Home Improvement by ABC network

The series centered on the Taylor family, which consists of father Tim ,his wife Jill and their three sons: Brad , Randy and Mark. The Taylors live in suburban Detroit, Michigan and have a neighbor named Wilson who is the main source for solving Tim and Jill's problems.

Tim hosts a television show “Tool Time” (similar to This Old House) with assistant Al and tool girl Heidi. Pamela Anderson played Tool Girl Lisa in the first 2 seasons, but left due to lack of screen time, and to join the cast of Baywatch.

Tim is a stereotypical American male, loving power tools, cars and sports. He is a former salesman, and very much an overconfident know-it-all. Witty but flippant, Tim jokes around a lot, even at inopportune times. Family life was boisterous, with the two oldest sons, Brad and Randy, tormenting the much younger, Mark, while continually testing and pestering each other. This rough by-play happened especially throughout the first four seasons.

Brad, popular and athletic, was often the moving factor, who engaged before thinking, a tendency which regularly landed him in trouble. Randy, a year younger, was the comedian of the pack – the quick-thinking, sarcastic son who had more common sense than Brad but wasn't immune to trouble. Later on, in the seventh season, Mark grew into a teenage outcast who dressed in black clothing (a goth), while Brad became interested in cars like his father and took up soccer. Randy joined the school newspaper; in the eighth season, he left for Costa Rica.

Each episode included Tim's own home improvement show, called Tool Time, a “meta-program,” or show-within-a-show. Originally slated to be called Hammer Time, the show's name was changed to Tool Time because Tim and the producers felt that name would be confused with MC Hammer.

In hosting this show, Tim was joined by his friend and mild-mannered assistant Al Borland, and a “Tool Time girl” — first Lisa and later Heidi — whose main duty was to introduce the pair at the beginning of the show with the line “Does everybody know what time it is?” They would also assist Tim and Al during the show by bringing them tools.

Although revealed to be an excellent salesman and TV personality, Tim Taylor was spectacularly accident-prone as a handyman, often causing disasters on and off the set to the consternation of his co-workers and family. Many Tool Time viewers assume that the accidents on the show are on purpose, to demonstrate how not to use tools. Many of Tim's accidents were caused by his devices designed in application of his mantra, “More power!”

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posted: 03/06/2009 by jka12002 comments | results | vote