From the Archives: Tool Time Episode Guide
Welcome to Tool Time Episode Guide! All about the show-with-in-a-show on the sitcom Home Improvement. [Note: This was originally a “Pandemic Project” in 2020 which I uploaded on my old blog that same year.] Each episode has a title, a description, an airdate, and a reference to the Home Improvement episode it aired in. If Tool Time was a real show, these are the titles I would suppose the clips would be used if the clips were put on YouTube (and many fans did use similar titles when putting the clips on YouTube). The “airdate”, I assume, is meant to be the same airdate as the actual Home Improvement episode, and each subsequent clip is the following day, except if there’s some in-episode dialogue that references another date. These are best guesses, not actual airdates. Tool Time did not appear generally in one episode per season, except for season 5, where Tool Time was missing from five episodes. All of the below episodes will reference the number that I assigned for the Tool Time episode. I’ve also included extra notes about the episode, like the Home Improvement dialogue which refers to when the episode aired or other important details.
Tool Time Episode Guide (PDF)
But if you want to read even more thoughts on Tool Time after cataloging every single episode of the show-within-a-show, what read on for a way too obsessive look into “Tool Time” as if it were an actual show:
What do we know about Tool Time? It’s a local cable show on Channel 112, based out of Detroit, Michigan. Tool Time, as referenced in the episode, “Fifth Anniversary” (S3E21, aired April 5, 1994), supposedly began in 1989, two years before Home Improvement itself aired its first episode. Also, during the 8th season, in the episode “Trouble a Bruin” (S8E23) Tim says he’s been doing the show for 10 years. Is it a weekly show or a daily show? In “The Long and Winding Road, Part 1, (S8E25)” Tim quits and says that the final show is tomorrow, not next week. In “Believe it Or Not,” (S7E22) Tim says it’s a 30-minute show. Is it live or recorded? This is actually something that is somewhat contradictory on the show: on many location shoots, Heidi will say “Live on Location,” making you assume that Tool Time is usually recorded live, but in “Aisle See You In My Dreams,” (S3E2) Tim shows Jill an edited Tool Time because Al proposed to Elieen after just starting to date her; if it was live, he couldn’t fix the mistake. There are several times that show some of the Taylor family (the boys or Jill) watching Tool Time from home while the episode is going on, and others afterward. Generally, I think the On Location shoots were live and the in-studio parts were recorded.
So assuming that Tool Time premiered in 1989, and ran as a weekly, Monday-Friday show from 1989 to 1999, how many episodes were most likely produced? Every season of Home Improvement lasted for 24-26 episodes (with the exception of Season 8, which had more episodes for the finale), so let’s say Tool Time was produced 26 weeks out of the year, the same amount of weeks that Home Improvement aired. Thus, combining all the numbers together, (5 Episodes a Week X 26 Weeks X 10 Years), we get 1,300 Episodes! Thus, when in “Insult to Injury” (S6E21), Tim finds out he is about to break Bob Vila’s record of most consecutive appearances on a home renovation show, it’s actually not that unreasonable of an idea. However, we only get to see around 272 episodes (some of the unnumbered Tool Time episodes include two dream episodes: one where Tim is in a Christmas-themed stop-motion TT episode and one where he and Al are elderly men still hosting the show).
Something not really focused on that much is the fact that the entire show is a paid advertisement for Binford Tools: a real-life show like Tool Time would be a home repair show where Tim & Al would do projects with Binford Tools, providing a natural advertisement for the products. It’s implied that on “Dances with Tools” the accidents were examples of what not to do, as part of the show’s appeal. And really, if Tool Time was a real show, what would be more fun, a tool show where the project worked out perfectly every time or one where the host’s ego got in the way of nearly every project he attempted on the show? In that way, Tool Time helped me appreciate the rest of the show even more: on Tool Time, many times, Tim is portrayed as the accident-prone jerk to Al, when in the entirety of the show itself, Tim did have ego but realized by the episode the error of his ways and apologized. Divorcing Tool Time from the rest of the show robs Tim of that moment of clarity, and more of his humanity.
What are the best “Tool Time Episodes? First, watch the entire episode of “Totally Tool Time,” (S6E15, 195), which is the best example of what a full Tool Time episode would look like. The intentionally weird premiere episode is a must, only to see how it makes fun of established jokes on Tool Time. The Man’s Bathroom (90), The Man’s Kitchen (103), The Man’s Bedroom (164), The Man’s Gym (195), and The Man’s Dormroom (244) feature some of the most inventive (and working!) devices ever conceived on the show. The best-known recurring characters were the K&B construction boys, the best-known members being Dwane, Pete, and Rock, and they would perform with instruments made out of tools, in both the season 1 finale (35) and the season 8 series finale (272) Of course, in the early seasons, Bob Vila was considered a rival to Tim, he appeared in season 1 (24, 25); in seasons 2 (71, 72) and 3 (111, 112) he raced against Tim in the season finale. Several space shuttle astronauts also made appearances on the show, including Ken Bowersox, who appeared three times (110, 167, 238). Also, the compilation episodes Tool Time After Dark Part 1 and 2 feature what the producers thought was the best of the first four seasons (12, 14, 20, 24, 35, 46, 60, 61, 72, 50, 51, 63, 88, 73, 81, 79, 97, 110, 90, 84, 114, 127, 103, 124, 116, and 1.)
As a bonus, I’ve included all the Al “middle names” that were given to him over the years. In reviewing the nicknames, Al actually gives himself the first nickname (Al “the lucky man” Borland), but near the end of Season 1 was when Tim introduced Al with a different middle name each episode. Not every Tool Time clip begins with an introduction by Heidi or Lisa, thus not every Tool Time gives Tim a chance to say a “middle name”, but most nicknames were from seasons 2-5. Seasons 6 and 7 feature very few middle name jokes, probably (in my mind) because the writers ran out of ideas for clever middle names. However, towards the end of the 8th season, they picked up again.
[That was what I wrote for my original blog post in 2020. If you read to the end, I hope you have enjoyed this look into a beloved show-with-in-a-show on one of the most popular sitcoms from the 1990s. Comment down below your favorite Tool Time moment from Home Improvement! It was a lot of fun to catalog Tool Time and think about it as a real show. Have a great day, everyone!]
