I have been thinking about family-oriented sitcoms a lot lately, and not because I am trying to be dramatic about television (although I can be dramatic, it is part of my charm). I am thinking about them because I am about to be 45 in March, and I am sitting here watching Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion, which aired on CBS on November 24, 2025, and streams on Paramount+. I can feel that old, familiar warmth in my chest. The kind that says, “Oh. There you are. We used to do this.”
I am also watching it like a writer, because the older I get, the more I notice when a show is built on real storytelling instead of noise.
The family room used to be a meeting place
In the 80s and 90s, TV was not just background noise in my house. It was a routine that brought us into the same room at the same time after dinner was done and the kitchen was cleaned up. Friday nights mattered. TGIF mattered. Full House, Step By Step, Perfect Strangers, Family Matters. Those shows were funny, yes, but they also smuggled in values. They talked about work-life balance. They bumped into racism, sexism, and peer pressure. They let families be messy and still try again next week.
Then Saturday came, and I graduated into SNICK with Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Clarissa Explains It All, and later (not on SNICK) came Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even then, my mom still often watched with me. Not every episode. Not every season. But often enough that I can still picture it, the two of us on the couch, sharing the same story for an hour. It counted.
Here is the thing. We did not call it “quality time.” We just showed up. The family room was our little story circle. Same couch, same time, same characters, and we got to practice being people together.
Everybody Loves Raymond felt real because it was written from real life
Everybody Loves Raymond landed for me in a different season of life. High school into college. Not always watched as a whole-family event, but it still became a shared language. I talked to my mom about it. My grandma loved it too, and when your Italian grandma is laughing, you know the writers hit something honest.
The Barones were dysfunctional in a way that was both ridiculous and familiar. Frank and Marie were meddlesome, hilarious, and exhausting, sometimes all in the same sentence. Ray and Debra were trying to build a marriage inside a minefield of opinions, guilt, love, and unsolicited feedback. Robert was that specific flavor of “adult sibling who is still bruised,” and Brad Garrett played it so well that I still feel protective of him.
And I need to say this clearly, because I think we sometimes praise “characters” when what we are really praising is the actor’s craft. Frank and Marie worked because Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts were extraordinary actors. Their timing, their physicality, the way a look could be a whole paragraph. I cannot imagine anyone else doing it with that same authenticity. The reunion conversations about why there will not be a reboot made that point even sharper. The cast has said it would not be the same without Boyle and Roberts because they were essential to the show’s dynamic.
And I love that Ray is a sportswriter in the show. Even if the writing is about sports, the point is that storytelling matters to him. You can feel it in the bones of the episodes. A small irritation becomes a premise. A premise becomes a spiral. Then, somehow, the whole thing lands back at the table like, “Okay, we are still a family.”
Two things can be true. The show is a comedy that also knows how to tell the truth sideways.
What family-oriented sitcoms taught me about storytelling
This is what I miss, and I mean it in the most nerdy, tender way. A classic family sitcom episode is basically a short story. Set up, escalation, turn, and resolve. Thirty minutes. A beginning, a middle, an end. A laugh. A little reset.
You finish it, exhale, rinse your plate, and carry one good line with you into the next day.
Part 2 made the writing feel visible
Also, can we talk about Part 2 of the reunion special for a second? It had me giggling like I was trying not to wake up the whole house. CBS aired a bonus Part 2 on December 22, 2025, featuring never-before-seen content, outtakes, and behind-the-scenes footage.
Watching those outtakes and one-liners felt like watching the writing happen in real time. Not just “being funny,” but building funny. Trying a line, adjusting the rhythm, swapping a word, finding the version that lands. It reminded me that the warmth we felt in the original show was not accidental. It was crafted. On purpose. Over and over again.
When nostalgia includes loss, I want us to talk about it with care
One of the things the reunion did was name the people who are no longer here. Doris Roberts. Peter Boyle. And Sawyer Sweeten, who played Geoffrey.
