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Home Improvement
1991 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 8 seasons
Created by Carmen Finestra, Matt Williams, David McFadzean
The daily trials and tribulations of handyman Tim Taylor, a TV show host raising three boys with help from his loyal co-host, domineering wife, and unseen neighbor.
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12 comments on Hacker News
I recently watched the Jon Bois documentary "Fool Time" which relates the story of the men involved in the development of telegraph lines to the 90s sitcom Home Improvement. It's an excellent watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyBSrQodnI
Conflict with neighbors is a common theme. But also friendship with neighbors. Wilson Wilson Jr in Home Improvement. Lawrence in Office Space. All the guys in King of the Hill. Even in some which start off with frustrations about neighbors sometimes shows strong bonds between them later like Grand Torino or Family Matters or even The Simpsons.
I think a lot of TV shows and movies show a lot of different perspectives of neighbors, and I'm not convinced it's mostly negative. Lots show some amount of strife with neighbors, but even a romance movie will often show some amount of conflict between the protagonists.
I think I learned about this from the TV show Home Improvement in the Tool Time segment.
No, I meant American sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Modern Family, etc. None of these shows show anything dramatic or larger than life - it's just a couple of friends or a family going through relatable yet sanitized everyday situations.
Many of these shows were the pillar of people's evening ritual - the whole family would gather around the TV to watch a fictional family experience life.
The top 5 scripted TV shows in 1992 were Roseanne, Home Improvement, Murphy Brown, Murder She Wrote, and Coach. The only show in top 30 that I would say was any good is Seinfeld.
Today, broadcast TV seems to be mostly procedurals and cable TV is mostly reality. If you like sitcoms, there has definitely been a dropoff since those have lost popularity.
Streaming is where can find the good TV shows. Remember, 1992 is before HBO started making good dramas and those were pretty rare before then. The big advantage of streaming is the variety, there are a bunch of mediocre shows in genres that barely existed before.
I just finished watching Derry Girls on Netflix, a comedy set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I would rather watch the 18 episodes of that than any amount of 90s sitcoms.
Yeah? Home Improvement, lead into by the TV series Family Matters? I think it's a stretch...
Yes the friendly neighbour idea was last seen in home improvement, the TV show. There is too much fear of placing a foot wrong and ghosting as the norm for mistakes.
Ha, just passing along a tired old joke :). I personally never saw the show myself but plenty of shows had a good time making fun of it (Home Improvement, Red Green Show (?)) I guess I stopped watching TV after the 90s sitcoms stopped so my references are old and tired.
>I have to wonder how effective those heavy-handed episodes of Family Matters or Home Improvement were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bflYjF90t7c
Never doing drugs again.
I had heard about this a few years ago and I find it fascinating. Entertainment being used for good! Its interesting how effective this particular show has been, so I have to wonder how effective those heavy-handed episodes of Family Matters or Home Improvement were.
I'm sure there are many examples of a TV show heavily impacting stuff that we encounter in our everyday lives, but I also would recommend reading The Power of Habit, as it has a whole chapter about how TV was used to effectively get people to start brushing their teeth before bedtime.
1 of those shows is still on TV. Sopranos ended all the way back in 2007.
Anyway, from a business standpoint only having 2 or 3 good shows mean people get out of the habit. Fox fed viewers from Simpsons into American Dad and Family guy, but when most channels are filled with junk people got out of the habit. When The walking Dead has a bad season there is nothing keeping people tuning into AMC.
Think filler B TV like Roseanne or Home Improvement the kind of show where the mass of humanity don't just turn them off even if nobody is lining up for a new episode.
PS: It's also all the same formulas and if you like it that's great for you. But, we are missing a lot of the off the wall TV like the twilight zone or MST3k.
Couldn't help but remember a TV show from my childhood called Roc about a garbage man. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101184/
I couldn't remember any shows that centered around postal workers. Seinfeld had a regular character and a few episodes about the postal system (but then that show had an episode about almost everything). But it did make me think about "Get a Life" which starred an adult paperboy http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=76500&lid=7
Construction crews was the same, I could think of several shows off the top of my head that center around the "idea" but none that landed right on it. There's Arrested Development which centers around a land development company (but really isn't about that all that much). Home Improvement, which isn't actually about home improvement and is more about a guy who has a show about tools. You said "show" but I'm guessing you meant sitcom/drama based on context so that rules out Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, since that's really reality-vertising. No worries, I'm sure someone on HN will figure this one out.
A truly gifted writer could make a show about almost anything interesting
I totally agree, including a cop/doctor/lawyer show. :o) One of my favorites was "Ed" on NBC ... first season only, though (http://stuckeyville.com).