Everybody Loves Raymond may be a sitcom about a man named Raymond, but the series always worked best as an ensemble cast of funny characters. Even still, the series only worked as well as it did due to Ray Barone, and by consequence Ray Romano's innate ability to find the comedy in even the most uncomfortable of situations.
Though he may be just another in the long line of lazy, neurotic, often annoying 1990s sitcom leads, Ray still stands out as one of the funniest and one of the most lovable, thanks to his self-deprecating sense of humor and his ridiculous relationships with all members of his family.
10 "Open up the window and let some of the wrong out."
No matter how much Ray and Debra may love one another, their marriage is one that is fundamentally defined by their inability to get along and their tendency to argue with each other. Polar opposites in many ways, Ray and Debra are therefore a perfect sitcom couple.
Their fights often lead to hilarious back and forths, some of which are much more childish than the others. And more often than not, Ray is the one who's being childish, such as his outlandish claim that Debra "open up the window and let some of the wrong out."
9 "You want to know what marriage is really like? Fine. You wake up. She's there. You come back from work. She's there. You fall asleep. She's there. You eat dinner. She's there. You know? I mean, I know it sounds like a bad thing, but it's not."
Ray Barone may be a writer for a living, but he's not always a man with a gift for words in his daily life. Few examples portray that more clearly than his resoundingly stupid summary of what married life is like.
While trying to make amends for a faux pas with his brother Robert that led to his breaking up with girlfriend Amy, Ray tries his best to summarize the reality of marriage in as appealing a way as possible. And of course, in true Ray fashion, nothing sounds flattering about it at all.
8 "So I should go to work and raise the kids, right? It should be all me. And what do you do all day? I'm sorry."
Not only is Ray bad at describing marriage to anyone outside of his relationship with Debra, he's also particularly bad at describing his own role in his marriage to Debra herself.
Ray and Debra often wind up arguing over the most mundane aspects of daily life, due in large part to Ray's overall incompetence. But on particularly special occasions, Ray still manages to shove both feet in his mouth at once, requiring him to apologize and back away with his tail between his legs.
7 "This? This is not Debra. This is the woman who shows up once a month to rip into me like a monkey on a cupcake!"
The episode "Bad Moon Rising" is one of the most iconic in the series' run, no matter how offensive it might be in certain areas. Depicting Ray's idiotic attempts to understand Debra's mood swings, all of which he attributes to PMS, the episode is hardly a high for either of their characters.
But no matter the episode's many problems and jokes, it still manages to produce some absolutely hilarious gems, including this admittedly insensitive but visually hilarious suggestion that Debra's manic behavior resembles "a monkey on a cupcake."
6 "You're stupid, you're ugly."
The brotherly rivalry between Raymond and Robert, including all their teasing, fighting, and flat out insults, is a major component of what makes Everybody Loves Raymond so regularly hilarious.
Though they may be grown men, Ray and Robert both wind up acting like total children whenever they get into it with one another. Their insults - like Ray's snappy "You're stupid, you're ugly" - are hardly well-worded, but they always cut right to the quick.
5 "You are an idiot wrapped in a moron."
Sometimes, Ray's insults have a few layers to them. Maybe it's the literary side of him. Maybe it's the petty little brother side of him. Maybe it's both.
And while this particular insult may not be super impressive in terms of diction or word choice, there's no way of denying that this claim - that Robert is "an idiot wrapped in a moron" - always brings the laughs when it happens.
4 "You called your teacher mommy? Why? Was the teacher yelling?"
Ray might not be the best father in sitcom history, but it'd be pretty hard to make the case that any of the main characters with children in the series are good parents at all. This particular quote highlights both Ray's and Debra's failings.
The episode "Home from School" finds Ray taking care of Michael, who refuses to go to school multiple days in a row. It turns out that Michael was embarrassed to go back because he called his teacher mommy - something that Ray immediately has a field day with.
3 "Robert, we're Italian. Whack means something different to us."
In yet another weird Raymond episode that is both hilarious and ultimately insensitive, Ray tries to deal with Robert's latest attempts to socialize with a coworker and her friends. "Robert's Date" finds Robert adopting stereotypically ethnically African American traits, including an exaggerated use of Ebonics and a flashier wardrobe.
It's up to Ray to try and talk some sense back into his brother toward the end of the episode. When Robert claims that something is "whack," Ray quickly reminds him of their own Italian heritage with the cheeky claim that "Whack means something different to us."
2 Drunken assessments of his family members
The episode "Snow Day" finds all members of the Barone extended family snowed in together at Frank and Marie's home during a snowstorm. All hell naturally breaks loose, and following a large fight caused by Debra, Ray winds up drunk and a little too loose-lipped.
But thanks to his drunken boldness, Ray offers some of his most astute observations in the entire series. He calls Frank "a known baboon's ass." Robert is "weird" and "doesn't like to go out to eat because he has a fear of busboys." But best of all is his assessment of Marie: "Judgmental. Childish. Meddlesome. A world class buttinsky."
1 "Just the good ones."
It's not very often that Everybody Loves Raymond allows Ray to be a well-spoken character, no matter how good he might be at writing for a living. But arguably the most important moment he gets to show his gift for speaking comes in an incredibly poignant moment during his speech at Robert's wedding.
As he reflects on his and Robert's childhood, Ray offers some genuinely sweet words of wisdom about editing memories: "I remember my wedding day as the day I got to kiss the most beautiful girl in the world. I think she remembers it, I hope she does, as a good day. The start of a lot of good memories. We completely blotted out the part where mom was yelling onto my pants, yelling, 'Don't go! Don't go!' We didn't save those pictures. Just the good ones. Just the good ones. Here's to my brother, Robert, and my new sister, Amy. You'll keep the good ones."
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