Home Improvement [TV Series] (DVD)

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Brace yourselves. It's TOOL TIME—another season watching Tim Taylor (former stand-up comic Tim Allen) cut up on his home improvement show with right-hand man Al Borland (Richard Karn), with practically every show resulting in some sort of disaster. Tim was just as accident-prone at home, and his wife, Jill (Patricia Richardson), had the patience of a saint (make that a sarcastic, deadpanned one). Every episode she had to cope with three boys (ages 14, 13, and 10 this season) and a great big overgrown juvenile delinquent. How can you confiscate rubber band guns from the boys when dad's the one showing them how to make them?

"Home Improvement" was a popular ABC sitcom for eight years, finishing a surprising 4th its first season, 3rd its second, 2nd its third, and this 4th season slipping . . . all the way down to 3rd again. There was something about this bumbling know-it-all that viewers loved, and the gimmick of having a neighbor whose face is never seen ended up being a metaphor for all those fences in America's suburbs that kept neighbors from seeing or knowing each other.

In episode 24 this season, Jill's sister, Carrie comes to visit. Her purpose? To secretly observe this group in order to gauge whether she wants to get married. Bad idea. The goings on at the Taylor house are far from normal, and this season was full of changes. Tim turns 40 and continues his perennial mid-life crisis, son Mark (Taran Noah Smith) needs glasses, son Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan) gets to be on TV with dad, son Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) has to figure out how to date despite dad's unintentional sabotage attempts, Jill decides to go back to college, neighbor Wilson (Earl Hindman) says he's moving (and gets set up for his first date in 20 years), Al buys a share of a hardware store and becomes one of Detroit's most eligible bachelors, and brother Marty has marital problems. But what fans will notice most are the splashy new inter-scenic transitional graphics which come darned close to 3D at times.

As sitcoms go, the husband-wife dynamic is pretty standard. After all, since the early days of television it's either been the goofball stuff-happens husband (ala Jackie Gleason in "The Honeymooners") and his longsuffering wife, or else it's the wacky wife (ala Lucille Ball in "I Love Lucy") and the husband whose patience is sorely tried. The situations themselves are nothing out of the ordinary, except that the scale is perhaps increased a bit. Lucy did a lot of things, but she never got into a crane and dropped a three-ton I-beam on her spouse's shiny antique car after berating the spouse for getting a scratch on it. And though she did a lot of physical comedy, Lucy never put her head through a drywall ceiling panel when hydraulic stilts backfired. But those things happen to Tim Taylor, and it's his mishaps and shenanigans that drive the show. Father doesn't know best, and that's probably another reason for the show's popularity. He's goofy and he's likable as someone to whom stuff just happens—a formula that also worked well in "The Santa Clause."

Twenty-six episodes are on three single-sided discs in a tri-fold case:

1) "Back in the Saddle Shoes Again"—When Jill announces she's going back to college, Tim panics, thinking she might drop him for more intelligent guys.

2) "Don't Tell Momma"—Beam him up, Scotty. Tim drops an I-beam on his wife's car after getting annoyed with her over a scratch she put in it. Meanwhile, Brad and Randy have to deal with a bully.

3) "Death Begins at Forty"—When the owner of a hardware store has a heart attack, Tim starts to have panic attacks as his own big 4-0 approaches.

4) "The Eyes Don't Have It"—The trouble at school turns out to be medical when Tim and Jill discover that Mark needs glasses.

5) "He Ain't Heavy, He's Just Irresponsible"—When Tim's brother Marty says he's leaving the wife and kids, Tim gives him advice that drives a wedge between them.

6) "Borland Ambition"—When Al bolts into the hardware business he drives everyone else nuts.

7) "Let's Go to the Videotape"—Tim tapes Jill's speech but accidentally leaves the record button on when he adds his own comments, and then it's a cover-up of Nixonian proportions.