Hold On!!! Ray Romano Graded Every Single ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ Episode???

Ray Romano did something during COVID that only Ray Romano would do. He sat down and graded all 210 episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond.

Romano joined The Rich Eisen Show and confessed the project to Rich after being asked when he'd last watched the show. The answer was 10 to 15 years before the pandemic. Then he watched one episode, saw it differently than he had at the time, and decided to keep going.

"I was so critical back then," Romano said. "And I enjoyed it more and I appreciated the performances."

The full audit followed. All 210 episodes. A 100-point scale. No episode earned a perfect score. A handful, he admitted, did not score well at all. He chalked that up to math. When you have 210 of anything, some are great and some are not.

Rich asked which episode rated the highest. Romano said two episodes tied at 96.

One is called "Good Girls." The other is "She's the One," the episode where his brother's date eats a fly. Romano sees her do it. He has to break the news to his brother that this woman is, in fact, not the one.

"She ate a fly," Romano said. "And he thinks I'm lying to him."

The re-watch wasn't just about ranking. Romano said the distance helped him appreciate the show more. The actors. The writers. He paused to credit Tom Caltabiano, one of the show's writers, who happened to be in the room during the interview.

Rich asked about the criteria. Romano kept it simple. Writing and acting. Overall feel. Nothing more scientific than that.

Then Rich asked the better question. Was there a line that made him laugh out loud during the re-watch? Romano had one immediately, and it didn't come from one of the regular cast.

The scene was set in a hospital. Romano's character, sportscaster Ray Barone, was doing charity work and trying to one-up his brother. He had to convince an elderly woman to take her pills. She refused. She recognized him.

"Wait a minute," Romano recounted her saying. "Are you the sportscaster Ray Barone?"

Romano said yes. He offered to get her tickets to a Yankees game if she'd take her pills.

She looked at him.

"You tricky tricky white boy," she said.

The room laughed. Romano paused for a beat. Rich and the cast wondered briefly whether the line was even repeatable on air.

The story wasn't just a punchline. It was a window into how Romano sees the body of work now, decades after the fact. The criticism that defined his relationship to the show in real time has softened. The respect for what the cast and writers built has hardened.

A different lifetime, Romano called it. From that distance, the show looks different than it did when he was making it.

Rich wrapped the segment by pointing viewers to Running Point, Romano's current project, and to a photo from back in the day pulled up on screen.

For a sitcom legend known for self-deprecation, the grading project is on brand. The fly episode getting one of the top scores is even more on brand.