Sometimes picking out the worst and the best characters on a sitcom is a bit difficult and can cause a debate, as it probably should since everyone has their favorite characters and their own bias for making such a choice. Tim Taylor feels like a very obvious choice since he was the most outspoken and the most present character on the show given that he was the main event while the rest of the cast was kind of, well, there as support. The great thing however is that every supporting character did a great job of making Tim look good, while all Tim had to do was grunt convincingly and keep pushing out one-liners and funny quips that made him appear to be the go-to guy for the series. Plus, without Al, he might not have been quite as effective since Tim kind of needed support to really pull off his Tool Time act and his believability as a family man. Having a wife, three kids, a brother and a sister in law, and several other supporting characters around him did wonders for the show since people could focus on who they wanted even though Tim was usually at the center of things.
It’s been that way with his most recent show as well, Last Man Standing, where he had three daughters instead of sons. Tim Allen has been one of the funniest comedians on TV for quite a while and Home Improvement turned out be one of the shows that people watched the most. In some cases there are likely people who might call him a bit of a toxic male since he did kind of cling to a lot of old ideas about how a family should be run, what being a man is all about, and so on and so forth. But Tim was still modern enough that he supported his wife being in college and could at least listen to his sons when they came across problems that he might not have fully understood.
The support he needed was often to fill the blank space that would have existed that his talent couldn’t have covered. It was obviously made for this purpose since characters like Wilson, Al, Jill, and the boys, as well as everyone else, managed to highlight Tim’s role on the show in such a way that they were pulled into the spotlight as well at times. The show had plenty of guest stars that came and went at times or were present and then faded out as needed. Tim’s interactions with a lot of the cast members that were part of the main roster tended to be a constant that depended on the given situations, while those that came and went, or were recurring, were kind of fleeting and not always seen as the most important moments. Tim’s relationship with his immediate family was something that brought a great deal of drama but also a great deal of comedy. As much as he wanted his sons to follow in his stead, they often went off and did their own thing as Randy, Brad, and Mark were all possessed of different temperaments that could have been said to be a combination of their parents, but something still very different.
Jill was the type of woman that knew how to put up with a guy like Tim, somehow, and would often roll her eyes at his antics and his attempts to fix things around the house. For someone who was so inclined to act like a handyman though, Tim was also the type that tried to overdo everything, which made for great comedy since it landed him in a bind a lot of times. But when all was said and done at the end of the day, he was also the kind of guy that was passionate about what he did and wasn’t bound to just quit when things became difficult. If anything, Tim just tried harder when things got rough, since he was the tool man, the kind of guy that would shrug his shoulders and keep moving on since that was the only way he knew how to go. He did muck several things up throughout the course of the show, but he usually meant well.
Calling Tim a toxic male wouldn’t have been accurate to be realistic since the guy did harbor a few ideas that some folks might not like, but he had a big heart and often showed it when all the kidding and joking was over and done with. Home Improvement was a great show thanks to Tim and everyone that participated, and since he was one of the main characters, it’s not too hard to call him the best character on the show. Al or Wilson might have been a close second, but Tim definitely takes the cake.
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