Everybody Loves Raymond Bloopers Funnier Than The Original Scene
More than two decades after it launched and over 15 years after it aired its series finale, "Everybody Loves Raymond" remains a popular and enduring sitcom. Based on the stand-up comedy of Ray Romano, the show follows the Barone family as they go through daily life on Long Island and grapple with everything from marriage to parenting to domineering mothers-in-law.
The show quickly became a hit after premiering on CBS in 1996, remaining popular throughout its run and well into syndication in no small part because of the interplay of its core cast. Even when the Barones were fighting, it always seemed like a show where everyone was having fun, and that's seen very clearly in the show's blooper reels. "Everybody Loves Raymond" is a very funny series, but what happens when the cast flubs a line, misses a mark, or flat-out throws the script out the window is often even more hilarious. We combed through the bloopers to find the best "Everybody Loves Raymond" moments that turned out funnier than the scenes that made it on TV.
What kind of sale?
"The Garage Sale" is a pivotal Season 2 episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" because it shows the Barone clan digging through their past for items to put in the title event and discovering things about themselves in the process. It's a great use of a simple premise to say a lot about the characters, particularly Ray (Ray Romano) and Debra (Patricia Heaton) as they grapple with whether or not to have more children, and it all begins with a very basic setup.
In one of the episode's establishing scenes, Frank Barone (Peter Boyle) realizes that he can make some money off of all the old junk he has around the house and begins the process of talking the rest of the family into having a garage sale on the front lawn. As seen in the blooper, Frank is supposed to say "garage sale," the title of the episode, but Boyle has a different idea of what he's supposed to say. The result is Boyle flip-flopping on the line, then bursting into an impromptu lecture to the audience over which version "sounds classier." It's a great Peter Boyle moment and a reminder of what a fun actor he was, despite Frank's grumpy nature.
Madylin corrects Patricia
Patricia Heaton had one of the most difficult roles on "Everybody Loves Raymond." As Debra Barone, she was often tasked with playing the straight man to her husband's goofball. In many scenes, that meant Heaton had to memorize long, complex speeches so her character could break things down for Ray, and sometimes those complicated monologues came with stumbling blocks. Thankfully, there was always someone on-set to remind her of the correct line, including her TV daughter.
In the Season 2 episode "The Checkbook," Debra has a scene explaining to Ray how she manages the family's budget every month because Ray decides he'd like to try handling some of it himself. It's a speech full of little details about expenses, debt, balancing the checkbook, and other key financial terms. Along the way, however, Heaton gets tripped up by the specific phrasing of a critical detail. While Heaton tries to laugh it off and move on to another take, her young co-star Madylin Sweeten, who plays daughter Ally Barone, reveals that she knew the line all along. It's a moment that turns a dry speech into something very fun.
'Don't kiss me with that stuff!'
One of the most important dynamics in "Everybody Loves Raymond" exists between Frank and Marie (Doris Roberts) Barone, Ray's parents, who are constantly sniping at each other. The trick, of course, is that all that bickering ultimately comes from a place of love, so the two eldest Barones are allowed to roast each other almost constantly without the show slipping into pure meanness.
Of course, in order to pull that off on set, Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts have to pretend to be grouchy, no matter how much they might enjoy each other's company in real life. This often meant that the actors would end up shouting ridiculous lines that needed to be played completely straight. Towards the end of the Season 2 episode "The Family Bed," when Marie sneaks over to Ray's house to sleep next to her granddaughter, Frank comes looking for his wife and finds her all ready for bed, her face slathered with cold cream. Marie is touched by Frank's need to sleep with her, and Frank is supposed to spoil the romantic moment by shouting, "Don't kiss me with that stuff!" Of course, that's easier said than done when Doris Roberts' cold cream-covered face is inches from yours.
'Beetlejuice'
Sometimes it's a little hard to pin down where a blooper comes from. Occasionally, it just happens, and you couldn't reverse engineer it if you tried. Nothing on set malfunctioned, no one messed up a complicated speech, and it might not even be a particularly funny line. Every once in a while, something short circuits in an actor's brain in the middle of a scene, and a classic flub is born.
"No Fat," the Season 3 Thanksgiving episode, is a fan-favorite among "Everybody Loves Raymond" devotees because of the payoff of the premise. Marie, determined to make her family healthier, decides to make a tofurkey meat substitute for the family meal rather than cook an actual bird. The real comedic meat (pun intended) of the episode arrives when the rest of the Barones get a look at the strange, wiggly, turkey-shaped loaf of bean curd on the family table.
