Everyone is in Raymond's kitchen except Raymond, who is out at a Knicks' game with the twins and their new friend, Chris, who we hear lives next door. Raymond comes home alone. He jokes, when asked where the boys are, by saying he told them to hitchhike home from the strip club. Then he tells them they are at Chris's house next door.
He boasts about a one-line "joke" he made at the game, when he saw Chris eating peanuts and holding the shells in his lap. He told him that he can throw them on the floor, "that's what they pay the janitor for." Everyone seems horrified because they know what Raymond did not know-Chris's father is the custodian at their school.
When Chris's dad, George, comes over, Ray wants to prove that what he said wasn't offensive, so he makes a point of telling his new neighbor just what he had told his son. The man says nothing rude at all, says "It's alright." He leaves, but then returns because his son left his retainer somewhere in their house.
Virtually the entire rest of the show features everyone telling Ray what a dummy he was for saying such a thing. Ray and everyone fall over each other apologizing.
They then do the usual thing on this series, seasons 4-9, more or less. They spend the whole episode trying to top each other with stupid things they have said or done, with almost everyone taking a turn. George keeps trying to get out of there but they insist he stay.
So the poor man has to listen to this extended-family argument as they go on and one, almost ignoring the fact that a stranger is in their midst. Too bad nobody actually wanted to talk to him.
None of the dumb things we heard them arguing about was funny-Robert misinterpreting sign language for gang signs, Frank using the term "black" instead of African-American (oh the horrors), etc. They even finish with Amy coming back, having missed most of the festivities and even though the whole rest of the family was there, she didn't see Marie who happened to be behind the open door, so she said something stupid about Marie before learning where she was.
I said, "rest of the family" but that's not quite correct. Older daughter Allie was nowhere in sight and was never mentioned on the entire show. Here they followed the old Dick Van Dyke Show practice of having their son almost never seen nor mentioned unless he was important to the script.
One thing that never made any sense was that Ray is supposed to be a sports columnist who writes about the pro teams in New York. Yet he almost never is seen traveling to a road game and seems to go to lots of local games, like the one mentioned on this show, as a fan, not someone working. Most teams-Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, and Islanders play the vast majority of their games at night, which should mean by the time Ray does interviews and writes his column, he returns home after midnight, but he is almost never depicted not being home in the evening. Those "unrealistic" shows of the 1950s and 60s have nothing on this series and others of today in that regard. I think of Frasier normally showing up for his radio show about 2 minutes before he went on the air, and heading for home, or his favorite coffee shop, as soon as it was over. No preparation time required here.
When this series began, it was somewhat funny. Then they turned all sorts of little beefs they had into major arguments over rather important matters and made the show almost non-stop bickering.
It is a fact that at sports events, fans do leave peanut shells on the floor because they don't have a waste basket at every seat and they do sweep and power wash out the stands after the games, so it really is the norm to do this. I don't see why Ray would think his line to the kid would BE funny in the first place. And I don't see what is offensive about it. The people cleaning up the Garden wouldn't be saving any time if Chris put his peanuts into a trash bin after the game than if he does what Ray said to do.
Now when the kids came home, it appeared Chris was happy as a boy normally would be and likely didn't think anything of Ray's "joke." He might have forgotten about it entirely for all we know. But for some reason, Ray just HAD to tell George when he met him. If not for that stupidity, the whole thing probably would have been forgotten.
To the folks who somehow found this episode funny-more power to you. I thought it was almost laugh less and rather stupid and can only give it a 3.
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