I am not interested in turning a tragedy into content. I am interested in telling the truth. Sometimes the shows that raised us also carry grief inside them now.
April 23 is recognized by many fans as Sawyer Day, and Sawyer’s family has used it as a way to keep talking about suicide prevention and to raise money through annual shirt sales that support the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
If you or someone you love is struggling, you deserve support that is real and immediate. In the United States, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Compassion is not just a feeling. It is what we do with what we know.
Why TV feels different now (and it is not just “kids these days”)
I miss family-oriented sitcoms, but I am not pretending everything back then was perfect. A lot of those older shows had blind spots, and some “jokes” did damage. There are definitely moments I rewatch and say, “Oooph. That did not age well.” And then I think about how many of us learned to spot the harm over time, in part because we can see it so clearly now.
Now, so much of what is popular is crime, murder, hospital drama, mysteries, and apocalypse. I like some of it. I really do. But that is not what I want to bond with my kids over at dinner.
The bigger shift, honestly, is how fragmented everything is. No shared schedule. No “see you Friday at 8.” No collective rhythm where half your school talked about the same episode the next day. Now it is a thousand shows spread across a dozen platforms, and everybody is watching alone, on a separate device, with headphones in. My nervous system clocked it before my brain did. We are together, but we are not together. We did not just lose a schedule. We lost the shared story everyone could reference without a group text and three logins.
Also, online games do not have an “end credits” moment where everyone laughs and then gets up to brush their teeth. They just keep going. Forever. Like a casino, but with Minecraft. (Or am I dating myself. Is it Arc Raiders now?)
What I want with my kids is simple, and I am allowed to want it
I want my kids to get off their online games and come down to the family room and watch a 30-minute show with me, damnit. Not because I am controlling. Because I miss us. Because I know what it feels like when a story becomes a bridge.
Not just to watch it. To talk about it after. To quote one dumb line all week. To build our own tiny family language out of it.
These days, our closest thing is turning on YouTube during dinner and watching Good Mythical Morning, because at least it is funny and usually wholesome. Or we watch Psych, which is technically crime-based but also warm and goofy and built on friendship. It has that “we are in this together” energy that I am craving.
My younger two watched Stranger Things with me for the most part, and I loved having that with them. But the long hiatuses and the extra-long episodes meant it never became a simple, steady ritual. It was an event. Not a habit.
And I want the habit. I want the easy togetherness.
What I am hoping we bring back without going backward
When I say I want more family-oriented sitcoms, I do not mean a return to the same old defaults where only certain families are centered, and everyone else is a side character. I want the opposite. I want shows that bring us together and tell the truth about real life now. Modern Family did this, it was great, but it has even been off-air for what, six years now?
That includes:
- Families of different races, cultures, and structures.
- Immigrant families whose stories are not reduced to stereotypes.
- Kids who have big feelings and are not mocked for them.
- Parents who are learning in real time, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes beautifully.
- Humor that punches up at power, not down at the vulnerable.
- Storylines that name racism, sexism, and inequality without turning it into a lecture.
I want to understand, and I also need specifics. If a show is going to call itself “family,” I want it to be accountable to what families actually look like.
A small invitation, practical and a little stubborn
I cannot control what networks greenlight. I cannot force my kids to love what I loved. But I can make a tiny claim on our time.
Maybe it is one night a week. Maybe it is one episode after dinner. Maybe it is a rotating choice, so everyone gets a turn. Maybe it is not even a “sitcom,” but it has to meet the standard: short, funny, and something we can share in the same room.
Because I am not trying to fight. I am trying to stay human.
If you miss the family room too, what is one show, old or new, that gives you that “pull up a chair” feeling, and why?
Schitt’s Creek is arguably the funniest show I’ve ever seen that everyone could enjoy.
That is another really good show, I agree. It ended around the same time as Modern Family, so back in 2020. In my opinion, we haven’t had another great family sitcom since before the pandemic. We are, instead, inundated with doom, gloom and horror OR comedy so stupid it is insulting and cringey.