Commentary : The Manly Way Was the Right Way For This Sitcom

Finally, a guy can find something else on weeknight television besides Monday Night Football and the ESPN Sports Center.

And to make good matters better, a fellow doesn’t even have to fight the wife for control of the remote. She’ll probably want to watch the show with him.

But tact and sound judgment suggest that the man of the house might want to restrain his laughter over certain of the show’s jokes in the presence of his wife, or maybe watch in a separate room.

Welcome to “Home Improvement,” ABC’s hit situation comedy that has brought men--and women and children too--to their TV sets on Tuesday nights in big numbers.

And say hello to its star, stand-up comic Tim Allen, whom you may not have heard of before this series premiered (unless you hang out at comedy clubs or watch specials on Showtime, where he’s done two, the second in reruns on that pay service).

Allen’s face and name are fast becoming household items now that he’s been put front and center in one of the few new network TV sitcoms to break from the pack in years.

Allen, who was doing a stand-up act built around his romance with things like tools and cars before anyone ever heard of Robert Bly, brings the same pro-male attitude, which is not to say anti-female, to the show.

He plays the host of a TV home-improvement show who also has a family life centered on his wife, played by Patricia Richardson, and their three sons, played by Zachery Ty Bryan, Taran Smith and Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

On the TV show within the show, called “Tool Time,” Allen is a Bob Vila in overdrive, a man for whom no problem around the house can’t be solved by more volts, horsepower or testosterone.

When he comes home, that rule does not necessarily apply. That’s where Richardson, as suffering and sage wife Jill, steps to the fore, enduring his efforts to soup up home appliances and patiently watching him work himself into a frenzy when Sears announces a tool sale.

Honestly, she tells him at one point, “I wish you looked at me the way you look at tools.” “Well,” he replies, “if you had two speeds and were reversible ... “

All of this was the result of Disney executives trolling for talent, checking to see who was throwing off sparks in the comedy clubs. The search-and-discovery process began for Allen when he heard that Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, and Michael Eisner, chairman of the Walt Disney Co., were dropping by to catch his club act.

“I’m a businessman,” said Allen. “There was no reason for them to want to see me (unless they wanted him to do a show). They offered me a development deal.”

A TV series was far from his mind, Allen said. After 13 years as a comic, his stand-up act was going well, and he was getting used to doing a couple of shows on a weekend and staying in a nice hotel.

Besides, he’d seen other comics go the same route, with results that ranged from cataclysmic to sensational.

Allen said he was a hard bargainer. “I showed them a specific idea,” he said. “I wanted to do the show I had written. I hammered it out with another friend of mine and met with three producers.”

The producers expanded on his idea. The result is the only true hit of the 1991 season’s new series.