Home Improvement: Favorite Season

Lately I've been wanting to revisit the 1990's sitcom Home Improvement with Tim Allen starring as Tim Taylor. It's nice that all the Season's have been released on DVD (I'm not expecting a Blu-Ray release anytime soon, as this show was shot on standard-definition videotape).

I still remember some of the crazy things that were done on this show: the man's Kitchen, the man's Bathroom...Tim dropping the beam on Jill's car!

My favorite season is probably Season 3 or 4. My least favorite season in Season 8: after Jonathan Taylor Thomas left, I found the show really didn't have a lot memorable episodes.

 

I can't tell you my favourite season but I agree that season 8 is the worst, it wasn't just Jonathan Taylor Thomas leaving (which was a big loss, Randy was by far the strongest character among the kids and so different from Tim, he was a great foil for him), Tim's brother moved in and his daughters showed up too often, they were really running out of ideas at that point.

My favourite seasons are probably the middle season and to this day I'm convinced the show wanted Randy to be gay and someone (probably the network) put an end to that. I remember that he never seemed to be that interested in girls, there was an episode were they were on a family vacation and Jill was disappointed everyone had different plans, in Randy's case he had met a boy he wanted to spend time with, not a girl, not a group of people, just one boy and they were totally going on a date.
Then suddenly Randy had a girlfriend and she became a recurring character, the problem was that they had zero chemistry and at least in my mind that made Randy look even gayer. I'm sure that was intentional, the girlfriend was forced on them so they turned her into an obvious beard.

Or Randy was never meant to ge gay and it was just JTT but that's less interesting.

Edit: I just realized I wrote more about Randy and arandy possibly being gay than anything else, I don't think I have to tell whommy favorite character was, I had the biggest crush on JTT.

 

I'm not familiar enough with individual episodes or even what seasons they are from to accurately vote in this poll:

But I can say I didn't care for how they turned Mark into a goth. Nothing against Goth's or anything, but it just wasn't a very interesting storyline to me.

 

The memories .

@ Aldo: I wasn't a huge fan of that either.

I'll have to double check on the seasons though, since it's been a long time since I've watched the show.

 

That was one of my favorite shows growing up. It was definitely best in the early years. The middle seasons were okay, but eventually I stopped watching.

I've never seen season 8. Probably never will.

 

I'd say once the focus on Brads soccer the show went to shit fast. The kids got too old and couldn't really tell a cohesive story anymore. So anything past 6 is probably crap. I'll go with 3 or 4 as being the best over all.

 

Anyone remember a Halloween episode where Wilson Wilson was dressed up like a mummy and you could see the bottom part of his face? That one stuck with me, with the exception of the name of the episode...

 

That was in Season 2, where Tim also put on a dress for Halloween.

 

Tim's nieces were horrible on the show, just god awful. But I can't really remember much of anything else. I'd probably say season 2-4 because I remember not liking it right away.

I will say one thing though, comedies have a way of having horrible series finales because they rather become a drama for an episode instead of staying true to their roots. Home Improvement ended in a very very silly way, but it was touching and funny. No matter how bad the last season was I will remember liking the ending.

Of course I haven't seen it since it ended, so what would I know.

 

I agree, I liked the ending too, it was one of the few good things about season 8.

 

Thanks tomswift! I'll have to see if I can find that clip somewhere.

 

That was also the series first Halloween episode. But the last Halloween episode in Season 8 had a couple of a Trek connections: Natalia Nogulich and Richard Riehle both appeared in htr episode as friends of Wilson.

But with the final episode, it is to bad that they were not able to get Jonathan Taylor Thomas back for the finale. While he does appear in the finale in archive footage, it would've been nice to have had him in some new footage.

 

One of my favourite shows, up there with Frasier, in my opinion. It was really clever at times. Great chemistry from the cast too. Anyone remember the gag where Al and Tim switched roles, Tim growing a beard while Al shaved his off? I loved the interplay between those two.

 

Yeah I remember the beard gag on the show where Tim and Al looked back to the first episode of Tool Time.

 

I remember that the Man's Kitchen episode was the one where we saw the Tool Time pilot that had the beard joke.

But it's to bad that Disney hasn't released any themed Best Of DVD sets. Imagine a set with all the Man's ( name of room) episodes, or another set with the Christmas and Halloween episodes (HI had 8 Christmas and 7 Halloween episodes, so those would be pretty good Best Of sets).

 

I gotta admit. Part of me would be pretty happy having those rooms in my house for real.

BTW, as an aside, you know what minor thing used to bug me about the show? Tim wearing that tie while working with power tools on Tool Time. No way a competent tradesman would ever do that, let alone a klutz like Tim. He should have died about two episodes in from that alone.

 

One could argue that that's a subtle clue about Tim's actual ability. There were more than a few times where he should have just outright died, and thank god that Al was there.

 

Aren't all seasons except 8 pretty much the same? Didn't vary the formula too much.

Early seasons were probably best because they had to stretch more in the later seasons.

 

There was one episode where it was mentioned that Tim was, before Tool Time started, a salesman for Binford, so I always assumed that Binford had had Tim keep the appearance of salesman. But there was one episode where Tim and All were wearing those 1950's era shirts around a lathe, and the lathe ripped Tim's shirt off.

And (at least I think it was in Season 8) Season 8's stand-out episode was probably the Greased Lightning episode.