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In another episode, Tim and Al are stuck at an airport in Alpena along with a rather contrary clerk. When Jill tells Wilson about this, he mentions that he has a friend who works at an airport in Alpena. When it descended into "Is too times 100!", "Is not times a thousand!", Tim capped "to infinity!" with "to infinity and beyond!", the Catch Phrase of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. He does all the voices of their stuffed animals, but they complain that he didn't voice the lion right. Most episodes have Wilson give Tim some advice to deal with his dilemma of the week, which Tim usually misinterprets and then totally garbles when trying to recount the advice to someone else.
There's also the issue that Mark gets picked on and called a dork all the time anyway, glasses or no glasses, so even if he'd kept them, it wouldn't really change anything. Episodes would typically feature some problem of Tim's, either as the A Plot or B Plot, and him trying to deal with it in his own stereotypically macho way, and then have to seek out the help of his extremely well-spoken, well-traveled, well-read neighbor Wilson Wilson, whose face was never seen in full. She was apparently so large actually seeing her wouldn't do it justice and the only time we see her is an arm holding a loaf of french bread and we only hear her speak in mumbles and groans.
Home Improvement (TV series)/Heartwarming
Originally, another character was to be Tim's assistant, but actor Stephen Tobolowsky was busy with another project. When the series was picked up, Karn stayed on as a recurring guest star as Tobolowsky was still busy elsewhere. Soon enough, all parties agreed that between Tobolowsky's busy workload and Karn and Tim Allen's playing off each other so well, it was best to simply retain Al. Home Improvement is an American sitcom starring Tim Allen as Tim Taylor and his family, consisting of his wife Jill and their three sons Brad, Randy, and Mark.
Subverted, believe it or not, when Tim races his hot rod against Bob Vila's. Tim loses the race, but he tells Jill that he could have won if he'd pushed his car into the redline. He didn't do it because he spent three years building his hot rod and wasn't about to wreck it over a low-stakes race. Arguably one of THE sitcoms of The '90s, and still popular in syndication. The series ran for eight seasons, from September 17, 1991 to May 25, 1999.
Home Improvement (TV series)
The season 5 episode "Room Without a View" has Tim and the Tool Time crew build a new bedroom for Randy in the basement when it's clear he and Mark have grown up too much to share one. Unfortunately, he wasn't prepared for the strange noises in the night and slept in the living room in fright. An early episode had the crew doing a massive remodeling job on the Taylors' home installing a Jacuzzi. A five day project ended up taking nearly a month because of set-backs and poor planning, starting off with Ted busting a gas line doing demolition with a 20 pound sledgehammer.
Wilson then tells Tim that he once had a friend who didn't respond to a chain letter who happened to be a naval officer...in Borneo. Wilson then tells Tim that he once had a friend who didn't respond to a chain letter who happened to be a naval officer... Jill's mom was also supposedly enormous, which made for a joke that she'd lost a lot of weight and was played by a waif thin actress. One time when Tim goes to Wilson for advice, Wilson is in the middle of training for a biathlon, specifically saying that he's a biathlete.
Home Improvement [Hospital Visit]
There's an episode where Tim tells Jill he got to ride a cow at work, and Jill asks, "Why, was the pig in the shop?" She goes on to suggest that the pig was in the shop to have his "porking brake fixed." The rest of the family has one when Jill accidentally leaves Tim's Hot Rod out in a snowstorm without a protective cover. Another episode ends with Tim in his garage, using a nail gun to shoot at a Dartboard of Hate with Bob Vila's face on it. And another time when Tim tried to claim "so boring" was actually "sobering". Hinted at with Patricia Richardson's reaction in an outtake from "The Rights and Wrongs of Passage", in which Tim appears to flash her while wearing a kilt. Often happens with the tools and gags introduced on Tool Time, where you'd see the tool, then see Tim using it later.
Too bad she still manages to make her way to Tim and Jill's house, much to Jill's chagrin. The Unwanted Glasses Plot with Mark is about how he doesn't want to look like a dork and Jill says it'll be okay even if he has glasses. Pretty quickly he changed to contact lenses, so those who don't want glasses for fear of looking nerdy got very little out of it before the character is not a dork again.
