{"id":309462,"date":"2025-11-23T19:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/309462\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T19:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:34:08","slug":"why-do-reunion-but-no-reboot-or-spinoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/309462\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Reunion But No Reboot Or Spinoff?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor a decade, Everybody Loves Raymond<\/a> creator Phil Rosenthal<\/a> had been trying to get a reunion off the ground but couldn\u2019t get an interested buyer. That changed this year, with Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion<\/a>, which is airing Nov. 24 on the series\u2019 original network, CBS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy did he keep at it for so many years?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to see my friends and celebrate our nice show,\u201d Rosenthal said in explaining why the 30th Anniversary Reunion special is being released 29 years<\/a> after Everybody Loves Raymond\u2018s premiere.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile he and series star Ray Romano<\/a> loved the idea of a reunion, they both are against a reboot. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMany shows do reboots, and we\u2019ve never wanted to do that,\u201d Rosenthal said. \u201cWe felt like we couldn\u2019t honestly do one since some of the cast isn\u2019t with us anymore, and they were essential to the success of the show. Also, Ray and I both believe that reboots generally are never as good as the original.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince the Emmy-winning family comedy Everybody Loves Raymond ended its nine-season run in 2005, three of the show\u2019s stars, Doris Roberts<\/a> and Peter Boyle<\/a>, who played Ray Barone\u2019s (Romano) parents, and Sawyer Sweeten, who played one of Ray and Debra\u2019s (Patricia Heaton) sons, died, along with Fred Willard and Georgia Engel who recurred as the in-laws of Ray\u2019s brother Robert (Brad Garrett). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBrad Garrett, Sawyer Sweeten, Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, Peter Boyle, Sullivan Sweeten, Doris Roberts, Madylin Sweeten in \u2018Everybody Loves Raymond\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t want to do it because It would never be as good,\u201d Romano added. \u201cFirst of all, even if every cast member was alive and well, they\u2019re never as good as when the show was thriving and we were younger. And the fact that the mother and the father and one of the kids is gone, and also a couple of the guest stars are gone, we would be doing a disservice to the show. They are such a major dynamic and element of what made the show work, it would almost feel disrespectful to them to even try to do it. I think even before, had the other actors still been around, I still think we would decide against doing a reboot.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut doing a reunion is something that we want to do, because we get a chance, first of all, to see each other and talk about [the series] and show clips and but also to honor those actors,\u201d Romano added. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere is another reason Rosenthal sees no purpose in rebooting Everybody Loves Raymond. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause we\u2019re still in syndication and that we\u2019re on every day somewhere in the world, all over the world, the show exists in the form that we took such care in presenting so we don\u2019t see really a need or a desire to do a reboot,\u201d he said. \u201cI just feel like it has to be right. We cared very much about the quality of the show and we even ended the show when CBS still wanted us to continue but we ended it on our terms, we ended it after nine seasons. In fact, we did a shortened ninth season, we only did 16 episodes because we felt that was the number of good stories that we could generate at the end.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m a student of TV. I love TV. I love great sitcoms, great dramas, I love everything,\u201d Rosenthal continued. \u201cBut I\u2019ve also seen, especially in sitcoms, some shows stay beyond when they should have, and that hurts their legacy. Maybe we wouldn\u2019t be on 30 years later if we had done more shows than we should have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"(L-R):<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion\u2019 (L-R): Brad Garrett and Ray Romano<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSonja Flemming\/CBS<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Robert & Amy Spinoff\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile a reboot has been a hard no, a spinoff is a different matter. Rosenthal attempted one centered on Ray\u2019s cop brother Robert (Garrett) and his wife Amy (Monica Horan).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had a spinoff ready right after Raymond went off the air, and the reason that I wanted to do this spinoff was to keep the writers together, but to do a different show with Amy\u2019s parents who we loved, Fred Willard and Georgia Engel, and her brother, who we loved, Chris Elliot and, of course, Monica and Brad,\u201d Rosenthal said. \u201cWe thought we could use some of the characters and send them into a different world, in a different setting, but CBS didn\u2019t want it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tNo more sitcoms\t<\/p>\n

