HOME IMPROVEMENT batch2/20260907_121950

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## HEADING: HOME IMPROVEMENT

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By Marvin Kitman
REVIEW
Home Improvement: more power to you
Tim Allen of ABC's Home Improvement (Tuesday nights at 8:30 [ET]) is another wonderful example of a stand-up comedian making a successful transition to acting — a la Richard Lewis of Anything But Love and Jerry Seinfeld of Seinfeld.

The fresh and charmingly funny Allen plays Tim (The Tool Man) Taylor of power-tools-TV called Tool Time. It's very popular in Detroit, with a studio audience, a grandmaster-carpenter sidekick named Al and a bimbo prop carrier with "two big headlights," as Tim's wife, Jill (Patricia Richardson), dismisses them. He shows us how to fix things that need fixing and things that don't.

When in doubt, Tim's major philosophical tenet is: add more power! The Taylor blender is the only one on the block that can puree a brick.

Tool Time Tim is transformed into an even more macho guy when he straps on the old tool belt. Cold steel on the hip turns him into Wild Harry. Power tools are an aphrodisiac.

He is hilarious on his TV show and in the privacy of his suburban home in front of his wife and three sons — grunting about how working with your hands is the only way to recall the good old days from the men ran around the campfire naked.

The joke is that real life defies This Old Tim's theories. His wife and sons are unfiable. What's worse, Tim is a closet klutz. Every time he has something, as Jill says, the fire department shows up. The half-hour sitcom is more than just a parody of the "This Old Bob Villa" show. Instantly recognized is the spoofing of Bob and Norm Abrams and their respective competence.

There is a uniquely congenial screwdriver-and-screw relationship between Tim and Jill as they seek to balance their yin and yang. His idea of fun is going to monster-truck rallies and tractor pulls. As much fun as that sounds, she prefers ballet. She's just as tough as he is, in her way.

The Taylors also have the best next-door neighbor of the year, Wilson (Earl Hindman) is always explaining the symbolism behind the sagging underpinnings of Tim's machismo.

Through all the laughter, the show not only offers useful home improvement tips ("the sure to label the fuse if you need it"), but is a do-it-yourself guide to mending family difficulties in ways the Bundys never dreamed of. I give the show four socket wrenches (with a 670-rpm, 4-cycle power overdrive).

Home Improvement's Tim Allen ABC's Mr. Fix-It

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The COUCH CRITIC
By Jeff Jones
Home Improvement

What makes a man? In the '50s it was brains; in the '60s principles; in the '70s sexual energy and in the '80s junk bonds. Finally, in the '90s, TV brings us the true essence of manhood: power tools. "We need a man drill," Tim Allen grunts on ABC's Home Improvement (Tuesdays, 8:30 P.M. [ET]) as his audience backs his macho mantra: "More power!" Allen plays the host of a fix-it show who believes that the RPM of a man's circular saw is the measure of his testosterone.

On his show, Allen is a proud, hairy ape. But at home, with his family, he's just another guy who's not sure what's included in the job description of manhood. In fact, Allen couldn't safely install a refrigerator magnet. "Every time you fix something," grips his wife (Patricia Richardson), "the fire department shows up." He doesn't use tools to build many things. He uses them to act manly, as if buying a nail gun can fertilize chest hair. That's exactly why I used to watch tool shows, back when TV had lots of good ones.

I was a This Old House snob until Bob Villa left. Bob's new show, Home Again, is okay, but I miss his sidekick and power-tool crusader, Norm Abrams. I devoured Home Improvement, but now co-host JoAnne Ledbetter is leaving to be a comic (what's former Utah drywall?). ABC's Home and The Discovery Channel's Easy Does It give you 101 ways to build frilly, silly bathrooms. So I long for a simple hammer and saw show. I want Home Improvement to spin off its show-within-the-show, Tool Time.

But Home Improvement is more than a tool show. It's an honest, hilarious show about families. Like Roseanne, Home Improvement presents families with all their warts. The show's three boys are, along with most TV kids, smart-assed. Our brother taunts another: "Mark, are you gonna be a dork your whole life?" Mark replies, "I hope not." What saves these kids is that they inherited their smart asses honestly, from their parents. "What are we going to do about Brad and Randy — they keep tormenting Mark?" Mom pleads. And Dad replies: "That's why we had Mark, so they'd leave us alone."

Unlike Roseanne, Home Improvement doesn't grapple with weightier issues like teen sex and unemployment. It's just a show about men, a show that makes us guys the butt of jokes about butts-cracks and power, a show that admits that men don't know what manhood really means. Speaking as a man — and the proud owner of a variable-speed, reversible (and rarely used) drill — I like it.

Home Improvement's Tim Allen, guest Richard Karn
Home Improvement Patricia Richardson, Tim Allen.

New Comedy from the creator of "Roseanne"

662. HOME IMPROVEMENT w/Tim Allen, Patricia Richardson 9/24/91 to 3/3/92 1.

662B. HOME IMPROVEMENT 4/28/92 to 1/6/93 2.

662C. THE GEORGE CARLIN SHOW 1/13/93 to 3.

662D. 4.