PHIL ROSENTHAL (Somebody Feed Phil) stops by Seattle on book tour; 2022

Phil Rosenthal is perhaps best known as the creator of the long-running sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond; but post-Raymond, he has been delighting new audiences as the host of the beloved Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil. Rosenthal loves food and learning about global cultures, and he makes sure to bring that passion to every episode of the show. Whether he’s traveling stateside to foodie-favorite cities such as San Francisco or New Orleans or around the world to locations like Saigon, Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, or Marrakesh, Rosenthal includes a healthy dose of humor to every episode - and now, to a new book.
Phil joins us to share tasty travel tales and an abundance of laughs with Town Hall audiences.
Phil Rosenthal is the creator and host of the Emmy-nominated Somebody Feed Phil, an unscripted documentary series on Netflix, which combines his love of food and travel with his unique brand of humor. Rosenthal was born in Queens, New York, and raised in Rockland County. After graduating from Hofstra University on Long Island, where he majored in theater, he embarked on a career as an actor, writer, and director. In 1996, Rosenthal created the hit CBS comedy, Everybody Loves Raymond. He was the Showrunner/Executive Producer for all nine years of the show’s very successful run, which ended in 2005. Everybody Loves Raymond was nominated for over seventy Emmy Awards and won fifteen awards, including two for Best Comedy Series in 2003 and 2005.

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I ~loved~ Everybody Loves Raymond. The soul of the show was Romano playing the perpetually awkward, lovable and insecure narcissist . And Patricia Heaton's warm and funny Deborah trying to cope with Raymond was his perfect foil. The least successful character -- and he was not bad at all -- was Brad Garrett as Raymond's brother Robert, who was slightly too much, too manic, too over-the-top, although it worked. And not necessarily Garrett's fault. He was obviously Phil Rosenthal's projection of himself into the show. I like him a lot better than I like full-strength Rosenthal. It cannot be denied that Rosenthal has bits of his personality that sometimes work in a comic way. But he is like a college sophomore in complete charge of a skit contrived while smoking dope. He is way too much, uncensored, unedited, and too often downright uncomfortable in a way that makes one want to look away when he is expected to laugh. On Raymond, all the creative talent around him was enough to keep some boundaries on his unfunny nonsense in spite of his authority as co-producer of the show. A show that is all Rosenthal was bound to be a trainwreck.