[life] It's all lies, Raymond. It's all lies.

I hate the show "Everybody Loves Raymond." It's an incredibly popular sitcom, and like most of it's breed, displays poor writing, hackneyed jokes and cliched characters to win the hearts and minds of America. Yet I don't hate it for that. In fact I couldn't really articulate why I hate it so much until just this morning, as I was slicing a bagel.

It's that insidious gospel that it preaches about the married state. That same story that T.V. has been telling since "The Honeymooners," and probably since before that, even. The story that goes, "There once was a big dumb lummox of a man, and he married a woman who was smarter than him."

So very very many of T.V.'s successful shows have fallen into this festering rut of storytelling. "Flintstones," "Married With Children," "The Cosby Show," "Family Matters," and our beloved "Simpsons," which somewhat raises itself above its own formula by being a parody of it. "Everybody Loves Raymond" is like the pinnacle of this sad little mountain. Raymond is the ultimate idiot husband, the guy who barely knows his own children, who never does anything around the house unless the harridan wife makes him, obsessed with golf, unable to read his wife's emotional mood beyond "uh, she's pissed off again." It drives me insane.

I'm sure that there are men like this, in relationships similar to Raymond's T.V. marriage. What I don't know is why we choose to glorify them. True to the title, the show carefully manipulates the audience to be on Raymond's side, even when he's doing the most selfish and reprehensible things to his wife. A sense that he's like a big dumb dog, or a child, and he doesn't really know that it's going to hurt her as much as it does. He's always sorry afterward. We always forgive him, because he's Raymond! And after all, isn't marriage just a series of pitched battles?

Why are we so in love with that story? Is it true for enough people that they need shows like "Raymond" to be able to laugh at their own dysfunctional relationships? It isn't true for me. I'm married to a man who isn't dumb, emotionally retarded, or lacking in any kind of adult knowledge of cause and effect. We have a great relationship, based on mutual trust and respect.

I guess that simply isn't funny, and to be honest, I'm sure that it would make for a boring sitcom. But since it's my basis for regarding relationships, I just can't see Raymond as funny either. It's incredibly sad to me, both for the misery and futility of the characters, and also for those who find it funny. A theatre prof of mine once told me that laughter is recognition. I'm really glad that I don't recognize enough of "Everybody Loves Raymond" to make it amusing.