As an avid sitcom viewer, I grew up watching reruns of shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, and Roseanne, on Nickelodeon. The 90’s were chock full of sitcoms like these. The lack of originality between each show was astounding, with a cookie cutter plot for each episode, and extremely shallow character development. Every show had the goofball husband, with the controlling wife, and the troublesome children. The show I remember most vividly however, is Everybody Loves Raymond. The show accounts the misadventures of the Barrone family. There was Raymond, the ignorant husband; Debra who was the loud, controlling wife; Marie, the intrusive mother; and Frank, the obnoxious Grandfather who only cares for himself. The change in the wife figure has incurred the most interesting change over time, and has continued even into today’s TV shows.

The characters, Deborah and Marie, are complete opposites when it comes to embracing the role of the traditional housewife. Marie is old school when it comes to taking care of her family. She is very intrusive, and this is where her comedic value comes in. She intervenes in the affairs of her fellow family members constantly and annoys them to no end. She simply refuses to give up her role as a “nurturing” mother, and she is always concerned with the matters of her two sons Ray and Robert. All this happens despite the fact that they are over forty years old! At the beginning of the show Robert actually lives in her basement, and Ray lives directly across the street from her, and it is obvious that she enjoys this setup. She constantly gets into conflicts with Debra about the jobs a housewife is “expected” perform, and criticizes her lack of proficiency at such jobs. She gives Debra backhanded comments on her lack of cooking and cleaning skills. Marie feels she is not living up to her own, unparalleled, abilities.

She actually enjoys the life of the housewife as she waits on Frank’s every whim. Just like clockwork, Frank is yelling at Marie to make him food in every single episode. He even says that he married her because of her braciole. Marie does complain about it, but it seems that their relationship and power dynamic makes both of them happy. Ray and Debra realize that their current situation is the only way that their relationship could have lasted so long, despite their apparent hatred for each other. Her attitude about her role in the family is summed up nicely in Season 5, Episode 10, called “The Sneeze”. Deborah is concerned that Marie is coddling Raymond.

You know I understand that you’re a young woman of today, what with the women’s lib and all that. And you probably think of me as a very old-fashioned, out-of-touch housewife. And maybe I am, but if someone in my family needs me and wants me to take care of him, I’m there for him. And I’m happy to do it. And now I’m gonna boil my Raymond a chicken.

Her tactics are overbearing, and there is almost no place for her in the family. It almost as if Marie were taken from a 60’s sitcom like the Brady Bunch, and planted into a contemporary show. From the way that the family reacts to her presence, it is clear that old housewives like her are a dying breed. She acknowledges that there just is not room for a traditional housewife like her in modern times.

Debra along with the other 90’s sitcom wives shift the power dynamic in the traditional family hierarchy. In a traditional sitcom like Leave it to Beaver one sees that the male is the most dominant figure in the family, and what he says, goes. While Marie would fit in perfectly in a show like that, Deborah would not last a day. Every character cowers at the mention of Deborah’s cooking. Even Frank, who at one points eats a bowl of expired pudding knows better than to go anywhere near food Debra has made. Raymond seems to suffer daily because of it, and refuses to criticize Debra in fear of what may happen to him. His reaction is like that of a child who cannot leave the table to he eats his peas. He knows it awful, but he he also knows its better just to eat it rather than argue.

Oftentimes the woman wears the pants in the family. Everyone loves to see the husband try to lay down the law on the family just to be stopped dead in his tracks by one look from the wife. In Raymond’s world, the roles are even reversed in some aspects. In one episode, Ray chides Debra because she never lets him make any important decisions. It is, as if Ray has once again become one of the children, and wants to do “grown up stuff”. Even in shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, it seems that Uncle Phil may run the house, but he has no control over Aunt Viv, and that in some instances she has power over him. Whenever he shouts at her to do something, like he would with the children, he immediately backs down at her reaction. This mostly plays into the comedic value of the show, but it something that is unique to more current sitcoms. In the below scene Aunt Viv scares a group of gangsters.

Sexuality is much more open in the 90’s sitcoms then the traditional sitcoms. When the Brady Bunch was pitched to the ABC, NBC, and CBS, they all liked the script, but were unanimous in their desire to change the concept that Mrs. Brady was divorced. At the time it was unacceptable, considering divorce was something that was frowned upon at the time. In I Love Lucy, Lucy and her husband did not even sleep in the same bed together. The complete opposite attitude toward sex is displayed in Raymond. Sex is something that is openly discussed, and scenes are seen throughout the show where they had just finished their business. The show even discusses the sex life of Frank and Marie, as disturbingly painful as it was to think about. “What we do in our bedroom is our own business. And I prefer not to be known as the whore of Lynbrook.” Marie represents the traditional housewife, and brings a traditional view on sexuality into a contemporary environment. Things such as sex life were not discussed, and were seen as something that a wife must do in order to please their husband. Women were not supposed to enjoy sex, but see it as another task that needed to be completed. However, in the “No Roll” episode, Raymond and Debra openly talk to each other about the shortcomings in their sex life. Ray is upset that they don’t have sex often enough, but Debra feels that Ray has become too boring over their twelve years of marriage, and wants more variety. “I need them[you] to be less selfish. Why should I have to tell you what I want? …Do you know how depressing that is, that after 12 years, you don’t know?” She even goes as far as to reprimand Raymond for his lack of knowledge about her sexual desires. During the scene, Ray sits at the foot of the bed dejected, and somewhat humiliated at his failures in the bedroom. For Debra to be making demands in the bedroom it shows the power that women hold in the show. In a traditional atmosphere like in Marie’s world, one would fully expect the man to make all the demands in the bedroom, and the woman to go along with it. This concept ties back to the feminine complaint that woman are meant to forget love’s failure in exchange for the gift of love itself. Debra does not follow this trend as she seeks to increase her own pleasure despite what shame it may bring to her spouse.

The 90’s sitcoms may not have been the creators of the new power dynamic between married couples on television, but it was certainly overly present. Shows like Married with Children exhibited the same structure in the 80’s, but those go a little to far back for me. A great change is noticed in the relationship between husband and wife, as women begin to hold the power over their husbands. This trend is something that is extremely common in almost every TV show today, and may have paved the way for the new “Housewives” shows that are popular today. They may have even taken it a step further, and now focus only on relationships between couples, cutting out family life all together.