\n\tEverybody Loves Raymond has been Romano\u2019s first and only multi-camera comedy to date. (He had famously been cast in another network sitcom, NewsRadio, six months prior but was fired on the second day of rehearsal and replaced with Joe Rogan.)<\/p>\n

\n\tSince then, Romano has done dramas\/dramedies and single-camera comedies, including Parenthood, Men of a Certain Age, Get Shorty and No Good Deed. He recently joined the upcoming second season<\/a> of Netflix\u2019s single-camera half-hour Running Point starring Kate Hudson.<\/p>\n

\n\tWould he consider doing multi-cam comedy again?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI really wouldn\u2019t,\u201d Romano said. \u201cI don\u2019t know that I would ever want to do a sitcom again, but if it\u2019s the right single-camera [I would]. I\u2019ve done single-camera, one-hour shows that are kind of comedic, but also drama; I\u2019m doing one now, Running Point, which is a half-hour comedy but it\u2019s got some nice, dramatic moments in it. But no, I wouldn\u2019t want to try to repeat. My four-camera legacy, I don\u2019t want to damage it, I want to leave it the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe then added to his answer. \u201cAlthough I will say I do miss the live audience, there\u2019s an energy with the live audience that you could never duplicate again. Every week, to be up there in front of this live audience and get the energy in, I miss that part. I miss it all but I do miss that now when I think of never doing another one, I\u2019m like, Oh, I\u2019m gonna miss that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Romano, Rosenthal, who had worked as a writer on a handful of sitcoms prior to Everybody Loves Raymond, has not done a multi-camera comedy series since the end of the show in 2005. In fact, Rosenthal has not done any scripted series in the past 20 years after a couple of comedy pilots post-Raymond did not go to series. He is known for his food-themed Netflix reality series Somebody Feed Phil, which has released eight seasons to date. <\/p>\n

\n\tWas being back on the Raymond set for the reunion give him the itch to try sitcoms again? <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe itch has never left. I\u2019ve always loved the four-camera sitcom. That\u2019s where I feel like I can work because that\u2019s the genre that I\u2019m fond of, and the genre I know,\u201d Rosenthal said. \u201cThey don\u2019t do too many of these anymore. They told me when Raymond was finished that the business had changed in the nine years we were doing Raymond. So after a couple of years of not being able to get another sitcom on, I shifted gears, and that\u2019s why we have Somebody Feed Phil. I would be open to doing another sitcom, but I also am never going to quit Somebody Feed Phil. I\u2019m gonna find a way to do that the rest of my life, if they\u2019ll have me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Clockwise<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion\u2019 Clockwise from left: Brad Garrett, Ray Romano, Phil Rosenthal, Sullivan Sweeten, Patricia Heaton, Monica Horan, and Madylin Sweeten<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSonja Flemming\/CBS<\/p>\n

\t\tMore reunions \t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt took 29 years after the end of Everybody Loves Raymond to make the first reunion happen but it may not take as long for the second. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn 5-10 years, if we\u2019re all still around, sure, why not revisit some of the things,\u201d Rosenthal said of the prospect of doing another special. \u201cI\u2019m fine if people want to see that. It\u2019s very easy for us to do because we love doing it. We love being together.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tEverybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion\u00a0airs Nov. 24 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.<\/p>\n

\n\tHosted by Romano and Rosenthal, the special features appearances by cast members Garrett, Heaton, Horan, Madylin Sweeten and Sullivan Sweeten. It also pays tribute to Roberts, Boyle, and Sawyer Sweeten. You can see more photos from the reunion\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a decade, Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal had been trying to get a reunion off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[991,118806,88,113114,159589,118807,118810,118279,92],"class_list":["post-309462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-cbs","tag-doris-roberts","tag-entertainment","tag-everybody-loves-raymond","tag-everybody-loves-raymond-30th-anniversary-reunion","tag-peter-boyle","tag-phil-rosenthal","tag-ray-romano","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}