to do in Myrtle Beach), then — when he suggests she go to a movie — picks up on her unwillingness to commit to it. “You want... to not go to the movies,” he informs her, with uncharacteristic insight: “Because then if you go to the movies, you don't get to say, ‘I never get to go to the movies.’” A whole lot of episodes have Ray being devious where Debra is concerned; “Christmas Present” excels at showing both characters at their most imperfect: his eagerness to be manipulative, her willingness to play the victim. It’s an episode in which Ray, to achieve his own ends, makes Debra aware of patterns of behavior she’d never considered: “You want to do it all because then you can feel superior!” — and he’s not tactful, but he’s also not wrong. One of the understood — but thankfully unstated — messages of Everybody Loves Raymond is that Debra takes pleasure in knowing she's smarter than her husband. It’s why, after patiently seeing him through his weekly crises, she brands him an “idiot” the moment he’s out of earshot; it’s why, in “The Breakup Tape,” her declaration of love culminates in her calling him a “stupid, stupid man.” And in fact, Ray’s assessment of Debra here harks all the way back to the series’ fourth episode, when Robert is giving IQ tests to his family (as an assignment from the police force), then fudges the results, leading Debra to score lower than Ray — and she can’t handle it. (In about the only glimpse in Season 1 of the Debra to come, she dumps a bowl of ice cream in Ray’s lap.) Right from the pilot episode, we're made aware that Ray is a mess of neuroses, but “Christmas Present” reminds us that Debra wrestles with her own issues: deliberately martyring herself so she can claim the moral high ground. (The episode asserts that it’s their particular flaws that make them perfect for each other.) The central irony of “Christmas Present” is that the more Ray proves his case, the more he loses sight of his objective; as Debra reminds him, when she hands down her final verdict on Myrtle Beach, “I mean, how could I not think of myself as a martyr if I'm stuck at home with the kids while you're golfing with your buddies?” (“Yeah, about martyrs,” Ray reminds her, making one final plea for leniency, “a lot of them became saints.”) “Christmas Present” is an exploration of the games married people play, both knowingly and unknowingly. It’s not just that after 11 years of marriage, Ray and Debra are still learning how to ask for what they want; “Christmas Present” delves into why they don’t even ask. As counterpoint, the episode gives us Frank, who’s forged his own methodology, and shares it with his sons:

Frank: You think you've got to butter them up to get what you want. That is a poor man's game. “Oh, sweetums, here's some flowers. Can I go to the lodge?” Not for me. Not for me! I don't do that nice crap.
Ray: So how do you get what you want?
Frank: I've learned to do without.

An episode about Debra’s desire for a crockpot, and Ray’s determination to get what he wants by “working above that,” Kathy Ann Stumpe’s “Christmas Present,” from Season 5, finds Raymond cooking on all burners. (It even finds room for an escalating series of visual gags involving a brownie mix, which Gary Halvorson directs and edits to perfection.) The best character study in the show's long history, it's as insightful as it is entertaining. Also worth a look: an episode about the literal games married people play, Aaron Shure’s “No Roll!,” in which Ray buys the board game Sensuopoly to spice things up in the bedroom. The opening scenes between Ray and Debra, and Ray and his family, are nothing special, but magic happens — as it so often does — once Romano and Heaton are left alone on stage. The game itself is uproarious, but it’s what comes after that’s remarkable, as Ray and Debra – with mounting self-consciousness – have an honest talk about their sex life, and the ruts they’ve fallen into. Heaton is particularly splendid, radiating embarrassment, exasperation, warmth and uncharacteristic vulnerability: “Why should I have to tell you what I want?” “So I will know.” “Do you know how depressing that is, that after 12 years, you don't know? Why do I have to say it out loud? Why haven't you been paying attention?” (As with “Christmas Present,” the episode refuses to take sides, as Ray counters, “After 12 years, I should know you, right? After 12 years, shouldn't you know me? I mean, you could have realized that I wasn't getting your signals after... year three.”) Season 6, as noted above, is a tough one for Heaton, as she’s essentially reduced to Romano’s comic foil for much of it. I can’t fault her for the episode she chose for her Emmy reel, “A Vote for Debra,” as it’s about the only one that season that really features her — but I would’ve chosen “No Roll!” The performance is that good.

Do you enjoy detailed looks at hit shows? If so, I serve up my 10 Best Episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Designing Women , WKRP in Cincinnati and Kate & Allie; delve into Rhoda Season 3, Newhart Season 7, Maude Season 2, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2; pen an appreciation of the underrated Mike & Molly; and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons.

Or if you have a preference for dramas, check out my write-ups of Voyager Season 4, Cold Case Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent, ill-judged Netflix miniseries), Judging Amy Season 6, Doctor Who Series 8, Grantchester Series 6, and fourteen essays devoted to all the seasons of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing, starting here. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries — not (necessarily) the best episodes, but the best whodunnits.