Created by Matt Williams, Carmen Finestra (who both produced The Cosby Show) and David MacFadzean, Home Improvement was based on the standup comedy routine of Tim Allen. The show debuted on September 1, 1991 on ABC and became an instant hit, ranking 5th in the Nielsen ratings during the series' first season, and never leaving the top ten during the show's entire eight year run.

Tim "The Toolman" Taylor (Tim Allen) is the accident-prone host of Tool Time, based in Detroit Michigan. He spends most of his time teasing his co-host, Al Borland (Richard Karn), unmercifully. Tim is married to Jill (Patricia Richardson) and they are raising three boys, Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who left the series at the beginning of the eighth season by going off on an environmental research study in Costa Rica, and Mark (Taran Noah Smith), the youngest son, who grew into an outcast dressed in dark clothing and was prone to sulky behavior.

With its fairly typical husband/wife dynamics and teenage problems to solve, Home Improvement got into a nice, typical comedy groove. There wasn't one big thing that set Home Improvement apart from the myriad of other comedies on the air in the late nineties. It is the little things that make the series a pleasant memory almost ten years after its final original broadcast - like the Taylor's next door neighbor Wilson (Earl Hindman), whose face was never completely shown, not even in the eighth season opener when he joins Tim on a whitewater rafting trip (Wilson wore a specially designed helmet that hid the same part of his face, as always) or Pamela Anderson and later, Debbie Dunning (as Heidi), who brought unmistakable sex appeal to the show as the Tool Time girls.

In the final season, the perennially single and much maligned Al finally found the woman of his dreams, the very wealthy Trudy. Tim gets jealous when Al gets to star in a TV movie alongside Morgan Fairchild, Brad has to decide whether to play professional soccer in Europe, Jill has surgery, and the fence between Tim and Wilson finally comes down.

I don't know if I would call Home Improvement a comedy classic the way I would The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Cosby Show or The Dick Van Dyke Show classics, but it's very easy to see why the series was a fan favorite right out of the gate. Tim Allen is a master at playing the lovable, bumbling idiot and his ability to relate to his wife and kids is an exercise in humor. Al is the perfect straight man for his shtick. Mixed in with all that, there were still touching moments that everyone could relate to.