Tim Allen, an American sitcom star, made his debut on ABC’s sitcom Home Improvement in 1991. The show, which aired from September 17, 1991, to May 25, 1999, was a hit commercially and had something for everyone. Allen’s grunts became a comic signature on the show, and there are now YouTube videos compiling Taylor’s every groan.
Although Allen was born in Colorado, Michigan became his home after his family moved there when he was a teen. He only wore clothing from Michigan colleges, whichever particular university’s gear. The show had something for everyone, with some of the best and worst episodes ranked.
One of the most memorable episodes was Tim Allen’s never-ending stunts gone wrong on Tool Time. Al played the perfect foil for Tim’s craziness. Allen was a coke dealer in the ’70s and also got a DUI during Home Improvement’s run. He was kind of a jerk to Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
Despite spending two years in federal prison, Allen’s family feud ended when he walked out on the show during the run. Early on, Allen would deliberately misquote lines in some scenes to help child actors Zachery Ty Bryan, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Taran Noah Smith feel less pressure about getting their jobs.
Home Improvement was one of the highest-rated sitcoms for almost the entire 90s, with a cast that included Tim Allen, Tim Taylor, Earl Hindman, Wilson Wilson, Jr., and Santa Claus.
📹 Building a Better Man With Home Improvement
I take a look at the Tim Allen vehicle that became a smash TV hit. It was one of the top 10 rated shows on television during its …
Why did Home Improvement get canceled?
Patricia Richardson, best known for her role as Jill Taylor in the 1990s sitcom Home Improvement, has claimed that the show was canceled after she demanded the same pay as co-star Tim Allen. Richardson, who is 73, used the pay disparity between herself and Allen to avoid shooting another installment of the ABC series, which ran for eight seasons between 1991 and 1999. She stated that there was not enough money in the world to get her to do a ninth year and that the show needs to end.
How much was Tim Allen paid per episode of Home Improvement?
Ray Romano’s Everybody Loves Raymond generated $1. 725 billion in revenue, while Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier earned $1. 6 million, Chris Pratt’s The Terminal List earned $1. 4 million, and Tim Allen earned $1. 25 million.
Did Tim and Al get along on Home Improvement?
Al, a skilled and knowledgeable plumber, is often compared to Tim Taylor, who often misunderstands and messes up projects. Despite Tim’s tendency to miscalculate, Al often helps out with home projects and watches his children. Throughout the series, Al has had four different girlfriends, including Greta Post, Cynthia, Stacey Lewis, Dr. Ilene Markham, and Trudy. In season one, he met Greta during a Tool Time show, while in season two, he had a platonic relationship with Cynthia.
In season three through five, he dated Dr. Ilene Markham, an orthodontist who was a sister of one of Jill’s co-workers. They got engaged, but they decided not to marry. In season seven, Al met Trudy and married her in the series finale in 1999.
Al’s love life is also a topic of discussion, with Tim teasing him with a card he had stolen, only for Al to produce another one. Despite their differences, Al and Tim maintain a close friendship offstage.
Does Patricia Richardson like Tim Allen?
Patricia Richardson reunited with comedian Tim Allen in 2015 for two episodes of his ABC series, “Last Man Standing”. Despite praising Allen’s talent, they do not keep in touch. Richardson cited the tension on the “Home Improvement” set as the competition between three young actors’ parents for equal screen time and opportunities for their sons. She expressed her love for working with Allen.
Did they actually build a hot rod on Home Improvement?
Tim Allen’s character, Tim Taylor, sold a blue ’33 roadster he built during the 1994 season, which now resides in the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. His latest project is a fat fender ’46 Ford ragtop. In an interview with entertainment reporter Lisa Hallett, Taylor sketched an excellent addition to Tool Man’s stable, which Hallett presented to Allen. Despite not receiving any response from the show’s producers, Taylor believes Allen would look cool cruising in one of Thom’s radical rides.
How much of Home Improvement was improvised?
In a recent announcement, Richard Karn, renowned for his role in the television series Last Man Standing, revealed his involvement in the upcoming reality show Assembly Required. This program will adopt an improv-based format, with 12 hours of improv per day, similar to the approach taken by Al Borland and Tim Taylor. The program will include editing, as more than half of the original content is unusable.
Additionally, Karn believes that the American audience is not yet prepared for such a program. The inaugural episode of Assembly Required is scheduled to air on the History channel at 10 p. m. EST on Tuesday.
Did they use a real snake in Home Improvement?
The California kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) is a non-venomous snake that emerged from a wall. The light fixture that conceals the snake is not present in either the past or future episodes. The series was originally titled “Wild Thing,” a nod to the 1966 hit song by The Troggs. From 1995 onwards, the title was “Wild Kingdom.” The term “BTU” is an acronym that stands for “British Thermal Unit.” This unit of measurement represents the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.
Why did Randy leave Home Improvement?
Thomas began his television career in 1990, playing Kevin Brady on The Bradys. He later appeared in Fox’s In Living Color and later on ABC’s sitcom Home Improvement. Thomas was a month older than Zachery Ty Bryan, who played his elder brother Brad. He left Home Improvement in 1998 to focus on academics. Since then, Thomas has acted only occasionally, with guest appearances on 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Smallville, Veronica Mars, and The E!
True Hollywood Story. In 2013, Thomas guest-starred on the second-season finale of his third ABC sitcom, Last Man Standing, and reunited with his TV father, Tim Allen. In 2015, he had a small cameo on the fourth season of Last Man Standing. Thomas also appeared in many films during and after his time on Home Improvement, and had a few voice acting roles in Disney’s animated feature The Lion King.
Why did Jonathan leave Home Improvement?
