With only a relative few episodes left to go in its eight-season run, Fox's Last Man Standing delivered a slice of weird TV history recently thanks its canonical crossover with Tim Allen's previous hit sitcom Home Improvement. The episode not only allowed Allen to serve as his own co-star for part of the runtime, but it also opened up the floodgates for fan requests for a Home Improvement revival to happen. (Granted, Last Man Standing worked a reboot joke into the dialogue, giving the floodgates something to spill over with.) And those fans will probably only get louder after learning what Allen held onto from the Home Improvement set for all these years.
If you guessed "one of the Taylor family's refrigerator doors" or " one of the fence boards that Wilson used to hide behind," you're thinking on much too limited a scale. It turns out Tim Allen can apparently film episodes of the show-within-a-show Tool Time in his own garage. Here's how the comedian put it in a recent US Weekly feature:
I have the original Tool Time set from Home Improvement in my garage.
Am I the only one who pictures it already set up for the Tool Time band, K&B and the Boys, to come in and start a tool-filled jam session? I can't be the only one, right? [Slowly stops drumming on the bottoms of buckets.]
Okay, so Tim Allen didn't actually say he has the Tool Time set fully constructed and ready for filming inside his garage, and I'm sure he just has a bunch of the set dressing and props all stored away in there. Regardless, that's arguably the coolest takeaway that anyone could have taken from Home Improvement. Definitely better than Mark's goth makeup kit and Randy's jeans. And if anyone wanted to attempt to bring Home Improvement back to TV in a revival form, having that original set would likely be a huge help for all involved. Now, I realize that Tim Taylor claimed that Tool Time was no more, and that he was higher up on the success ladder at Binford Tools, but that's an easy enough hurdle for the writers to clear in some way.
Tim Allen also noted one of his favorite Home Improvement episodes, which could be an amusing hint at where a new show might be headed if Tim Taylor ever plots his return. (Though it probably isn't.)
One of my favorite Home Improvement scripts [took place] up in the International Space Station.
You guys remember the Alien tagline: "In space, no one can hear you grunt, grunt, grunt." We can't have that, though. Everyone needs to hear the grunts.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tim Allen also shared that his favorite class in school was shop class. It certainly ties into why he signed on to co-host a new building-based TV show opposite his former Home Improvement co-star Richard Karn. And even if he doesn't make all the pieces fit to bring a new season of Home Improvement to audiences, it'll be interesting to see what else Allen does after Last Man Standing ends. As well as what LMS sets he'll be taking home to store in his garage.
While you can't find Home Improvement currently streaming via subscription anywhere, Last Man Standing airs Thursday nights on Fox at 9:30 p.m. ET. To see what other new and returning shows will be making their debuts in the coming months, head to our Winter and Spring TV premiere schedule.
