It's a brand new season of Home Improvement, which will mean more changes for our beloved characters. First up, Tim and Al show how to put up drywall. Well actually, Tim shows how NOT to put up drywall, as the two get into a competition, Al showing skill and Tim making a mess. They needlessly get carried away. At home, Tim fawns over his shiny blue hot rod, waiting anxiously for a call from a guy who has a cherry hood ornament, or rather he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, etc., who can get it. Life was good... but not for Jill, who comes home from work sulking. They laid her off. Tim and the boys tried to be supportive, but offered more levity than support. Jill does some thinking and realizes this getting laid off from her job would be the perfect opportunity to go back to school, to study...are you ready for this? Psychology. Abnormal psychology, owing to her abnormal family. She tells Tim about going back to school, but he isn't very supportive of the idea. He instead suggests she go to a trade school and learn how to become a turret lathe operator.
Back to Tool Time where we continue dry humor week...er, I mean Drywall Week. Last time they did walls, but this time they're showing how to put up drywall ceiling panels. Al's wearing old fashioned, adjustable stilts to accomplish the job, but Tim, as always, not wanting to be outdone, brings out a pair of pneumatic drywall stilts, though technically they're hydraulic, but this IS Tim we're talking about. It all goes horribly wrong and Tim's demonstration literally goes through the roof. Later on, he comes home carrying a big bouquet of flowers, dubbed the Tim Taylor Foot-in-the-Mouth Special. He still doesn't support her going back to school, he was just trying to soften her up. It didn't work. Wonder what Wilson has to say about this. Tim tries giving him the flowers, then tells him about his own days in college. Yeah, Tim somehow got into college. I'm guessing he was awarded a shop scholarship. Anyway, it seems Tim is worried that if Jill goes back to college, they may drift apart as she'll take an interest in the eggheads. Wilson helps him to realize there's very little chance of that happening, so Tim, flowers in hand, go back inside and gives his full support for Jill to go back into the world of "macadamia." They have a serious conversation about their college days. It's when they met, you know. Tim asks if they had to do those days over again, would Jill have picked another man to marry. She says that despite Tim's flaws, there would never have been another. So, to continue his supportive of his schoolgirl wife, Tim creates some handy little school items for her: a pencil sharpener that can grind a 6 inch pencil into a shiv, and a remote controlled lunch box that loses its lunch.
Well, folks, THIS is the turning point in the series where Jill decides to study psychology, a subject she really sucks at. In the years to come, we'll see Jill bumble and stumble her way through therapy exercises, she even destroys a few marriages along the way (see Advise and Repent), just all the way up to the series finale, she proves that she is in NO way a qualified psychologist, she makes almost every mistake in the book. So now we know when that trouble started, and we know whose to blame for it: Bruce Ferber. Apparently Mr. Ferber somehow got it into his head that making Jill a psychologist would generate a wealth of new jokes and mishaps for the series to further illustrate that Tim isn't always the stupid one in the Taylors' relationship, because I guess Tool Time alone was wearing thin. To be fair, that does balance things out because in most sitcoms, it's the dad who's the idiot and the mom is the sensible one. Home Improvement dared to break new ground by having BOTH spouses be idiots AND, at times, be sensible. Nice job. As for this episode, Back in the Saddle Shoes Again was a good episode and a good way of starting Season 4, which is, in my opinion, the show's last REALLY solid season.
Back to Tool Time where we continue dry humor week...er, I mean Drywall Week. Last time they did walls, but this time they're showing how to put up drywall ceiling panels. Al's wearing old fashioned, adjustable stilts to accomplish the job, but Tim, as always, not wanting to be outdone, brings out a pair of pneumatic drywall stilts, though technically they're hydraulic, but this IS Tim we're talking about. It all goes horribly wrong and Tim's demonstration literally goes through the roof. Later on, he comes home carrying a big bouquet of flowers, dubbed the Tim Taylor Foot-in-the-Mouth Special. He still doesn't support her going back to school, he was just trying to soften her up. It didn't work. Wonder what Wilson has to say about this. Tim tries giving him the flowers, then tells him about his own days in college. Yeah, Tim somehow got into college. I'm guessing he was awarded a shop scholarship. Anyway, it seems Tim is worried that if Jill goes back to college, they may drift apart as she'll take an interest in the eggheads. Wilson helps him to realize there's very little chance of that happening, so Tim, flowers in hand, go back inside and gives his full support for Jill to go back into the world of "macadamia." They have a serious conversation about their college days. It's when they met, you know. Tim asks if they had to do those days over again, would Jill have picked another man to marry. She says that despite Tim's flaws, there would never have been another. So, to continue his supportive of his schoolgirl wife, Tim creates some handy little school items for her: a pencil sharpener that can grind a 6 inch pencil into a shiv, and a remote controlled lunch box that loses its lunch.
Well, folks, THIS is the turning point in the series where Jill decides to study psychology, a subject she really sucks at. In the years to come, we'll see Jill bumble and stumble her way through therapy exercises, she even destroys a few marriages along the way (see Advise and Repent), just all the way up to the series finale, she proves that she is in NO way a qualified psychologist, she makes almost every mistake in the book. So now we know when that trouble started, and we know whose to blame for it: Bruce Ferber. Apparently Mr. Ferber somehow got it into his head that making Jill a psychologist would generate a wealth of new jokes and mishaps for the series to further illustrate that Tim isn't always the stupid one in the Taylors' relationship, because I guess Tool Time alone was wearing thin. To be fair, that does balance things out because in most sitcoms, it's the dad who's the idiot and the mom is the sensible one. Home Improvement dared to break new ground by having BOTH spouses be idiots AND, at times, be sensible. Nice job. As for this episode, Back in the Saddle Shoes Again was a good episode and a good way of starting Season 4, which is, in my opinion, the show's last REALLY solid season.
