Everybody Loves Meaning

Everybody Loves Meaning

The show Everybody Loves Raymond spanned for a long 9 seasons. During its time, it was very popular, got decent to good critical reception, and won the occasional award. What the show did well was craft humor into a relatable and comfortable setting.

Ray Barone was the main character and he lived with this his family of 5 directly across from his parents. Obviously, that created a tense environment and most of the good-natured humor presented in the show is at that expense of this setting.

For all intents and purposes however, the show really does reek of the Adorno thought of “low culture”, the show rarely challenged any norms, it was simply intended to be consumed at face value and not rock the boat.

However, amidst the entire run of the series, there were a few episodes, one in particular which actually begin to dive into deep meaning.

The episode in question is episode 19 in season 6 and it is entitled Talk to your Daughter. In this episode, Ray’s daughter, Ally, begins to ask questions about babies. Ray panics but eventually decides to brief himself in the process of sex and explaining it to a child and he goes to talk to Ally. Once the conversation starts however, Ray quickly learns that Ally wasn’t curious about the process of procreation but rather, interested in why we are actually here.

Ray flips out and all of the adults immediately congregate in the family room to come up with something to say to Ally. They all take turns trying to fumble around with a statement that they think will work, when in reality, it’s plain and clear that none of the characters have ever thought critically about this idea. In the end, they decide that ultimately, they’ll start talking to Ally, and they’ll probably figure out something along the way. They go upstairs, and she’s busy playing with her younger brothers, the parents look at each other, sigh, and the episode ends.

This episode stands out as one with a lot of power. Parents everywhere struggle with how to talk to their children about big picture ideas. And in this episode, despite all of the adults trying to do what they think is best for the child it strikes me as very odd that not a single one of them come up with “JUST TELL HER THE TRUTH” the adults don’t know answer to her question, isn’t ok for them to tell her that they don’t know?

A lot is going on this episode, and possibly even more behind the scenes in the production process. The writers of the episode knew that they couldn’t challenge the norms and rock the boat because that’s just not the kind of show Everybody Loves Raymond is, so instead, they had everyone just run around all confused and fumble with made up explanations which would eventually result in lying to a child.

Apparently, that’s the norm because the show does not want to go against it. So then the question needs to be asked… how do the distributors of the show see us? It’s an uncomfortable realization to make because suddenly it becomes glaringly obvious, the show hoped to relate to a bunch of confused parents unable to come with a critical though of their own and instead of suggesting anything directly, to avoid any form of controversy, the episode chickens out at the end and refuses to actually say something. The show simply did not take a risk because doing so could have lost some viewers but ultimately, what’s more important; losing some viewers or ushering some new thoughts into the marketplace of ideas? The idea that Adorno proposed of lowering the standard of the audience, while a cynical notion, is hard ignore when an episode of television like this is well received.