If you’ve rewatched Everybody Loves Raymond in recent years, you have something in common with Ray Romano. The actor has revealed he’s spent the last few years watching all 210 episodes of the hit sitcom for the first time. Not only did he watch every single episode, he rated each one and figured out which ones he thinks are the series’ best.
Romano rated each episode on a scale of one to 100, but 96 was the highest score he gave. ““We were never perfect,” he told People.
“I got on a little kick there. I hadn’t seen the episodes,” he explained. “They took on a new look to me. I was appreciating them more. I was very hard on them back then… But you see when you’re removed from it a little, I felt like an audience member. And then I said, ‘Let me rate them.’ I rated them, and I was hard on some.”
Only three episodes got a 96 from the actor, 66: Season 2 Episode 19, “Good Girls;” Season 7 Episode 9, “She’s the One;” and Season 7 Episode 22, “Baggage.”
In “Good Girls,” Ray (Romano) finds out the Marie (Doris Roberts) likes Amy (Monica Horan) more than Debra (Patricia Heaton) because Amy is a “good” girl. “She’s the One” is the episode where Robert’s (Brad Garrett) girlfriend eats flies. (“It’s bizarre and crazy, but it ended up being a great episode,” Romano said of the installment.) In “Baggage,” Ray and Debra have a three-week-fight over who’s going to put the suitcase away. “Baggage” won an Emmy for its writing.
Romano said in the classic sitcom format, you’re bound to have hits and misses. He also declined to reveal which episodes got his lowest scores. He still hangs out with the writers, and wrote some episodes himself, after all.
“When you do 210 episodes, you’re going to have episodes that you think are brilliant and you’re going to have episodes that you think, ‘Wow, you know what? We kind of missed it on that one,” he explained. “Then you’re going to have episodes that are very good, great and somewhere in the middle, you know what I mean? That’s just to be expected when you’re cranking an episode out every week.”
Everybody Loves Raymond aired for nine seasons from 1996 to 2005 on CBS. It collected a total of 69 Emmy nominations during its run, winning 15, including two wins for Outstanding Comedy Series (in 2003 for Season 7 and 2005 for Season 9, the final season). All nine seasons are available to watch on Paramount+.