There’s an episode devoted to that in flashbacks. IIRC, they were living in an apartment reasonably far away from Marie and Frank and already had a daughter. When they found out Debra was pregnant with twins, they started house hunting. Up till then Debra and Marie got along fine - she was great as an every other weekend grandmother. Debra and Ray always visited Frank and Marie, not the other way around, so Marie hadn’t had a chance to criticize Debra’s housekeeping. So when they found the house across the street from Marie & Frank, Debra was all for it (“It’ll be great having your parents across the street! The kids will love it!”) but Ray was very much opposed to it. He tried to explain to Debra why it was a bad idea, but she overruled him.
I know Chicago alleys are supposed to be unique, but we have backyards before the alleys. I would indeed run out my back (kitchen) door with my garbage, through the backyard and out to the alley to meet the garbage truck.
In my family-of-origin’s social strata, only guests use the front door, unless it’s a Formal Function (like prom, Christmas dinner, etc.) or your arrival is unexpected. Family and close friends use the back door, open it without knocking and yell “Hello?!” or just walk right in.
Yeah, it’s unlocked. Always. You don’t lock the door 'till you go to bed. The front door’s probably locked though, and requires ringing the bell even if it’s not.
As I recall, at one point Ray even had a map with his parents’ neighborhood as the bullseye and circles drawn to represent the distance from his parents it would be safe enough to live.
Not every show does it, but most sitcoms do. The Waltons knew how to fill out a table. It is so rare to see realistic table seating on tv that I get excited to see the back of some heads.
Back to Ray… Raymond always enters from the kitchen’s back door. If the driveway was alongside the house, this would make total sense. But it’s not.
Ray’s house
In this pic it appears that the driveway (that you can’t see) leads into the garage from the front. So if Ray parks in the garage, he has to go back out of the garage and around the back to enter through the back door. This is insane, considering that there is a door directly from the kitchen to the garage. Even if there is a door to the garage that leads to the back yard, he is still going out of his way. He should be entering through the garage entrance, between the fridge and the junk drawer.
To further the argument, I have noticed that Marie walks like she is a bit mobility challenged. Perhaps she has arthritis that accounts for her slow movements and short steps. Whatever the cause, this is not someone who would go the long way around.
That’s it! I demand a do-over in which no one ever enters through the back unless they have a legit reason.
The Bunkers were another family that sat crowded around one side of the dinner table.
That would make perfect sense, except, as one poster noted, everyone enters at whichever door is closer and not restricted to one door.
I guess I never really noticed it about sitcoms before
In watching the Seinfeld pilot last night, I realized they had it right about single people and food. Seinfeld eats on the coach, and only eats stuff like cereal, snack food, and takeout in his apartment. No seven course meals at the table like they do on “Friends.” Whenever he is seen eating a full meal, it’s at a couple’s house or at Monk’s Diner.
I have a feeling that going through the back doors would be Marie’s idea. You know what a clean freak she was. She probably thought that by going in the back doors she would be preserving the cleanliness of the living room. (although she didn’t seem to think Debra was too clean). Maybe that’s why you see them using Ray’s and Deborah’s front door more often and Ray and Deborah using their back door almost all the time. :rolleyes:
Why does it matter?
I’m not sure you’re going to get an answer out of him.
And through which door do the zombies enter?
That being said . . . It’s strange that Ray comes home from work and enters through the back door . . . even though he has just parked the car in the garage, and there’s a door from the garage to the kitchen, by way of a utility room. We know there’s a door between the kitchen and the garage, because that’s where Ray went when his inlaws were in the kitchen discussing their marital problems. Ray hid in the garage to eavesdrop on them.
Yep, as I recall it Ray had worked out what range was close enough for occasional baby-sitting and warm food pick-up but too far for frequent visits. At the end of the ep, in current time, he creates a similar diagram using the solar system. 
No, the beauty part was that Too Far meant any visits would become overnight visits, up with which we will not put.
I love how they eat on The Big Bang Theory–takeout around the couch.
I used to laugh when Marcy and Steve (or Jefferson) just walked in the front door of the Bundy residence and make themselves right at home. And how they all regularly sat lined up on the couch, crammed together, facing the camera.
Years ago I saw an indie movie called The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love which contained a scene where a girl went over to her girlfriend’s house for dinner. Everyone sat down and a character made a comment about how crowded it was having an extra person at the table…which I suppose was a deliberate lampshade of the fact that the side of the table nearest the camera was empty.
Since this is a zombie anyway I will go a bit off topic and say it bugs me how on every show the couch is in the middle of a room when no house I have ever been in has done it like that.
Back in the early aughts, I think it was, there were a slew of home redecorating shows pleading with people to move their couch off the wall. One of the male hosts (Clinton whatisname maybe?) used to yell, “Everybody up on the wall!” and plaster himself arms akimbo when he walked into a room with the furniture lining the walls.
I’ve had a couple of frontrooms now where I’ve tried it, and it often works out quite well, visually and physically dividing the room into two more useful spaces.
If you scroll down there’s a really tortured attempt to make sense out of the floorplan of their house.
Well Monica was a foodie and professional chef.
What always bothered me is how could both houses be across the street from each other if both their front doors are facing to the right? The front doors should be facing each other. One facing left and the other facing right. Right?