Verbal vs. Non-Verbal Communication Experiment

This clip is from the wildly popular television show Everybody Loves Raymond. First, I watched the clip without sound recording my thoughts. Then I listened to it with sound and confirmed or denied my assumptions.

Without sound:

Robert sits on the couch eating a banana when a red headed woman comes in yelling and waving her hands. She leaves and come back waving her arms around. Then Robert gets up and answers the door, Raymond is there. Robert and Raymond exchange some words and sit down. Then Raymond checks to see if the girl is gone. They talk for a little while, Robert seems unhappy. Then the red head comes back and smiles and chats with Raymond who smiles at her, she continually smiles and carries on a conversation with the red head. Robert interjects and her facial expressions change to aggravated. The three of them carry on a conversation. 

Robert and the red head don’t seem to get along, but Robert doesn’t seem to do anything about it. 

With the sound on:

The red head asks why Robert isn’t studying for his cop exam. She yells at him because they won’t ever have anything nice. She is still yelling from the other room, for him to answer the door bell that rings. Raymond comes in and sits with a seemingly depressed Robert. Raymond comes in and apologizes for something he did yesterday. In comes Joanne, all smiles and talks to Raymond. She tells him that Robert has a lot of studying to do and Raymond isn’t the best influence. All while smiling. Then Robert makes Joanne apologize for saying mean things about Raymond. He tells Raymond that Joanne says mean things about him all of the time. Robert tells Joanne how unhappy he is and she says that she wants a divorce. 

While I watched the episode without sound I assumed that Joanne was being nice to Raymond. After listening to the clip with sound I learned that her smile was dishonest, that she was being sarcastic and was still making hurtful comments. I also thought that Robert was acting passively in the conversation, but with sound I learned that he stood up to Joanne and asked her to apologize. 

If I was watching the television show Friends, which I have memorized, I would have been able to tell what the characters were doing even without sound. All of my assumptions would be correct because I know the show so well.