Home Improvement
The ABC network sitcom Home Improvement first aired on September 17, 1991 and ran for eight seasons, through May 1999. During only its second season, the show was renewed for three additional seasons, an unusual decision in the television industry. Based on the stand-up comedy routine of its star, Tim Allen (born Timothy Allen Dick in 1953), Home Improvement initially reflected Allen's love of power tools, cars, and Sears department stores, as well as mirroring his own family situation. Allen portrayed Tim Taylor, the host of cable TV's "Tool Time." His wife, Jill, was portrayed by Patricia Richardson. More than just comedy, though, Home Improvement epitomized the concerns of the largest generation in history, the baby boomers.
The Taylors were a representation of the average American family of the 1990s, and their struggles, although treated with lighthearted humor, reflected the struggles of the show's demographic. In the main, three fundamental concerns of the boomer generation were examined on a weekly basis—relationships, family, and the search for spirituality.
One trend that Home Improvement influenced was a return to more defined gender roles. While women in the 1960s and 1970s discarded their bras and retained their own last names within marriage, while men grew their hair long and explored the sensitive side of their natures, couples in the 1990s rediscovered the fundamental differences between the sexes. Home Improvement gave propulsion to such bestselling pop psychology books as John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992), with its, at times, stereotypical gender roles. On "Tool Time," buxom tool-girl Heidi (Debbe Dunning) seemed more like window-dressing than a fleshand-blood character. In the Taylor household, Tim grunted, worked on cars, was obsessed with "more power," and didn't read unless a book had the word "illustrated" in the title. He was into sports and often didn't listen to his wife. Jill, on the other hand, didn't understand cars and called tools "thing-a-ma-jigs." An example of Mars/Venus stereotyping was seen in the episode "Shooting Three to Make Tutu," where Jill wanted Tim to take one of their sons to the ballet, but he had plans to take him to a basketball game instead. In this episode, and others like it, real men don't like ballet (or opera), and women don't like sports.
The series, however, wasn't content merely to stereotype male/female relationships, and in stretching itself, made the characters search for an identity beyond roles. Jill Taylor lost a job, found another, struggled with how to keep family and job together ("Abandoned Family"), and decided to go back to college. Tim Taylor dealt with the death of a mentor ("Arriverderci, Binford") and the arrival of a new boss; he dealt with work rivalries and an inferiority complex with Bob Villa ("What About Bob"). In other episodes, Home Improvement broke the stereotype of the dumb male that it had helped to perpetuate. The formula that had always put Tim in the wrong was overthrown as Jill realized her own shortcomings (e.g., "Heavy Meddle" and "Slip Sleddin' Away"). Their three boys (Zachary Ty Bryan, Taran Noah Smith, Jonathan Taylor Thomas) grew older and dealt with issues of their own: identity, dating, sex, drugs, and pulling away from Mom and Dad. Al Borland (Richard Karn), originally cast as a foil to Tim, became even more sensitive—the man every woman wants, the representative of the 1990s Iron John manhood movement (see "Reel Men" for Al's yearning for male bonding). Heidi was given more to do as she juggled work with a new baby.
As Tim Taylor was fond of saying on "Tool Time," "It's not just about home improvement, it's about male improvement," and Home Improvement could be said to be about marriage improvement. Episodes didn't shy away from tough topics that boomers were having to confront in their own marriages, such as sexual temptation on both sides ("Eye on Tim" and "Jill's Passion"), legal separation of friends and family members ("He Ain't Heavy, He's Just Irresponsible"), marriage counseling, lack of intimacy, and taking each other for granted ("Taking Jill for Granite").
Home Improvement reflected the concerns of an aging baby boomer population. It resisted a sitcom staple that infuses life into dying ratings: an impending pregnancy. Instead, it went in the opposite direction and began pulling in extended family. Boomers became increasingly aware of aging parents, and so the series introduced Tim's mother and brothers, Jill's parents and sisters. In "Taps," the audience vicariously experienced the death of a parent as Jill lost her father. In "No Place Like Home," Tim dealt with his mother selling the home in which he grew up. In the final season, Jill faced an emergency hysterectomy ("Love's Labor Lost"), forcing her into menopause, a condition with which female audiences could readily identify.
During the 1990s, the baby boomers were frantically searching for who they were and where they fit into the cosmos. The idealistic 1960s had faded, along with their bell-bottom jeans, leaving many to wonder where their ideals had gone. Their search for spiritual values was found in Wilson (Earl Hindman), the Taylors' over-the-fence neighbor. He regularly gave out spiritual platitudes with as much profundity as a fortune cookie, but Wilson developed along with the show and audiences saw more of his family, heard the story of his dead wife ("My Dinner with Wilson"), and watched romance bloom in his life. Wilson's wisdom, like spirituality in the latter 1990s, drew on many wells: Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Galileo. A running gag, and a technical challenge to the crew, was Wilson's partially obscured face, reflective of the boomers' belief that spirituality has many faces and none are clearly illumined.
Home Improvement won many awards, including Emmys, People's Choice, and TV Guide Reader's Poll, as did its two central stars, Allen and Richardson. Tim Allen won the People's Choice Award for "Favorite Male Performer in a Television Series" for the eight years of Home Improvement's run. He won the Golden Globe Award for "Funniest Actor in a Television Series" in 1997 and was nominated again in 1998. Patricia Richardson was nominated four times for an Emmy as "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series" and twice for the Golden Globe Award. The show held a mirror up to the baby boom generation, and the baby boom generation made sure that the Taylors knew they were America's Family.
Further Reading:
Allen, Tim. Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man. New York, Warner, 1994.
——. I'm Not Really Here. New York, Hyperion, 1996.
Arkush, Michael. Tim Allen Laid Bare: Unauthorized. New York, Avon Books, 1995.
Lichter, Robert S., Linda Lichter, and Stanley Rothman. Prime Time: How TV Portrays American Culture. Washington, D.C., Regnery Publications, 1995.
This is the complete article, containing 1,104 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