Thomas began his television career in 1990, playing Kevin Brady on The Bradys. He later appeared in Fox’s In Living Color and later on ABC’s sitcom Home Improvement. Thomas was a month older than Zachery Ty Bryan, who played his elder brother Brad. He left Home Improvement in 1998 to focus on academics. Since then, Thomas has acted only occasionally, with guest appearances on 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Smallville, Veronica Mars, and The E!
True Hollywood Story. In 2013, Thomas guest-starred on the second-season finale of his third ABC sitcom, Last Man Standing, and reunited with his TV father, Tim Allen. In 2015, he had a small cameo on the fourth season of Last Man Standing. Thomas also appeared in many films during and after his time on Home Improvement, and had a few voice acting roles in Disney’s animated feature The Lion King.
Is Cal really non binary?
Sex Education, a popular streaming series, has made significant strides in gender diversity by introducing transgender characters like Cal and Abbi, played by trans actors. The show has always been committed to pushing against the taboo of discussing sex, particularly involving teenagers. In its first season, Aimee discovers the joys of masturbation, a topic often hidden for women on screen. The show also explores various aspects of other identities and experiences, including queer relationships, vaginismus, and asexuality.
By casting and consulting with trans actors for new roles, Sex Education has solidified its position as a progressive and inclusive show. The show was the first Netflix series to include a dedicated intimacy coordinator on set, proving its worth as one of the most progressive and inclusive streaming series.
Is Cal really Al’s brother?
Al, a character in the TV series “Sisters and Brothers”, has a brother named Cal, who is a physicist. Cal was a fan from Texas who sent his photo in a fan letter, leading to the producers naming him Al’s brother. Al served in the Navy as a Lieutenant and later worked as a construction crane operator and later as a master plumber and carpenter. He drives a 1984 Mercury Colony Park station wagon, which his mother passed down to him. Al has odd interests, such as deducing wood types by smell rather than appearance or texture.
He gets along well with Tim’s sons but has faced problems and needed to seek advice from Wilson. Al has also invested in Harry’s Hardware and marketing a successful board game based on Tool Time to avoid hospitalization. Al’s unique interests and his love for cars make him a relatable character in the show.
📹 This Scene Wasn’t Edited, Look Again at the Home Improvement Blooper
Who’s your favorite male sitcom lead? Tim Allen found success in film, but he’s also a reliable sitcom star. He was a lovable dad in …
In the 90s my dad was a brown skinned immigrant man with a woodworking shop and undiagnosed autism, who was slowly becoming more and more religious. His favorite sitcom was Family Matters (I think he related to Steve Urkel) but his second favorite was Home Improvement. I was his only biological child, a girl, would watch him perusal Home Improvement, studying his reactions to this house filled with boys. It was such a quiet repetitive ritual….. So mundane….that I never really thought about how this show shaped him. It definitely did.
When you talked about the theoretical principles behind slapstick humor, I immediately thought of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. In IASIP, the brunt of the slapstick humor is derived from Dee, the only female character in the gang, getting hurt and I wonder if the show creators did this on purpose as their show is meant to satirize typical sitcoms. Great article!
Would you ever consider doing one of these for Malcolm in the middle? Just curious. These are really great, and that is the sitcom that has always meant the most to me, so I had to ask. Either way, I adore these articles. They are absolutely amazing and a great look into the sitcoms and the window they give us to the past/the times they came out.
Nice article. Home Improvement isn’t by any means a groundbreaking masterpiece but I appreciate what it’s trying to do. Tim is a very conventionally masculine guy whose masculinity is neither a flaw nor a strength, in and of itself; conflicts arise when it’s not suitable to a specific situation. Jill is a very smart, forward-thinking woman who also has blindspots that cause friction with her husband and family. Even Wilson and Al have well-rounded personalities that bely how simple they seem at first glance. It’s a very smart show in ways that are probably easier to appreciate in hindsight than at the time (particularly given how obnoxious Allen’s current show is).
I’m disappointed you didn’t go into more depth on Tim’s drug distribution conviction. He’s spoken alot publicly about “personal accountability”, despite recieving a severely reduced sentence by having others take responsibility for his crime (the mandatory minimum was 20 years and he recieved 2 for becoming an informant).
First Married with Children now this classic! Great vid, man. I hope you’ll eventually get into the great black shows from the 90’s like Fresh Prince, Martin, Living Single, The Steve Harvey Show, Sister, Sister, Moesha, Family Matters etc. I feel like those shows could always use more love and attention too.
My dad always watched this show when I was a kid, and he really idolized Tim Allen. He regularly quoted the show and behaved a lot like Allen’s character, to the point that when I see Allen’s face, I think of my father, it’s like my brain sees them as the same person. Thinking about that, I’m kinda glad I’m trans (ftm). Had I grown up as a boy, I might have bought into this view of masculinity myself. Still, I sometimes find myself longing for a childhood of repairing old cars with my dad, as stupid as it sounds. But that would have been at the exclusion of a childhood of playing with Barbies and playing princess in my mum’s wedding dress. If I ever have children, I’ll try to make sure I give them both options and more, regardless of their gender.
I love how Tim Allen basically swaps everything from Home Improvement when doing Last Man Standing. In Home Improvement he has Patricia Richardson as his wife, with Nancy Travis as her friend, and him and Patricia have 3 sons. In Last Man Standing Tim and Nancy are married with Patricia as her friend, and him and Nancy have 3 daughters.
I feel like most sit coms have a troublemaker and a problem solver. Tim is the troublemaker, like Archie Bunker or Barney Fife, so most of his antics are to make a fool of himself. Jill is the problem solver, so she doesn’t get an identity out of solving Tim’s problems. It’s a problem with the conventions of sitcoms, as well as gender.
