In end, 'Raymond' stays true to itself

Boston.com / A&E / TV / Matthew Gilbert: "Last night, CBS's ''Everybody Loves Raymond" bid a quiet and affectionate farewell to prime time. Oh, there was plenty of yelling and screaming; it wouldn't have been ''Raymond" without a cacophony of raised voices. And there was at least one loud, outrageous Freudian gag, when Marie jumps into bed with Ray and Debra while they're kissing. Maternal havoc, too, is what has always made ''Raymond" ''Raymond."

But America's most popular comedy finished its nine-year run without resorting to any brash attention-getting gimmickry. There was no forced sitcom apocalypse -- no death, birth, marriage, or incarceration. The finale played out like just another episode of ''Everybody Loves Raymond," and it easily could have aired in the middle of any recent season. The writers wisely resisted the temptation to buy into TV's ''event finale" culture, which tends to turn series endings into ratings-hungry monsters. We recently saw ''Friends" succumb to finale bloat, for instance, as it put on its jumpsuit for one last ratings bid.

''Raymond" stayed true to itself last night, right down to its half-hour length. The episode found Ray in the hospital having his adenoids removed. When Marie steps out of the waiting room for a moment, a nurse tells the remaining family that Ray is having trouble coming out of anesthesia. They panic -- and for a moment, it looks like the ''Raymond" writers are going to make a big mistake, not unlike the one the ''Roseanne" writers made in their misbegotten finish, when we learned of Dan's death. But Ray lives, and his family must live with the memory of the grief they felt in that critical moment.

Familiar Barone family politics ensue, as Marie and Ray eventually find out about the crisis in the operating room. But more importantly, Ray learns how his family truly feels about him. ''For 30 seconds, you all thought I might be dead," he says. ''What did everybody do?" He hears that Robert broke down crying on the ride home from the hospital, when ''You Are the Sunshine of My Life" came on the radio. And he is told that Debra was a mess, which leads to the episode's sweetest moment: ''You like me," Ray says to Debra, grinning and then fumbling for words. ''I know, you like me, too," she says.

It was a simple exchange, but a momentous one. It answered the question ''Raymond" viewers have often asked themselves amid the constant friction of Ray and Debra's marriage. Do these people actually like each other?

But the episode's dips into sentimentality were only momentary. The show's parting image was of the extended Barone family sitting around the kitchen table, eating and talking over one another. It was a sap-free ''life goes on" portrait of a family in respite from its usual tensions and triangulations. For fans of the show, it was a respectful and admirable goodbye."