Just like with IRL motherhood, playing a mom on TV is hard work. You gotta be motherly with the kids but flirty with your partner, and you gotta deliver one-liners and life lessons with equal conviction. That’s why when it comes to naming the greatest sitcom mom of all time, the one that was just as nurturing as she was witty, there’s no contest: it’s Jill Taylor from Home Improvement, hands down.
Seriously, there is no mother greater than the one Patricia Richardson brought to life every Tuesday night of the ’90s. Lucy Ricardo was hilarious, but her mothering was overshadowed by her legendary zaniness. Roseanne Conner was refreshingly snarky and honest, but it took a while for Roseanne Barr to hone her delivery. And Carol Brady was too perfect, the role model for dozens and dozens of perky blonde TV wives. The mother role is not an easy one to pull off, but Richardson made all of the effort Jill Taylor put into keeping her family on track look effortless.
As Jill, Richardson embodies everything I’ve listed as an essential mom trait. She’s an excellent mother to her kids, totally perceptive of their needs and also ready to laugh at them (or make them laugh!). She’s a perfect wife for the always grunting Tim Taylor (Tim Allen); Their partnership is a great example of the compromise needed for marriages to work. She’s stern with him (because if she wasn’t, he would hot wire the entire house), but every playful swat of her hand or saucy one-liner shows how much she’s still into the guy, all these years and three kids later.
And Jill is funny–like, really funny. Whether she’s getting in digs on her husband or going for broad laughs in a giant carrot costume, Jill’s quick wit is 100% the reason why Tim loves her so much. She can take it and she can dish it out.
She’s also the Taylor family’s moral GPS, often tasked with pointing out bad behavior (talking about her drool on local TV, ditching Swan Lake to go see the Pistons play, cheating off of a girlfriend’s math homework). Thankfully the show lets neighbor Wilson (Earl Hindman) carry some of the lesson-giving load, freeing up Jill to do waaaay more than just scold and forgive.
And, in a next-level-great bit of character development, Jill is also wrong plenty of times, too–like when she took over Tim’s engine installation party (which is a thing in the world of Home Improvement) and turned it into a blind date for her friend. Of course Jill catches onto Wilson’s lessons way quicker than Tim (Wilson gets out half a thought and Jill knows the score), but seeing this TV mom screw up every now and then just makes her more believable.
The character is, obviously, well-written and well-rounded, but I cannot imagine what she would have been like had Richardson not replaced the originally cast Frances Fisher in the role before the series debuted. Whatever your opinion on Home Improvement, sitcoms, the ’90s, things set in Detroit, whatever, Patricia Richardson’s performance is more than reason enough to revisit this show ASAP. She does the one thing that we all wish every other sitcom actor would do: she laughs.
When Tim goes off, Jill laughs. When Tim comes home with a chunk of a table glued to his head, Jill laughs. When precocious Randy zings his dad, Jill Laughs. When Brad tries to pull one over on her, Jill Laughs. Richardson played Jill like an actual human being with an actual sense of humor, one that would of course find the daily insanity of her life kinda hilarious. That decision results in other small choices, like little dances or, one of my favorites, Jill making fun of her kids’ over-the-top screaming by doing her own silent, open-mouth freak out.
These small chuckles had a massive impact on the show. By making Jill laugh at her husband and kids the same way we do (her laughing was almost always timed with an audience guffaw), it makes viewers see themselves in her. It got us on her side, and that meant no matter how mad she got at the show’s lead, we were rooting for Tim and Jill equally.
You know what else Richardson did better than any other TV mom ever? Get her kids ready to go.