This is the lefty article I have waited for my whole life… this show was such a big part of my upbringing. As a small kid, the arrrrrgh thing really appealed to me. Tim Allen reminded me of the dads at Boy Scouts. I never understood then how stereotypes were reinforced on that show yet at the same time, much like Rosanne, even though Tim was conservative, they allowed some breathing room for other points of view… as opposed to girl meets world’s episode on communism for example, Home Improvement, like Tim, had some hidden depth behind all the arrrrrrrrgh
When actors sign up for shows, in the contract is a number episodes, a number of scenes, and minimum talking time (both the studio wants to get its money’s worth AND the actor wants to make sure they will get used as much as possible) – so I wouldn’t be surprised if sticking the neighbor in scenes was both a joke but also because they needed to give him a little “face time” legally but didn’t have enough every episode to satisfy the contract. If you ever watch any of the TNG era Star Trek shows – sometimes you see a few characters given a brief, needless scene in the opening segment(s) (maybe even with one throwaway line) only to never be seen or heard from again all episode – that’s contract fulfillment at work.
Upon re-watch I really love your comment about how having daughters can sometimes give men the opportunity to explore more sides of themselves. It reminded me of when I was a little girl and I would play hairstylist with my dad putting a dozen or so tiny hair ties. clips and bows until his hair looked pretty. He never complained, in fact he played into it. He wanted to be that stereotypical MANS-man but when it came to my sister and I we could get him to drop that act completely as see a soft and compassionate father.
Aww man, 1:03… That’s a wonderfully talented actor named Danny Zorn that I went to highschool with. One of the funniest and most talented people I knew. He struggled with depression and left this Earth about 10 years ago. Sorry if this is a bummer comment. Good article as always, I was just caught off-guard by that… 🙂
Great article! Please do one of these for scrubs 🙂 I always loved how scrubs portrayed manhood. When I first watched it being 15 or sth, it surprised me in many ways. I liked how JD is not the typical masculine man and still the protagonist of a wildly beloved sitcom. Fav scene was when JD pushes his scooter and tries to find a radio website and when he finds a website talking about sports, he is disgusted by it 😀 And it showed that affection between heterosexual men is nothing to be ashamed of. It shaped me quite a bit I think, but I also think that it probably had some questionable things as well. I should watch it again as an adult. But a article about this would be super cool, José 🙂
I love hearing you talk about the sitcoms of my childhood and unpacking them. I didn’t really watch Home Improvement, but my mother loved it. I remember her not wanting to be disturbed while the finale aired. I’d love to hear you talk about Boy Meets World, if you are interested. It was very formative to me, but I’d like to see another perspective.
This is a wonderful article, especially in my situation. When I was younger (like elementary or early middle School) this was always the show me and my father would watch, and along with my father essentially being Tim Taylor, shaped my views growing up. My views are much more to the left of these early views, while my father has gone on to being a mid 50’s working class MAGA guy. This show reminds me of simpler times, when the world felt more cut and dry and I saw my father more than once a year. With this article, showing the way Tim Taylor works, you’ve helped me understand my father works a little better, thank you
Nice article as usual. It’s fun to take a look back at old shows I liked in the day and see them analyzed through a more thoughtful perspective. Gotta say, though, I think the biggest revelation of this article is how Wilson was secretly a creeper. I never noticed it at the time, and wonder why they would have him in scenes where he’s simply in the background without any lines. That’s terrifying.
If anyone wants timestamps, here they are. Introduction\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|\t0:00 Seasons 1-3: How to Man\t\t\t\t\t|\t6:15 Tool Girl Time (Side Note)\t\t\t\t\t|\t15:55 – 17:28 Season 4: The Daddy Season\t\t\t\t|\t25:40 Season 5: The Season of One Episode\t\t|\t35:45 Season 6 & 7: Growing Up\t\t\t\t\t|\t41:13 Cancel Al is #CancAL\t\t\t\t\t\t|\t53:27 Season 8: The Season with All the Things\t|\t53:32 After the Sawdust Cleared\t\t\t\t\t|\t1:07:16
35:40 was so subtly and genuinely delivered I started laughing like ten seconds later and had to go back, I love your delivery and narration style, I also appreciate mentioning that this show was definitely stuck in its time when it came to exploring gender beyond male and female. I was never lost on what you were talking about, the script was extremely thought out, I am glad this ended up on my recommended
18:14 I think Wilson was correct. I don’t think he was saying it was a product of the 19th century (or 20th if you mean the 90s?), but rather a product of… well anything outside of a society in which you have to learn to survive, going back thousands of years. We like to say “modern society”, but the way we’ve constructed society in cities has been around thousands of years. Societies used to be egalitarian, but we’ve gone completely backwards. Our teenage years are about pushing boundaries in order to learn, and when you have parents who want to infantilize you rather than teach you, you end up with a rebellious teen. Tim’s initial reaction to Brad wanting to help was to say no, until he saw his disappointment and listened to Wilson. And I think that’s true. You compared the situation to Romeo & Juliet, but this is true for them as well (being just a few hundred years ago, not thousands). They are both confined by their parents, set with boundaries that they have no way of understanding that seem arbitrary to them (honestly, true). So, they push those boundaries. It isn’t entirely just that teens are rebellious. It’s also that parents don’t want their kids to grow up. It’s a deadly combination.
Its so weird i used to watch reruns of this show all the time when i was really young and it was one of my favorites, but i dont remember any of the more charged discussions or implications just that the halloween episodes were my favorite lmao but now i think i understand why my mom and dad werent as fond of it Its also very weird seeing bits of the show again because it was a running joke in my family how similar my grandpa was to tim, both he and my dad were the handymen/mechanic type and my grandpa was always getting hurt lol seeing it now with my dad gone and grandpa not doing great is a very bittersweet feeling
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really understand the reasoning behind not talking about Al at all. That was a strange choice for this article. Sure, this was made before Quinton Reviews blew up what we can expect from TV show retrospectives, but still, Al was such an important part of the show, especially as the series went on.