In this blooper, Ray is about to get the laugh line when he refers to a spot where "food coloring" has pooled on the dish as the "dark meat." Marie is meant to good-naturedly respond with the actual ingredients, but instead of "beet juice," she says, "It's not food coloring, it's Worcestershire and 'Beetlejuice'!" Actress Doris Roberts quickly realizes her mistake, as does the rest of the cast, with Peter Boyle exclaiming, "Spooky!"
When the kids have had enough
In the early seasons of "Everybody Loves Raymond," Ray Romano used the opening credits to tell audiences, "It's not really about the kids," and indeed, that's the case for most of the show's run. The series focuses on the adult Barones, mainly revolving around their conflicts and misadventures while the kids add to their challenges as either parents or grandparents. Sometimes, however, a kid gets a line in that's better than anything the adults could've written for them.
In the Season 3 episode "Halloween Candy," Frank is left alone at Ray and Debra's to watch for trick-or-treaters while the rest of the family is out. The scene is primarily an opportunity for the legendary Peter Boyle to get in a nod to his work in "Young Frankenstein," but he does give out some candy to kids, although it's a brief moment and the trick-or-treaters barely say anything. On the day of filming, one little boy dressed as a fireman got a little tired of trying to do the scene repeatedly and dared to tell the crew, "I think I had enough." The audience reaction, and Boyle's response, says it all.
Alternate lines
"Everybody Loves Raymond" is a scripted series, but that doesn't mean there isn't any room for improvisation. That's particularly true for Romano, whose comedy formed the basis of the series in the first place. Romano's knack for one-liners helped get him a TV show, so he was bound to bring that gift to the set. He even occasionally used a scene to try out a long string of alternate lines. It's a technique that meant the show's editors could pick the best take and run with it, but it also meant Romano had plenty of opportunities to trip up his castmates.
In this scene from the Season 4 episode "What's with Robert?", the Barone family has gathered at older brother Robert's (Brad Garret) apartment to keep him company as he goes through a rough patch. Marie Barone tells her son, "You're never too big to cry," leaving Ray with a perfect opportunity for a comedic retort. Instead of sticking to just one, Romano tries out everything from "But you are too big for my underwear," to a simple "Doo-da, doo-da." Sometimes it's Brad Garrett who breaks, sometimes it's Peter Boyle, but either way, Romano is clearly in command of the moment.
'You have to learn your lines'
If you watch every blooper reel from "Everybody Loves Raymond," you'll see Ray Romano playing with alternate punchlines for gags quite a bit, from clever retorts to nicknames for his wife, but the experimentation often comes at a cost to his co-stars. Patricia Heaton is particularly susceptible to Romano's improvisations, particularly when she has to follow them up with complicated, emotional speeches.
In the Season 5 episode "The Canister," Debra swears to her mother-in-law Marie that she doesn't have the title object, a family heirloom Marie is sure she loaned Debra. Marie believes her daughter-in-law and apologizes, but when Debra finds the canister in her house, she and Ray must scramble to come up with an explanation. In the scene, Ray says, "Look, there's a way to fix this, but..." before filling the rest of the line with a joke. The problem is that his jokes keep tripping up Heaton's next line, to the point that Romano finally says, "Look, there's a way to fix this. You have to learn your lines."
Hot tub time
Most bloopers are called as much that because they involve very obvious mistakes. Someone flubs a line, a piece of the set falls over, someone from the crew accidentally shows up on camera, or maybe a fake mustache falls off. Sometimes, though, there's a moment in a gag reel where an actor very clearly just decided to throw the script out the window and do whatever felt best, and it's absolutely delightful.
In the Season 5 episode "Say Uncle," Ray gets fed up with Robert hanging out with his kids all the time and angrily tells his brother to "get a life." When he goes to apologize, he finds that Robert has done exactly that and is lounging in a hot tub with two beautiful women from his apartment building. In the scene, as it plays in the final TV version, Ray is awkward about the encounter and feels thrown off by his brother's apparent comfort in his new circumstances. On the day of shooting, though, Romano decided it might be time for his character to climb into the hot tub himself — without necessarily changing into hot tub clothes.
Ray's pager
Sometimes a blooper reel hits a moment that feels so on-the-nose you'd almost swear someone had scripted it just to throw the show's studio audience a little extra laugh. It's almost too perfect to be something that happened spontaneously, but there it is, summing up where a show is in that particular moment in time.
By Season 6, "Everybody Loves Raymond" was at the peak of its popularity. It consistently ranked as a top 10 series in terms of ratings and was watched by an average of 22 million households every week, per The New York Times. A television special had been produced celebrating its first six years, and its adult cast members were full-on stars, with Romano himself moving on to film roles in the wake of the show's success.