"We'll be right back after these messages from Binford Tropes!":
Tim would then try to relate Wilson's advice, mangle it badly, and finally put the advice and his viewpoint into understandable words of his own. It also occasionally showed Jill in the wrong, and with her own visit to Wilson she would realize she needs to make the effort to understand and empathize with Tim, too. By nature of featuring a nuclear family and the trials and tribulations of its growth , it also had more than a few Very Special Episodes. All of these themes ended up Anvilicious at times, although a bit more subdued than other shows of its type.
When him and Al were filling in for a cooking show on the same network, Tim actually takes the time to study up on what they're cooking, with the end result being that Tim and Al's roles are reversed, with Al screwing up and Time getting everything right. When Mark comes down with chickenpox, Tim (who's never had it) has to move in with Al temporarily. Hilarity Ensues, natch, but then Tim explains why he always makes fun of Al - he considers him to be like one of his brothers.Also featured is a neighbor that Al has a crush on, who he tries to impress by saying he hosts Tool Time and Tim is his assistant. Though annoyed, Tim begrudgingly goes along with it - only to later let it slip by accident that he's the host. When Al's about to come clean over lying, Tim intervenes by calling Tool Time "our show." Ashley Judd was originally cast as the Tool Girl, which was supposed to be a much bigger role (a college student majoring in psychology who acted as a stand-in for Jill on the Tool Time set), but she pulled out only days before the pilot was shot.
Also in the episode where Al invests his life savings into a Tool Time board game. When it's revealed that the game is defective and Al stands to lose his entire life savings, Al flees to his cabin before he has to sell it. Tim, however, fixes the game while timing himself to find the most efficient method, and then recruits and teaches his friends and co-workers to do the same thing.
Tim hears this as "bi athlete" and tells him that whatever he does behind closed doors is his own business. Al's Mom was like this as well, although she only appeared in a few episodes. She was apparently so large actually seeing her wouldn't do it justice and the only time we see her is an arm holding a loaf of French bread and we only hear her speak in mumbles and groans.
Of course, as the archetypal Bumbling Dad, it could be said the show was mostly about Tim's search for respect in the world. A Sitcom starring Tim Allen as Tim Taylor and his family, consisting of his wife Jill and their three sons Brad, Randy, and Mark. Tim spent some time studying the recipe before starting, while Al went on his previous knowledge. Al ignored Tim's warning about overstuffing the duck, and it got stuck to his hand until he accidentally tossed it through the window.
To somewhat of a lesser extent, in one second-season episode, Tim wore a sweatshirt with the logo of ABC's Detroit affiliate WXYZ-TV (complete with its “Circle 7” emblem) on it. ABC owned WXYZ from its sign-on in 1948 until 1986, when it sold the station to its current owner, the E. W. Scripps Company, during the network’s merger with Capital Cities Communications due to FCC broadcast ownership limits. Subverted in an episode where Tim invites one of Jill's former coworkers to her birthday, but finds out later that the two weren't exactly friends anymore. The coworker calls up to get directions to the house, and Tim intentionally sends her to Canada.
In season 8 Zachary Ty Bryan and Richard Karn had worked up to a "With... And..." respectively. Kind of related to D.I.Y. Disaster, Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project, and Doom It Yourself, as though Tim and his friends are actually incredibly competent at conventional repairs and projects, when they seek "More Power!", Hilarity Ensues.
She admits to Wilson she does have a problem admitting when she screws up. Done intentionally in-universe when Tim shares the Tool Time pilot episode with his audience for an anniversary. Tim has a beard, Al doesn't, and the intro is played on piano by Ms. Binford, who has to prompt the audience to respond to 'Do you know what time it is? Also in the episode where Al takes over a cooking show as a favor and Tim is reduced to playing second banana, they essentially swap schticks and Al becomes the Small Name, Big Ego type while Tim is the quieter, competent, Deadpan Snarker sidekick. The season 5 episode "Shopping Around" sees Tim accidentally shoot his old shop teacher Mr. Leonard, who's guest-starring on Tool Time, in the butt with a nail gun. Which tells the story of a naval officer in Borneo who didn't respond to the letter and was later abducted and beheaded by natives.
