studioAT Tim Allen is a funny guy and like many a stand up comedian before him this sitcom was built around that stand up persona.The result is Home Improvement, a show that was successful enough to run for 8 seasons, lead to a movie career for Allen and remain a beloved show even to this day.Sad thing is I don't find it funny. The stories aren't always that funny and the attempts at sentiment are often cloying.Although I find Tim Allen funny in his films (well, most of them) I found his character here annoying. It's almost as if he's trying to be so 'alpha male with a power tool' that it becomes forced.But people love this show and fair enough. I'm just not one of them it seems.

willhaskew This sitcom pretty much exemplifies the worst problems I had with television from the 1990's. Tim Allen was one of a number of popular comedians who were given a sitcom in the 1990's. His stand up was probably whitewashed by network censors, though I find it hard to believe someone whose primary comedic shtick was grunting and growling while yelling "MORE POWER" as his catchphrase was edgy as Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor. Tim Allen was Tim Taylor, a former Detroit salesman for a tool company called Binford who was given a home improvement style talk show. He lives with his family, made up of his wife, Jill, and three sons; Brad, Randy and Mark. He's supposed to be a klutz, often injuring himself by taking shortcuts and or being generally unsafe. Allen's character also has this strange personal dislike of TV home improvement originator Bob Villa. Besides that he's loves his sports (all the Detroit teams; Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, Pistons), hot rods and playing around at home with different projects. Allen's TV kids are obnoxious little twerps. The middle son, Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), is only one who really comes close to having a personality but the writers thought it was funny to make him an antisocial smart aleck. The oldest son Brad, has a mullet through part of the first season and is later shown with a ponytail and the sides of his head shaven, easily the two worst ways an adolescent male could have worn his hair in the 90's. Brad is a dim bulb who takes more after his dad but for some reason is shown to have more success with girlfriends. The youngest Mark is a sensitive mama's boy most of the show until the last few years where he goes through an emo-goth phase, wearing black baggy jeans and spiking up his hair. The mom, Jill, starts off as a homemaker but is soon shown working outside the home in a number of jobs before going back to college to pursue a psychology degree. Jill and Tim fight in the most of the show's episodes about some small problem that's blown out of proportion so it becomes a marriage issue. Tim is supposed to be a chauvinist but somehow is sensitive enough to seek an emotional rapport with his wife, seeing the problem from her perspective. He often consults with his wise neighbor Wilson Wilson, PhD, who is happy to dispense marriage counseling for free that's always effective no matter what. Jill is almost always the wounded party and the show seems to gleefully blame Tim's behavior for their spats. This is what really bothers me about this show. A good marriage family therapist is going to tell any couple that solving relationship problems isn't about assigning blame. Building and maintaining relationships is a meeting of equals, finding understanding, looking outside your perspective to understand a partner's needs and being able to express your feelings in a positive way. This show is too focused on making the husband into a buffoon to do this.

Armand a family. and a lot of chaos sources. that could be all. but more than a classic, Home Improvement is a phenomenon. not in aggressive sense but a kind of model for kids, root for Christmas films for Tim Allen, start for the career of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. it is the ideal image for relationship between father and boys, for the Peter Pan complex, for the force of woman in impose the house rules, for silly errors and a lot of good intentions. Tim Taylor is more than a series character and that fact is the basic virtue of film. because it is the soft comedy who presents, in funny manner the life like an adventures with sparkles from childhood.

Michael L.S. I had watched a few episodes of Home Improvement now and then back in the late 1990s and for some reason--nostalgia, I guess--decided to re-watch the whole show recently.I didn't love it and I didn't hate it; I'm kinda blasé about it. It's all right as something running in the background while you do other things, such as browsing the Internet or playing Minesweeper but hardly something to dedicate a half hour to at a time.The show IS funny but is decidedly low-brow, which I suppose it was aiming for anyway. I did laugh a fair amount, but instead of the guffaws produced by the canned "audience," mine tended to be chuckles. The plots were average, nothing captivating or inspiring but, then, this IS a sitcom, not the Discovery Channel.Many segments showing tool-work were interesting and that is what carried the show. The scenes involving the characters in family settings were distinctly unremarkable, notwithstanding the occasional witticism, particularly on the part of the boys.A few specific annoyances:-- Tim: Has his moments but his overall character as a wannabe alpha-male grates. He represents the view that for a man to be a Real Man(TM), he has to dress, act, walk, talk, think and smell like a gorilla. How tiresome. Those WERE the 1990s though; I like to think the world has moved on since then...Jill: Another cliché. She is incredibly smart, put-down-upon, unappreciated wife to a next-to-useless husband. I suppose she is part of the faux-feminist propaganda machine whereby the woman, though intellectually and often otherwise superior to a man, is downtrodden by him and through various contrived situations she gets her own back, showing him up for the loser he is. Seen it a million times before, such as with Everybody Loves Raymond's Deborah. I guess in Hollywood a woman is either a vacuous tottie playing arm-candy to some superhuman superhero, or an intellectual giant in her own right dealing with exasperating, hapless men... - in other words, a Hollywood woman is everything EXCEPT a man's equal.Wilson: An interesting and novel concept to begin with, his idiosyncrasies and prowess eventually became his undoing. Finding ways to conceal his face was mostly amusing, but casting him as a person of incredibly many talents, interests, aptitudes, skills, knowledge and experiences became REALLY old halfway through the show. It came to a point where, on seeing the opening shot of him doing some--forgive me--batshit ridiculous thing in his yard, I just groaned and rolled my eyes.Al: By far the most amiable character. But what's the deal with him and his mother?! That angle was overdone and made him look pathetic and weird, to the point of perversity (Oedipus complex, anyone?).The Taylor family: I quite liked the boys and it was fun seeing them grow up through the eight seasons of the show. Watching the entire run across a few weeks, I basically witnessed three kids getting eight years older. They had quite a few droll moments. It would have been nice to have had a girl instead of one of the three of them, but then the whole dynamic would have been different, and not necessarily for the better.Overall: O.K. and just that.