Hulu Family Sitcom With Disney Icon Is A Disaster You Want To Watch

Home Improvement is a unique sitcom because Tim Allen’s Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor works as a television personality on his own public access show called Tool Time. This show within a show is a home improvement series in which Tim, and his co-host/assistant, Al “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Tim” Borland (Richard Karn), use Binford brand tools (their corporate sponsor) to walk the audience through a number of different renovation projects. More often than not, Tim gets into an accident on-set, which the audience thinks is to demonstrate what could go wrong if you’re not taking necessary safety precautions.

As it turns out, Tim is actually not very great with tools despite the fact that he’s Binford’s number one salesman, and the charismatic host that the company needs to move enough units to justify the show’s existence.

Adding a little bit of meta humor to the equation, the live studio audience for Tool Time is actually the studio audience for Home Improvement during each episode’s taping.

As the series title suggests, Home Improvement is about “home improvement” in the literal sense, but also about coping with family drama. After work, Tim comes home to his wife, Jill (Patricia Richardson), and his three sons, Brad (Zachery Ty Brian), Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), and Mark (Taran Noah Smith). Throughout the series’ eight-season run, the Taylor family overcomes a number of obstacles as the boys navigate through childhood, their teenage years, and young adulthood, while Jill attempts to pursue higher education and a career after spending several years as a stay-at-home mom.

The shifts in the Taylor family dynamic more often than not lead to conflict and comic relief as Tim literally tries to improve everybody’s situation at home while blowing up the dishwasher in the process.

Home Improvement may just sound like your by-the-numbers ’90s family sitcom, but its charm and staying power comes in the form of running gags.

My personal favorite recurring joke is the fact that every single Binford tool Tim promotes on Tool Time has the same 6100 model. In fact, from season 3 through the end of the series, this was a running joke among the cast and crew, and there were dozens, if not hundreds, of tools with the same model number that nobody within the show’s fiction ever seemed to notice.

And we can’t talk about Home Improvement’s running gags without mentioning Tim’s wise-beyond-his-years and incredibly eccentric neighbor, Wilson (Earl Hindman). Whenever Tim finds himself in a jam, he seeks advice from Wilson, whose face is always obscured by the fence or some foreign object that never fully reveals his likeness. As the series progresses into its later seasons, and Wilson is spotted in the wild more frequently, his face is always cleverly hidden from the audience’s collective eyeballs.

Just beneath Home Improvement’s slap-stick, bumbling-handyman-father-falls-down-while-grunting (aughhhhh?!) surface, there are dramatic elements that keep the series engaging for both younger and older audiences.

We learn about the trials and tribulations of parenting through Tim and Jill’s perspective. Throughout the series’ run, they find Brad’s stash of drugs taped beneath their patio bench, have to navigate Mark through his out of nowhere goth phase, and in one of the more heartwarming episodes, cope with the possibility that Randy may be dealing with a cancer diagnosis.

Using the “home improvement” analogy quite egregiously, but in a way that never wears out its welcome, the Taylor family always overcomes their obstacles as Tim bonds with his kids while restoring vintage hot rods in his garage.

REVIEW SCORE

At face-value, Home Improvement isn’t high-art, but it’s an effective family sitcom with just the right amount of humor, drama, and self-awareness to work on a number of satisfying levels. For every over-the-top mishap that Tim subjects himself to at work, there’s a lesson that can be learned on the home front. If you’re looking for some low-stakes fun, and enjoy watching Tim Allen falling through a Porta Potty roof on the job site on more than one occasion, then you can stream Home Improvement on Hulu the next time you want to take a trip down memory lane.