7:32 “mythology can be selectively read to reinforce certain world views. Wilson’s job is to cherry-pick parts of history to fit that masculine stereotype.” World views? Cherry-picking? huh? Masculinity is grounded in universal truths and reality, not in someone’s “world view” or another, so this idea of “cherry-picking” is absurd. Two of these truths of masculinity is that the very nature of being a man is being a provider and being a protector. This is innate in every man and is universally present across all countries, across all cultures across all time. There is a set of lies going around these days that insist that everything in a human is a social construct. These lies demand of people, men and women, to go even entirely against their own human nature, and many falling to those lies with disastrous results.
I never really liked this show as much as some of the others from the 90s, but this article made me think about it in a very different way. It talked about feminism as it relates to men, directly to men, without using the word feminism or framing it as something negative for either side. That’s something that’s really hard to do, and for a conservative 90s show to pull it off so well is… frankly, it’s amazing. It doesn’t take you all the way from patriarch to feminist ally, but it gets you firmly started on that path.
i was enjoying this til it became more of an attack on masculinity than it was a retrospective of a 90s tv show and as soon as I heard the words ‘cis white hetero men’ used unironically I had to check out, the point of Tim is he is a floundering modern man TRYING to embrace the old concepts of masculinity and failing, and Jill embracing moder feminism and struggling, and BOTH of them supporting each other, showing men dont need to feel threatened by empowered women, and women dont need their man to be a traditional masculine type while also reinforcing the need for a family dynamic, masculinity, femininity isnt the point, solidarity is. And Tim going for advice on topics from an older male figure speaks to the need for a male role model even into the time of your life when you yourself become a father. Men are expected to be strong, and lead and know all the answers, and often we dont, but we dont show that in front of those looking to us for the answers, ie kids, instead we slip out quietly and consult someone wiser and more experienced, thus becoming wiser and more experienced ourselves. none of this is a negative as its portrayed here, (the vid not the show) and the show also shows us its ok to be wrong, to fail, as long as we bounce back and do whats right by those around us.
I remember enjoying home improvement but it didn’t age well. I wouldn’t be able to go back and watch it today and The two or three episodes of last man standing that I sort of watched were gross. Looking back at home improvement and looking at how he is now really turns me off to anything with Tim Allen in it.
One thing about Home Improvement though, is the continuity errors of Tim and his brothers. At the beginning of the series, Tim is stated to be the oldest brother, with younger (unseen) brothers Steve and Danny. Later in the series, Tim is established to be the middle brother, with older brother Jeff and younger brother Marty.
So according to this guy Al Bundy is symbolic and therefore gets a pass while Tim Taylor, a guy that has his own coffee mug reserved for him at the emergency room, spends an entire episode with a board glued to his head, and probably has too many concussions to count, isn’t? I enjoy most of your retrospective articles but your bias is really showing in this one.
I do have a strong memory of there being a face reveal of Wilson in a later season, and the core gag of which was that it was completely nonchalant, just him sitting at a table delivering a line with nothing covering his face. The laugh-track was running throughout acknowledging that his face was showing, but the joke was that there was no fanfare to it. But yeah, I agree, a better version of that could have been during that romantic scene. This could be complete nonsense and if you watched the whole thing and that didn’t happen, maybe it was something I imagined.
Thank you for your articles!! I do agree with a lot of what you say!! However, I thought I would let you know that I thought it was kinda weird when you said that slapstick is aimed at a male audience or primarily for men or I’m sorry I don’t recall exactly what you said I just thought it was weird like … why would you or anyone think that? Interesting ….
Yeah… I know it was a meme even in it’s time but A LOT of the show (the only times I think I ever saw it is in the joint unless I forgot another time or two, so I don’t have a huge base to draw from lol) from what I’ve seen and seen said about this show was something of a product of and response to the Mythopoetic men’s movement that began in the 80’s (I think) and blew up in the 90’s. Much of the stuff Wilson says seems to be almost bullet point critiques/talking points of/about the “modern man” and other ideas put forward by the movement. Even his seemingly random and eclectic base of knowledge seems far less so when put up against their ideas. The view that there is this “natural essence of man” that has been “corrupted” by modernity and that we must “return” to is a central theme. During that same period we also had the feminist male allies of the Steinem current and era that arguably created the Men’s Rights Movement (as a partner to and component of feminism, not even remotely close to what we see today) taking a similar turn and later also adopting the concept of Toxic Masculinity that the Mythopoetic’s coined (if I remember correctly) and doing similar things in terms of self improvement and rethinking what it means to be a man. Something I’d argue all schools have failed at cause I still don’t know and I’ve looked everywhere. A lotta this I read about and looked to a while back, so don’t take my word for it. But then again, that’s always a1 advise! Like Wilson, I too have a broad, eclectic and varied, seemingly disconnected, sometimes borderline conflicting and contradictory to most anyone else base of knowledge, set if interests and tastes that is almost completely useless in the vast majority of life and that I’ve caught endless hell over for it since I was a kid lol But every now and then I get an outlet 👍 ✊👊♥✌A///E
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Tim was trying to flip the move to Indiana into being his idea in order to maintain the patriarchal leader role. I think he was just making it easy for her because he wanted her to have her opportunity. It wasn’t about him. No discussion was needed because she wanted the job and he agreed.
I’m the same age as Jonathan and Zachary. I also had a fangirl crush on JTT back then. lol The cancer ep was one of my favorite eps. I loved perusal Home Improvement. I watched it from the beginning to end, practically…although the last couple of seasons were so-so for me. For the final episode, a special was shown after it.
Love your vids. I was an adult when all these shows aired and I loved them. I always thought it was a funny play on words that Tim’s show is Tool Time about Tools and Tim himself could be considered a ‘tool’. It’s fun to look back and remember the times and what was going on and these shows were a big part of people’s lives.
Romeo and Juliet were angsty teenagers, yes, but they were also from very notable aristocratic families who resided in cities. So they have much more in common with the teens of today than any other teenager during that time, who would’ve been well into adulthood, working, and/or marrying as Wilson said.
