Home Improvement is a sitcom about Tim Taylor, the accident prone host of a Detroit, Michigan television program about tools, who raises his dysfunctional family including three mischeivous boys and a loyal co-host, domineering wife. The show's humor often revolves around cars, toys, tools, hardware shops, garages, fix-it-up projects, and similar themes.
A relaxed and likable show...Allen is one of the fall's freshest finds. But all the best punch lines in the hilarious pilot came right out of his "Men Are Pigs" stand-up routine. With the writers out on their own, the humor seems to be thinning out.
Allen's sitcom may well work, although by the second episode it already shows uneasy signs of cuteness bloat, right down to Tim ineptly trying to make a swivel-based cookbook holder for his wife...fairly routine sitcom fodder.
Bottom line is that this is one hilarious half hour. Probably a half dozen laugh-out-loud side-busters and a couple dozen chucklers. Even the obvious jokes are so well-timed they get a laugh.
Home Improvement isn't groundbreaking TV or even the most original new show of the year, but it's the most perfectly realized: an idea whose time has come combined with sharp writing and once-in-a-blue-moon cast chemistry.
