American TV is home to a continuum of great family sitcoms. From the dawn of the medium, writers have been using television to reflect viewers' home lives back to them. In addition to the workplace, family is one of the most relatable themes or settings imaginable. Luckily for audiences, families are also, generally speaking, hilarious. 

Everybody's got that one aunt or uncle who is the absolute life of the party. We've each got great memories of family get-togethers when a sibling mispeaks or somebody trips, and the laughs roll on forever. The family sitcom, then, is an over-the-airwaves reproduction of these reminiscences played out to millions for all of us to share. Sometimes these TV moments transcend the medium and become their own family memories. The whole household gathered around the tube for a chance to laugh together. 

When we look back at this history of family sitcoms, it's clear which ones stand out as part of a higher echelon. Shows like Leave It to Beaver, I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, and All in the Family not only delighted for decades, but they also paved the way for television yet to come. 

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While executive producer Phil Rosenthal may not have foreseen how hugely successful his show Everybody Loves Raymond would become, it's clear that he set his sights pretty high from the beginning. 

Legendary television mogul Norman Lear tells the story of how his legacy was immediately connected to Rosenthal's then-new show in the forward to the later-published retrospective Everybody Loves Raymond: Our Family Album:

"Before I'd ever seen his show, Phil Rosenthal, creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, told me he that when he was pitching it to the powers that be at CBS, they asked him what kind of show he had in mind. A photograph of the All in the Family cast was hnging on the wall in the office where the meeting was taking place. Phil pointed to it. 'One like that,' he quotes himself as saying."

This is the TV equivalent of Babe Ruth calling his shot. Rosenthal certainly wasn't some unproven novice at this point in his career, but he also wasn't yet the titan of television he'd become. His bold declaration clearly left an impression on Lear, who would go on to make clear that while any resemblance was a compliment, Raymond was no ripoff.

"Phil had to be alluding to the success he hoped to have, because to the extent that he intended the show to be like All in the Family, he failed. Utterly. Yes, Everybody Loves Raymond is about a family. And yes, it is about family life and family relationships, centered around a family member. But the comparison ends somewhere in that neighborhood, because Everybody Loves Raymond is a thorough original. Ray Romano's comedy [...] pokes into the nooks and crannies of marriage, family relationships, and human frailty, at levels so dep as to be at once universal and profound."