Thank you for these epic articles, José! I re-watched your 2-part Roseanne analysis a second time today, because it’s so well-done and your voice is easy to listen to! Plus I, too, wasn’t a huge fan of the show but appreciate all that it brought up and the relatable fashion in which it did so. I really enjoyed this analysis, too, despite only seeing one episode of this show. My main thoughts were: 1. Holy shit, how stubborn were they with hiding Wilson’s face (so dumb) and never letting Jill’s character get any scenes alone. 2. Damn, if Tim Allen were anything other than a white man, I wonder if he’s have gotten away with the little coke possession thing at the start of his career 🤔 3. I enjoy your nerdy word combos! 😁 4. As far as slapstick comedy only being popular/only being seen as funny when done by men – I beg to differ, as Lucille Ball was EPICLY funny in “I Love Lucy,” and her show was the most watched show in the ‘50s and for a long time after. I think she shifted that stereotype single-handedly, paving the way for Carroll Burnett and Melissa McCarthy, and the women of SNL, among others.
24:49 I disagree with the intended reason of the slapstick humour being benign. Even as a kid I always assumed the joke is that the person getting hurt was being overly confident and ambitious about their project – even demonstrating it to an audience for a TV show. Nothing to do with being any gender though!
Another homerun for Jose Conseco here. I do love the Simpsons parody of home improvement where tim hots up a ride on mower but accidentally reverses and kills Wilson. But even though I was never able to really connect with home improvement there is one moment from it that makes me laugh. The part where tim and the granite guy communicate with grunts with subtitles provided for the audience. I greatly appreciate the inclusion of that gag. Other than that it never made me LOL.
I’ve been perusal a handful of your article essays lately. They’re fantastic and the quality and depth you go into are truly well beyond anything imaginable. I’ve noticed you tend to lean into PC beliefs alot…Perhaps too much. You’re seeing issues where there aren’t any. There are ofcourse times where the PC nature is brought perfectly into frame. However a lot of the time, it almost feels as if you’re just pandering towards millennials (myself) & gen Z. I don’t believe that’s an accurate take, and instead it often feels forced. I do enjoy the essays, but I must admit it is getting tiring hearing the same tirade over and over. Yes, it was a general theme of the world growing up in the 90’s and earlier. These aren’t TV series made in 2023, it’s to be expected. It’s akin to someone lighting up a cigarette in a show, and you pouring over that cigarettes are bad and they should have known better. It simply was commonplace, that’s how it was. Society is moving forward, sometimes being too progressive, but for all the right reasons. I don’t think a retrospective view of these shows should include lengthy and often over-indulged delves into topics that these shows simply shouldn’t have done better with, as at the time that’s how things were. With that being said, colleges and universities are indoctrinating people with these ideas. The ideas aren’t the problem, the absolute over-the-top lean in regarding these ideas and societal issues are the problem.
No slapstick for women? I love Lucy and Laverne & Shirley were 1)both hugely popular and influential 2) slapstick of the female lead (s) in every single episode, for hundreds of episode. They weren’t the only ones, either, but they are famously built on the women in those shows doing pratfalls and subjecting themselves to humiliating physical situations in the regular. L&S safe na as a child perusal reruns, want to grow up and get an apartment with my best friend and have shenanigans, it helped me love physical comedy, too (along with threes company, where joyce DeWitt got overshadowed by John Ritter, but badge has a lot of physical pratfalls herself). As for Wilson, he cherry picked what he did to make it fit the patriarchal space in Tim’s head, to speak in a language Tim could understand and grow from. It’s be great to see Tim hear a bit of gender neutral anthro theory on behavior s grow from it, but Tim and his segment of audience were being addressed in a way that they hoped would be more palatable, I get that. And c’mon, Wilson was a many hobbies man… Being a midwife was right up his alley… To imply he was a stalker, rather than a midwife doing rounds was more believable isn’t a great message for folks, though I’d like to think you meant that facetiously. I’m not thru with the article yet, but I hope you address the journey of growth taken from Tim and the Seattle /NY discussion to the actual plot of the final episode 🤞🤞
Just wanted to chime in and say that if you look at british comedies/sitcoms through the years then you will see many excellent examples of women doing slapstick. Examples would be Jennifer Saunders, Mollie Sugden, Patricia Routledge and many others. I think it actually defies the gender norm that women must always be “appropriate” and reserved. Thank you for your article essays though. It really is some of the best content to show up in my feed, and as someone who watched so much tv in the 90s I really appreciate someone analysing and “getting” them within their context.
Tim didn’t want to do a 9th season without Patricia Richardson. There was the idea of killing her off. Patricia Richardson wanted to spend more time raising her real life sons. The boys were grown up and ready to move on the next chapter of their lives. Johnathan Taylor Thomas left the show resulting in Season 8 was a little more boring without him who was the jokester of the family. These are the reasons they decided to not do another season of Home Improvement.
Are you kidding me, you ‘Cancel Al’ because he ‘wore bl-face’ ???? He wasn’t pretending to be black at all in that scene, he got dirty. It’s a gag like the slapstick with Tim. Wow dude. That’s all it takes for you to throw someone out entirely? Wow. I like your retrospectives but you have GOT to let go of the overly sensitive politics you keep injecting into these. This one just about is making me consider blocking your website, seems deserved turnabout to me…
As a progressive liberal female…I have to say, I always loved this show and I think you are reading a little too much into it based on what we know about Allen’s real-life views. Sure, it centers around the views of the cis hetero male and doesn’t really show any kind of LGBTQ characters or views. But you could say that of basically ALL the sitcoms of the 90s. Before Ellen came out publicly on her show and before Will & Grace “normalized” (I hate that term) a view of gay life, the sitcoms of the 80s and 90s rarely touched on the idea of anyone outside the cis hetero spectrum except as a joke character. Roseanne went further than most, though I would argue her show only ever played such characters for laughs. I never saw Wilson as cherry-picking from history, but maybe like Tim, I’m not as knowledgeable about history as I think. I saw him as always being the one who nudged Tim into understanding his family and his marriage better. And I never read Tim’s final decision about the move to Indiana as him making the sole decision, but him saying that he was behind his wife 100% and willing to–as Wilson pointed out to him before that–make the sacrifices for Jill that she had made for him early in his career. If he had only done it because he lost his show and therefore he wasn’t giving up anything, THEN I’d have frowned at it as a cop out. But the fact that he was offered a big salary and more creative freedom to come back, yet he turned it down so Jill could have her shot at realizing the career she had worked and struggled so hard for made me love him all the more.
