With nine seasons and over 200 episodes, writing the finale episode of Everybody Loves Raymond was no easy task.

Series creator Phil Rosenthal was certainly not immune to the pressure, as he confessed during an interview with the Associated Press. To Rosenthal, a bad finale was a kiss of death.

“I feel a great obligation not to disappoint,” said Rosenthal. “Even if you’ve had a great run and end badly, there’s a little bit of taint on it. The series is a whole unto itself, and had to be treated as a body of work.”

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With such success, it can be difficult to imagine that there was a time when higher-ups were reluctant to air a sitcom like Everybody Loves Raymond in the first place.

“People didn’t jump up and down when we told them the premise of the show, a guy lives across the street from his parents,” said Rosenthal. “They were all saying, ‘Make it hip, make it edgy.’”

Of course, the docile nature of the series was precisely what drew audiences to the sitcom in the first place. More importantly, it kept them tuning in, right until the very last episode.

Series star Ray Romano also felt he owed it to fans to provide a finale that they deserved, but not necessarily one that would feel out of place in the series.“Every week it’s just a new episode in our life,” said Romano. “But there’s a pressure to have a good episode and for it to have some emotional resonance, a little bit more than normal, without going too over the top with life-changing moments, which we’re not going to do.”