All of which sets the stage for this particular blooper during the filming of the episode "Mother's Day." The scene is supposed to lead in to a major Barone family moment, as Marie walks into the Barone kitchen and finds that Debra, who she's been arguing with, has also just arrived. However, the scene is cut short by a strange beeping sound, which turns out to be movie star Romano's pager. To seal the fame-going-to-his-head joke, he looks at the pager and shouts, "'Ice Age' went over 30 million!"
Roasting Patricia
When you watch every single "Everybody Loves Raymond" blooper reel, certain themes emerge. One of the most noticeable is that of all the cast members, Patricia Heaton seems to struggle the most to deliver her lines. It doesn't happen all that often in the grand scheme of things, and it's also not overly surprising considering that her character, Debra usually has the most complicated speeches to give. It's also clear that the rest of the cast is so used to it that when Heaton does flub, they often take the opportunity to have a little fun with her.
In this scene from the Season 6 episode "Odd Man Out," in which Marie develops a male friendship that makes Frank jealous, Debra is supposed to be defending her mother-in-law in a speech about friendship, but Heaton accidentally flubs the line mid-sentence. That leaves Ray Romano, who's sitting next to her at the time, open to deliver a couple of roasting lines, including, "Hate to see the people that lost the Emmy," a reference to Heaton's two consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
Walking out on the joke
One of the central cornerstones of the long-running CBS series was the relationship between Ray and his brother Robert. After all, it's the reason that "Everyone Loves Raymond" has its title. Robert feels like he's perpetually finishing second behind his brother, who has a wife, kids, and a career he loves, while Robert himself is often unlucky in love and lives with his parents.
Ray, of course, exploits this dynamic for his own amusement as often as he can, mocking Robert for everything from his height to his voice to the way he mopes around when things aren't going well. This means Ray Romano got plenty of opportunities to use his improvisational skills to drop one-liners aimed at co-star Brad Garrett. Still, even he could recognize when he'd pushed the joke into territory that made the whole room squirm with uncomfortable laughter.
In this scene, Robert is doing his best to talk himself up, to get ready for what he's calling "part two" of his life, as though it's a movie. In response, Ray and Frank start mocking him with fake movie taglines. It's all going well until Ray uses some anatomically correct phrasing in a very unscientific insult. The audience certainly gets a kick out of it, but Romano walks off stage in embarrassment.
A fight gone wrong
"Everybody Loves Raymond" isn't a show you necessarily associate with physical comedy. It's a show famous for its verbal jabs, but that doesn't mean Ray Romano and company are above putting their bodies on the line for a laugh or two. There are plenty of moments in the series where the cast gets goofy with some physical gags — and even a few where they perhaps take things a little too far.
In the episode "The Cult," Robert Barone joins a new support group that puts him in a better mood, only to later find that the group is a little stranger than he realized. In this scene, Robert tries to storm out of the Barone house, only to have Ray try to hold him back. For the sake of laughs, Romano and Garrett are doing their best to look goofy in the ensuing fight, but when Romano tries to leap up on his taller co-star, he misses, dropping to the floor and taking the furniture with him.
'Don't touch me'
As the young actors who played Ray and Debra's children on "Everybody Loves Raymond" got older, it was natural that they'd see more opportunities to become a bigger part of the show. This was the case for Madylin Sweeten, who played the Barones' oldest child, Ally. By the end of the show, Ally has aged quite a bit, meaning Ray and Debra have to make important choices about her upbringing, giving Sweeten some key moments to shine — including on the blooper reels.
In the Season 8 episode "Slave," Marie starts to grow concerned about the number of chores Ray and Debra are giving Ally around the house, convinced that they're using their daughter to perform housework they could just as easily do on their own. In this scene, Ray and Debra are beginning to reckon with that feeling when Ally volunteers to clear plates off the kitchen table. At first, the blooper seems to be that Sweeten can't actually grab all the plates off the table in time to hit her next mark in the scene, but when Romano decides to poke fun at her for it, the young actress drops a joke of her own that the studio audience loves.
Ray's yell
"Everybody Loves Raymond" is famous for many things, but if it has a signature activity, it might be yelling. At its core, the series is about a family that loves each other despite the constant squabbles they get into, and that means the Barone clan is forever shouting and snapping at each other about things big and small, with lots of love hidden beneath it all.
All of that conflict coming from a place of caring leads to many silly moments on the show, and watching the cast as they create those weird fights can be more fun than watching the arguments themselves. In the Season 8 episode "Jazz Records," Frank Barone is still upset about an incident years before when his record collection was moved to a spot where the heat ruined them. For years he's blamed Ray, but an argument over some replacement CDs reveals that it was Robert's fault. In the scene, Ray is simply supposed to yell, "You moved the records!" but in the moment, Ray Romano's voice goes a little weird. Does he stop the scene and try again with a different sound? No, he simply lets the weirdness continue for as long as the audience keeps laughing.