Everybody Loves Raymond was a model of stability for CBS in the early 2000s. As the decade began, even more viewers started to love the show, as it shot to 5^th place during the 2000-01 season, tying Monday Night Football for the lead in the Monday night at 9:00 timeslot. After Monday Night Football concluded its season, Raymond easily beat everything slotted against it.

A season later, Everybody Loves Raymond surpassed Monday Night Football, finishing in 4^th place compared to football’s 7^th place finish. Once again, Raymond dominated the timeslot after Monday Night Football went on hiatus.

Everybody Loves Raymond was not only a consistent ratings performer, but it also remained stable on and off-screen. The show’s main cast and most of its writing staff, including creator and executive producer Phil Rosenthal, stayed with the show throughout its nine seasons.

When Raymond premiered in 1996, it defied the prevailing sitcom trends of the time. Thanks to Friends and Seinfeld, many sitcoms accelerated their pace, telling multiple stories within the same episode. Everybody Loves Raymond went in the opposite direction, getting big laughs from simple stories that built slowly. When other shows were busy casting young, attractive performers from a shallow talent pool for supporting roles, Everybody Loves Raymond had its pick of overlooked older performers to play Raymond’s parents, wisely choosing seasoned pros Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle.

Everybody Loves Raymond continued to run neck and neck with Monday Night Football during its final three seasons, with Raymond prevailing (7^th over 10^th), tying (9^th place), and winning by a razor-thin margin (9^th to 10^th) in 2002-2003, 2003-04, and 2004-05. However, the mid-season competition heated up as insipid Fox reality series Joe Millionaire and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé finished 3^rd and 16^th in the Nielsens in 2002-03 and 2003-04, respectively.

Raymond continued to get critical respect, winning Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2003 and at the conclusion of its final season in 2005. While Raymond could have run for several more seasons, Rosenthal and Ray Romano decided to wrap the series while it was still on top, with a shortened 16-episode run in 2004-05. A proposed spinoff for Brad Garrett’s Robert character never materialized.

With Everybody Loves Raymond ending its run, there was little doubt as to which series would replace it. The previous two seasons, Charlie Sheen’s Two and a Half Men followed Everybody Loves Raymond at 9:30 on Mondays, retaining a large share of the Raymond audience.

While not quite as successful as Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and a Half Men finished a solid 13^th place in its first season on Monday at 9:00, slightly behind Monday Night Football’s 9^th place finish. With the demise of Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, Frasier, and Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men was now the top-rated network sitcom, a position it continued to hold throughout the decade. Despite their popularity, multi-camera comedies had fallen out of favor with network programmers and critics. That said, beginning this season, Two and a Half Men picked up the first of three straight Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series.

Monday Night Football moved to ESPN in the fall of 2006, so Two and a Half Men won its timeslot among network series, finishing 14th for the 2006-07 season. While Two and a Half Men’s ratings would remain consistent (15^th, 12^th, 12^th) throughout the rest of the decade, it no longer won its timeslot from 2007-08 on, as ABC’s inexplicably popular and durable Dancing With the Stars took 3^rd place each season opposite Two and a Half Men. A writers’ strike in 2007 that led to a shortened season (19 episodes) didn’t help the sitcom while leaving unscripted programming unscathed.

Co-star Jon Cryer won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2009, and all appeared to be well as the series remained popular in its 7^th season. However, Charlie Sheen was arrested for a domestic dispute, and later entered drug rehab, halting production of the show for a few weeks. The series still managed to produce 22 episodes, and when Sheen agreed to return for another season at the last minute, it appeared the crisis had been averted.

Unfortunately, it was a sign of things to come, as Sheen’s time with Two and a Half Men was about to come to an end, as was CBS’ long streak of airing sitcoms on Monday nights at 9:00.