Thursday night, I saw Ray Romano’s and Brad Garrett’s stand-up acts. After a funny 10-minute bit by Jon Manfrellotti (the guy who plays Ray’s friend Gianni on Everybody Loves Raymond), Ray walked onstage. Cracking jokes about his children, family, and lack of sex, he sounded exactly like his sitcom character. And why shouldn’t he? The show is based on his life.
Then, Brad Garrett appeared onstage–yep, all 6’8″ of him. Speaking into the microphone with that sad, Eeyore-sounding voice, I assumed we would be getting something similar to his character, Robert Barone. Nope, not at all.
Brad Garrett’s stand-up routine is completely opposite from Ray Romano’s. Where Ray laughed about his 15-year-old twin sons who refused to shower for three days, Brad pointed out the reasons that Mexicans have so many children. Where Ray mused about toddlers who get excited over their, ahem, “big pee-pees,” Brad reamed two Indians sitting in the front row (”the ones with the dot,” he clarified). Well, as the Dallas Morning News reported the following day, “[Brad Garrett] paced the stage, ladling out abuse on Mexicans, Arabs, Indians, rednecks and whomever else he spied. Some of it was funny; some of it merely crude.”
Fortunately though, these diatribes weren’t the last memories of the evening. After Brad’s set, Ray walked onstage once more. The lights were turned up for a few questions from the audience, some of which led to a brief and sweet discussion about the late Peter Boyle, who played Frank Barone. And then we were treated to an Everybody Loves Raymond bloopers reel, which lasted about 5 minutes. So that was nice.
In any event, it was quite clear that everybody there still loves Raymond. But I’m not sure that I can say the same about “Robert.”
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,