Lots of folks love sketch comedy without really knowing what it is. We've all seen Saturday Night Live, with short, hilarious scenes written ahead of time and performed for laughs. It's different from improv in that it's all rehearsed and scripted. And it's different from standup because it's an ensemble performance. While sketch comedy might not sell out football stadiums and sell millions of records, there's plenty of material out there to prove it's one of comedy's funniest mediums. 

One more reason to love sketch comedy: It's where Ray Romano got his first taste of performing for laughter onstage, according to an interview with NPR TV Critic David Bianculli.

"In school, I wasn't a very good student— I was very irresponsible and never did the studying but always liked to get the laugh," Romano told Bianculli. "And Saturday Night Live was starting in 1975. I was 17 years old, and it was like nothing I'd ever seen."

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Ray wasn't alone. That first season of SNL caught lightning in a bottle and captured the attention of millions nationwide. With a once-in-a-lifetime cast of comic actors and some of North America's greatest writers on board, Saturday Night Live became a cultural touchstone for an entire generation. Inspired, Romano and a few other friends tried their hand at sketch comedy, too. 

"It was kind of my first taste of what standup was like because I was talking to the audience and getting laughs," he says. "So that was where the bug of performing standup came."

It's not hard to see how Romano's brief foray into sketch paved the way for Everybody Loves Raymond. Each scene on that show plays out like a sketch, with all of them interwoven to create the overall episode. Characters have clear wants in entering the scene, and we see an arc as the situation escalates, usually with a "button" that cleverly ends the action before a commercial break.