Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Ninth Season - Region 1 DVD

In the best Raymond episodes, you laugh until it hurts (in "Sister-in-Law," Raymond, ever the "selfish ass," resists extroverted Amy's attempts to get to know him better) and it hurts until you laugh (in "Boys' Therapy," Raymond, Robert and Frank, unwittingly make personal breakthroughs when they ditch group-therapy sessions for the track). At the heart of the final season is Marie's definition of family: "We stick together, we support each other." In the pitch-perfect finale (watched by a reported 32 million people), all resentments and bickering are forgotten when Raymond, undergoing minor surgery for adenoids, momentarily does not awaken following the operation. This set contains "The Last Laugh," an emotional series retrospective built around the filming of the finale (which had to be delayed when Heaton developed laryngitis), amusing deleted scenes, and rollicking, spontaneous commentaries on eight episodes. The brief blooper reel is hardly worth the trouble, but we do get to see Romano break up Boyle with a Young Frankenstein reference. --Donald Liebenson