I’d like to think that Wilson is supposed to be the Audience stand in character and that’s why there are so many scenes where he is present but has no lines. It kinda makes sense too from the stand point of the series, as Tim’s character is inherently seeking emotional validation from the audience he is performing for, both during tool time and during the regular scenes of the show. In addition to that is would explain why Wilson offers the advice that he does, as the audience of this type of sitcom would presumably be middle aged to old men who are most likely white and were most likely born before second wave feminism and eventually intersectionality where coined as academic terms. This would explain why so much of wilson’s beliefs seemingly contradict themselves, as many people born during that time would’ve held beliefs like “America is a fundamentally equal country” and “women shouldn’t work and should stay at home instead”.
I think you did Wilson pretty dirty here, actually pretty unfairly in my opinion. It feels like you we’re personally pretty upset at him, almost like you’re attacking any intellectual argument of traditional masculinity through a Wilson Strawman. Please.. Stop using Wilson as a punching bag for you to beat in your “alternative” views of masculinity. Wilson was just a cool neighbor, who was well read and thoughtful, and wanted to help out his neighbor out of a sense of stoic duty and friendliness. Wilson appearing at odd times wasn’t him intentionally stalking the family in some weird patriarchal obsession, it was more likely a behind the scenes contractual obligation for the actor to appear in a certain amount of scenes each season and the writers had to be creative in where to put him. I agree with you on a lot of takes, which is why I subscribed and enjoy your content (for the most part). But your contempt of traditional masculinity was readily apparent and intrinsically insulting to us men who have a healthy side of progressiveness, but not willing to ignore millions of years of evolutionary psychology in blind condemnation of everything traditionally male. I’m a center moderate, not an extreme lefty. With that said, I actually enjoy the thoughtfulness of your article essay explorations and your willingness to explore topics even knowing you’ll get criticisms like mine (don’t take it personally). The thumbnail, editing, audio, etc are all very competent and shows a substantial talent, and your obvious liberal interpretation is a healthy counter-balance to some of the other content I consume.
I’m not sure how YouTube came to the conclusion that suggesting your articles to me would be good, but it wasn’t wrong. I have enjoyed you going through the shows of my childhood. You have a very nice voice that is quite pleasant to listen to. I can’t wait to pick through more of your content and see what other shows you have analyzed.
I am fine overall whit the Bratt acting out Episode. How I saw it is, he was growing older and wanting to proof himselfe, as well as beeing aknowledged as older. He experessed his Manliness by causing Trouble, dominance by making a praktical Joke, and destructiveness by tossing a Stone. Tim shows him Productiveness as another Aspekt of maskulinity, and gives him Respekt at the same Time. It might be not the right thing fot everyone, but certainly for someone like Bratt. I personaly would say this Show holds up very well. Its very harmless overall, and most of the Themes they going for are very inoffensive. About Slapstick, as a Nerd I did saw a few Slapstick Scenes doing exactly that. Woman are fragile and its improper to treat them rough, or them getting hurt. In some Comedy Anime, they use this Perception specifically to subvert it. They themselfe are rough, and some Male Charakters dont shy away to treat them equal to man, usually in over the Top Manners.
As someone who is part of the lgbtq community myself I don’t think it’s realistic to think everyone is going to have a gay friend or a trans friend, there just isn’t enough of us around to make sure every family gets a visit once a year so they can be considered woke. People can be accepting and just not happen to know someone who is gay or trans so i don’t see why tv shows are expected to have token rolls to show inclusion just for inclusions sake. It’s the same with ethnic diversity, if it’s only done to be inclusive then it’s not really inclusive it’s basically become the acting worlds version of holding a sign saying see we aren’t racist. Its ok to have a cast that is one race or missing some race’s its ok to not have someone whos gay or trans because thats also normal in real life. At the moment I have to white female friends I see regularly and its been like that for a couple of years, doesn’t mean I’m against men or other race’s or other people in the lgbtq community it just means these are the humans I connect with right now and they happen to be white females. Other friends have moved away some weve grown apart others weve fallen out and thats ok because I dont keep friends so i can have a token black friend anymore than I’d want someone to keep me as a token queer friend. I much prefer shows that the relationships and characters feel organic rather than a random add in to tick the woke box.
What is wrong with men being men, being masculine. There is no issue with this and today’s redicoules views on this are just that… Redicoules. Women can be feminine and men masculine. I love this show and grew up with it. This vidio seems to trying to push that being a masculine male is some how wrong.
