Ray In Peace

Not much to say about the Everybody Loves Raymond finale. I smiled more during the hour long retrospective than I did during the actual final episode. It wasn't quite the ordinary episode Phil Rosenthall has been promising. It was more emotional than usual... some of it genuinely affecting. It could've benefited from a tighter story and more laughs. The best episodes of the series sprouted from very mundane, family-based situations that came from the writers' lives and were almost like stage plays - taking place on one or two sets with a minimal number of scenes and featured the entire cast bouncing off one another. That was missing in this finale. Still, not the worst episode of the series (see the episode where the show "Ate the Fly") or the worst series finale ever (off the top of my head, a dead heat between Roseanne and Mad About You).