By Ray Richmond | The Hollywood Reporter

The sitcom that came, laughed and helped CBS conquer the ratings signs off quietly tonight.

As CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond" bids farewell to primetime this evening with 210 episodes in the can, Emmys on the mantel and having made star Ray Romano the all-time highest-paid TV actor (with a rumored $1.8 million per episode), one fact should not be lost: The show had the deck stacked against it from the start.

That a comedy series so traditional could enjoy blockbuster success during an age of cynicism and irony ("Raymond" debuted while NBC's "Seinfeld" was part of the national zeitgeist) says something about its quality. It's hard to guess exactly what else hooked "Raymond" into viewers' consciousness: Romano was a little-known stand-up comic in his late 30s whose biggest job had been voice work on Comedy Central's animated series "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist," and creator-showrunner Phil Rosenthal had distinguished himself as a producer and director on ABC's "Coach" but also had on his resume such TV series flops as 1991's "Baby Talk" and 1992's "Down the Shore."

But "Raymond" defied early skepticism by putting a clever spin on the time-honored family sitcom genre. Sure, the show featured a married couple with kids, but the children here were rarely seen or heard, and the husband/father's meddling parents (Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle), who resided across the street, and his jealous brother (Brad Garrett) were the real juveniles.

Nonetheless, Rosenthal believes that "Raymond" would not stand a chance debuting in 2005. "As a family comedy, I'm not even sure we'd make it onto the air because while the networks say they want a family audience, what they really mostly care about are 12-year-old boys because the research tells them to," he says. "If our success proves anything, maybe it's that the testing is flawed."

To be sure, not a lot of people inside or outside the network believed early on that "Raymond" would become CBS' Monday Monster. The show's 1996-97 debut season was relegated to the far-less-than-ideal position of 8:30 p.m. Friday, following the then-fading sitcom "Dave's World." Nothing about the Rosenthal-penned "Raymond" pilot was remarkable enough to justify a cushier time slot, says CBS executive vp comedy development Wendi Trilling, the network's No. 2 comedy executive at the time.

"We loved it, but we also love a lot of pilots that ultimately fail," she says. "That said, there was a lot of buzz about the show internally: It had a loyal following within the company early on."

One of those fans was Leslie Moonves, then president of CBS Entertainment and now co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom and chairman of CBS. He liked "Raymond" enough to move it in March 1997 to Monday nights at 8:30, where the show stayed until it was moved to 9 p.m. the following fall to lock horns with ABC's "Monday Night Football" and Fox's "Ally McBeal" -- and subsequently beat them both.

"'Raymond' was struggling on Fridays, but it deserved a chance to find its audience because it was so good," Moonves says. "We put it behind (the 1996-2000 sitcom) 'Cosby,' and it started to take off."

A relief for Moonves, considering that he was committed to "Raymond" if for no other reason than it was produced by David Letterman's Worldwide Pants Inc., "which made it an especially important piece of business for CBS." Moonves now would love to see that business continue for another season, but Rosenthal and Romano came to a mutual decision to pull the plug -- and little would dissuade them.

"Even getting 16 episodes out of them this season was a little bit of a squeeze," Moonves says. "But I can totally appreciate their wanting to leave on top."

Nancy Tellem, who oversees CBS' entertainment division as president of the CBS Paramount Network TV Entertainment Group, believes that "Raymond" could have gone on for another five years.

"Not only was this show instrumental in establishing our Monday night comedy block as No. 1, (but also) it got people who had previously been reluctant in the door and wanting to do business with this network," she says. "One of the big raps on CBS had been that our shows had no syndication value because we couldn't reach younger viewers. 'Raymond' single-handedly turned that perception around.

"It also helped launch both 'The King of Queens' and 'Two and a Half Men' on Mondays to establish a family-comedy continuum that will stand us in good stead next season after 'Raymond' is gone," Tellem adds. "But trust me that I relinquish this show with a very sad heart."

Perhaps the only person who claims to have foreseen the "Raymond" phenomenon is Rory Rosegarten, Romano's manager and one of the show's executive producers. He admits that he could not have predicted the enormity of the show's success, but "it was obvious that Ray was special and exceptional and destined for great things," Rosegarten says. "I don't think he receives enough credit for having grown into a tremendous actor during the run of the show. Now, he'll finally get a chance to stretch."

Romano views the success of a show patterned on his stand-up act as mostly a glorious accident. "If I ever do another show, I'm sure I'll be in for a rude awakening," he says. "I don't think I get more than one of these per lifetime."

That notion makes Rosegarten chuckle. "Ray thinks it's over, and
I believe it's just beginning for him," he says. "He'll have no trouble moving on. The best news is that this guy is exactly the same as he (has) always been. ... He thinks the two biggest perks from all of this are that he can play golf on any course he likes and doesn't have to wait in line when he takes the family to Disneyland."

Garrett agrees that Romano remains unchanged by success.

"He's the same exact dude," Garrett says. "I mean, just think of the money this guy turned down to do a 10th season. It just doesn't matter to him, not like it does to me. Screw leaving on top -- where's my paycheck?"