I enjoyed this up until the ending. While you pick out some places where it fails and some problems early on (which even I had to acknowledge as a fan), you show pretty much throughout how the show was pushing a progressive message, how it tackled toxic masculinity, how it challenged gender roles, etc. But then, at the end, you go on about how the show isn’t feminist in any way, and how it’s clearly pushing a pro-patriarchy, conservative message–despite the primary focus of the review being on how it challenged those ideas. The disconnect is so strong that it feels like you wrote the conclusion first, and then didn’t change it when you found elements that didn’t fit your thesis. It would be fine if you said it wasn’t as progressive as it could be, held back by its conservatism, but, no, you just pitch it as a conservative show. The show is progressive, despite some problems, and is the type of progressive that we need to actually appeal to conservatives. Because, if you live in an actual conservative place like I do, you’ll see that there’s nothing “old” about the message at all. We’re still dealing with it–in fact, there’s been a resurgence of white male fragility and rejection of progress like how Tim starts out. Tim is the personification of the conservative, toxic masculine character. *If the show supported the patriarchy, Tim would have been right and Jill wrong.*
good article well researched but the article can be to “woke” he does make really interesting point but it has to much “Presentism” meaning comparing the morality of today with the past. the show is almost 30 years old we dont need to compare our morality system to their and by showing the change in our society means we are still making progress today
I loved your take and retrospective but respectfully disagreed with it. This show was definitely about an old fashioned man trying to get on in a changing world. Just like the character in Last Man Standing Tim Allen’s character always tried his best, where you may not agree with him – but you could always sympathise with a dinosaur trying to evolve. The show is dated but trying to put it into today’s context is like criticising Al Jolson – (yep).
I agree with your conclusions. However there are some points that could be closer to objective. There’s nothing inherently wrong about Wilson’s critique that the industrial revolution has decreased male agency. Nor his take that ‘modern society’ has decreased the ritual of initiation into adulthood. Women in slapstick is not an assumption as much as it is market forces deciding what is humorous. Other than that, bravo!
I’m new to your content. I watched your series retrospective on Cheers and enjoyed it. This is my second article. It seems that you aren’t able to comment on this series without injecting you Far Left political views into your commentary. I hope this isn’t normally an issue with your content. Maybe I just didn’t notice it when I was perusal the Cheers article?
It was so nice to see family shows back then that showed happy families who were learning to get along with each other. This show was so popular and still is in syndication because most Americans can relate to an entertaining, funny show that portrays family members growing into better people. Not every show has to preach a political agenda. Sometimes, it’s nice to have more relatable shows like this one was.
Al having black face I don’t think was an intentional thing. I mean they were not making fun or pretending to be a person of color but rather a gag about the dirt of the chimney got all covered over Al. Not any different than in the The Big Lebowski when the Dude got covered in his friend’s ashes. What I mean is, it was an innocent gag that did not intentionally do black face.
So, this show, like others I have seen you do a “report” on, basically is falling short of modern standards, probably because it is THIRTY FREAKING YEARS OLD?!?!?! I have watched your “Married with Children” article, the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” one, then the “Cosby Show” and now this, I see a trend. If a show is funny then “something is wrong with it” (it is either offensive, or toxically masculine, or not feminist enough, or not vegan enough or I don’t know what the heck else) or they “did not include everybody in their depiction of what society is TODAY!”. Apparently, being a man and liking it is a capital offense these days as is being black and acting “white”?? Perhaps when your show premieres, it being all inclusive, sensitive, tuned with the times, feminist enough, not masculine enough, colorblind AND, above all, politcally correct, we will have the pinnacle of human endeavors – and NOBODY WILL WATCH IT! (really now, would YOU watch something like this?) You missed the simple fact; comedy and satire CANNOT abide by PC rules, they are by nature offensive and upsetting and overthrowing whatever status quo you try and pit against them. Comedic characters CANNOT be “saints”, as a comedy expert once said “Saints are BORING!”
Interesting article. I only want to comment on the one bit about teenagers acting out the way Brad does. I think the real issue is a lack of real responsibility for MOST kids in the U.S. today compared with MOST kids in the rest of the world and in the past. Romeo and Juliet is a bad counter-example because I think the heart of the matter is not present vs. the past. Rather, I think the heart of the matter is extended adolescence. Romeo and Juliet were in well-off families who behaved like modern-day gangs, and didn’t have any real responsibilities. Teenagers will always act out in some way, but they do so out of an urge for independence. So if a child is raised with a certain amount of autonomy and responsibility early on, they won’t act out as intensely, because that pressure won’t have built up. That was the point they were getting at, though probably not very well.
I don’t think female actors got into slapstick because it looks too much like domestic violence. Imagine a male character making a smart-ass comment to his wife which provokes her to pick up a rolling pin and act like she’s about to whack him over the head, funny s*** right? Now imagine a female character making a smart-ass comment and provoking her husband to take off his belt and act like he’s about to whip her, doesn’t sound as funny does it? An exception to this would be like an old Three Stooges episode where it turns into a pie fight, there you had female characters receiving the ‘slap’ aka a pie to the face, not exactly the same as getting a two-by-four to the face like in Tommy Boy.
This show had a MASSIVE impact on how I viewed myself and what masculinity should be. Tim was the absolute antithesis of a quality person- he was dumb, overconfident and under capable, oblivious to empathy or good reasoning. On the other hand you had Al who SHOULD have been the lead of Tool Time if it were an actual show about competent workers who was an emotional, kind, friendly man unashamed of how he cared for others while also being well dressed, well spoken, and knowledgeable about his field. And Wilson was always willing to help his neighbor no matter how many times he absolutely missed the point while being an absolute fountain of multicultural knowledge. Thanks to this show, my concept of what a man should be was knowledgeable, caring, patient, helpful, kind. And despite the fact that Tim was the one with the ‘American dream’ of a big house, wife, kids, and a career he also stood as everything I knew I didn’t want to be. If being a good man was going to leave me like Al and Wilson, alone most of the time and looked down on by a person more ape than human who got everything the world tells us we need to be happy, I would be just fine with that. The issue we get with Wilson and his ‘bad takes’ is how often he is speaking from ‘throughout history’, ‘in x civilization from centuries ago and another culture’, ‘in this one century where things are very different than they are now’. Sometimes he is directly saying ‘we should be more like these old ways’, and those old ways weren’t necessarily good for the people who lived back then either.
