Home Improvement
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
Tim Taylor hosts a home improvement show called Tool Time, grunts at anyone who disagrees with him, and invents power tools that violate three building codes at a time. Tim Allen built the character from stand up timing: the alpha male pose with zero alpha competence, and a grunt that became a catchphrase. Earl Hindman’s Wilson, the neighbor visible only over the fence, is the best running visual gag of nineties television, and the show never explained it and never needed to.
Jill (Patricia Richardson) is the secret intelligence of the whole operation. The marriage is the engine, their fights are some of the best staged domestic combat on network television, and the three sons work as a Greek chorus of teenage indifference. The Tool Time segments escalate a notch every season, sponsor gags turning into demolition, and the series understands exactly when to let Tim admit he cannot build a thing alone.
The peak years are the middle of the run, when the grunts still landed and Wilson still had all his punchlines.
Our score: 7.5/10.
