The late stand-up comedian Mitch Hedberg had a great joke about when he was expected to guest-star on sitcoms. It was a well-worn path for comics' careers. You hone your craft in clubs and on the road, and then if you're lucky, you do a spot on a late-night show like Leno or Letterman or Carson. Then, your agent gets you a gig on a sitcom, so that the more "Hollywood" types get to evaluate whether you're worthy of that next level of stardom. But to Hedberg, it was a weird proposition. "That's like if I worked hard to become a cook," he equated it, "they'd say, 'OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?'"

Hedberg may have put it best, but he certainly wasn't alone. It's an awkward transition for many comedians. Suddenly, the toolset you've spent years sharpening is looked at as simply a stepping stone to some greater opportunity. You grind it out on stages for years, only to be expected to abandon stand-up entirely.

Ray Romano was no different and expressed the strain in a 1998 interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal. Like so many of his peers in the '80s and '90s, Romano was plucked from the comedy club and placed on TV, when executives saw dollar signs in that particular model. Tim Allen, Rosanne Barr, Jerry Seinfeld, Drew Carey, and Ellen DeGeneres had proved the formula to be lucrative, and now it was Ray's turn.

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Luckily, he had a cast of wonderfully kind and talented actors around him, in Doris Roberts, Peter Boyle, and Brad Garrett.

"They're all great," Romano said of his co-stars. "They helped me get some confidence. I didn't know if I could do it. But I was lucky enough to be able to be involved in the writing, so if something doesn't feel right or real, I can change it."

There was also the fact that Romano only contributed to each script, rather than writing it all himself. This was a huge departure for a comedian who'd previously penned every word in his act. 

"I had a hard time getting used to doing other people's material and getting laughs with it," he said. "For my act, I write every joke, and I want it all to be something I thought of. It took me a long time to accept a laugh even though someone else had written it for me."