The pizza magnate character in the segment that runs from 28:05 to 30:14 was inspired by John Schnatter, AKA “Papa John.” He started his business in his father’s bar, and sold his beloved ’71 Camaro to fund the purchase of a pizza oven. In 2009, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Papa John’s did a promotion offering a $250,000 reward for the Camaro… which was eventually found and reacquired by Schnatter several months after the promo started.
Hey, I dont think there’s THAT much wrong with… identifying with the “masculine traits” that you have grown accustomed to. Like when Tim says, “I’m a guy I let that stuff go.” It might just be colloquial. If he isnt prescribing those traits to people, but he just identifies with that trait and that’s just how he is, that’s fine! Yes, he is old fashioned in thinking that’s just some guy thing, but there is at least a little truth to it.
Just to comment on Last Man Standing, as my father loves that show, it is absolutely more political than Home Improvement ever was. My dad still believes the tired ass line that Tim Allen tried to pull that his show was “cancelled” because he’s a right-winger, rather than the actual reason, which was because a studio contract ending which meant ABC would need to bare the entire brunt of the cost of the show.
This was a grand overview, thanks, Jose. It took you a lot of time to produce this’n so I understand why my petty complaint is invalid but: I wish you’d have included the weed episode where Brad keeps a stash taped under a chair under the gazebo while tim spies on him do dumb and very “you’ll melt electronics in the microwave” influenced thought of what weed does to a person. At one point he picks his fingernails with a fork and then laughs and puts the fork back in the clean drawer. TAKE THAT LIBS
I love this article. My mom used to watch it and I know all the episodes. I never looked at it this way but you are dpoing a darn good breakdown. In hindsight, it may have influenced me a lot growing up. I wish you ahd gotten into Al more, because that’s the guy I liked most and identify with most nowdays. And a bit of Randy and Wilson.
You know when I watched your analysis of the fresh Prince of Bel-Air I thought brilliant. But in this one you’re Inserting so many believes of what Society is to you and what it is in your opinion I found myself having to pause every 5 minutes and argue with you. Wilsons points are valid given the culture where this TV show was originally produced and for whome it was produced for. Of course there are many cultures where men traditionally showed affection for eachother but it wasn’t the culture in America where the show was written. I grow up in a time when giving another man a hug was considered being gay. Gay being used in that time as a derogatory term. Concepts of masculinity were considered very important in the eighties and nineties. If Wilson conducted him shelf like you think he should of Tim probably would of Just completely ignored him. Wilson needed to come off as wise and someone with authority. That is not the case now but was deftly more of a case when the show was Written.
I truthfully find this show to be ridiculously cringey. As a gay man, what I hear from this show is how men are actively TRYING to fit a stereotype to fit in. In other words, they care enough about their outward perception that they’re willing to change who they are to be accepted. It feels about performative masculinity to me. But that’s just me. I find them to be extremely irritating with the macho stuff. But maybe that’s the point of the show after perusal this article. I do however love this website lol.
Love the website but I disliked Home Improvement so much that I didn’t make 10 minutes in. I stopped when Tim can’t grunt and his wife kissed him, so obviously he’s about to grunt and I just pass. If you look at his body, he’s never done anything physical in his life, yet he’s always grunting like cavemen, but he’s not masculine in the first place, it’s all so strange
Now that I’m older and have an open mind (I think), I can agree with many of the takes in this article. As a kid though, I never even thought too hard about the message of this show, or the social politics behind it. I was raised by television sitcoms, as were many in my generation. It’s crazy to think that for the first half of my life, all I did was mimic and repeat the things that I seen on tv. That’s just a thought that popped into my head while perusal this, no real point to it.
Why do you think anything close to modern sensibility, ever happened, Jose? I like ya alot, but there are things no matter how erroneously guilty you might feel, happened and occurred. I really wonder why pop culture as a whole, doesn’t just take a step back and have fun. I’m beginning to believe fun is our only answer here, across time and space. Was it fun? Fun may be the outlier.
45:45 is especially important because he also helped raise his other brothers. I think “Conservative in the reasonable sense” is the best way to describe Home Improvement. I agree I don’t think it’s anti-feminist but it’s… trying? The observation of how it’s 90’s makes it pretty okay for it’s day but we’ve grown for the better now. That’s what makes Last Man Standing so odd, times have changed even in sitcoms but Tim Allen hasn’t. I think jeffengel2607 put it better “Home Improvement is less pro-patriarchy and more about negotiating a soft landing for conservatives adjusting to a more progressive world.” LMS, however, is so pro-patriarchy. It’s kind of wild. What happened in those twenty years…
I used to watch Home Improvement with my dad and sister a lot as a kid. I loved Home Improvement as a kid because Tim reminded me of my father, sometimes a bit too much. Like he woodworks and LOVED New Yankee Workshop, to the point where he recorded it on VHS tapes. And we would always do that grunt thing. Even though this show is drenched in 90s culture, both in a social lens but political and economic lens (I mean yes it was made between 1991 and 1999 but you get my point). I know that now Tim Allen and I don’t share the same political beliefs, very much so. But, man I can’t help but feel so nostalgic and soft for that period in my life. I saw a lot of the Taylor family in my own family, except my dad was raising two (at the time) girls, though we were never sort of strictly “forced” within a feminine or masculine view point of things much like the Taylor kids were. My dad often encouraged my more “tomboy” hobbies (obviously hobbies aren’t locked to gender but I’m saying this as someone who grew up in the late 90s/early 20s), I’d always woodwork with him, or we’d go bike riding, or I would play footy and he helped out at school when I was doing school sports. I’ve had a lot of issues with my dad growing up as a teen and young adult, but I’ve come to now being that little kid again who loves their dad. I think in a way this show kind of helped my dad understand fatherhood in a way that is completely different to what his dad did. And in a way I think now, it shapes my view of fatherhood too.