The Most Ridiculously Heavy Plot Lines In The Off-The-Rails Final Seasons Of ‘Home Improvement’

In Season 7’s “A Night To Dismember,” Mark’s growing frustration with his family gets out of control when he asks the Taylors to star in his horror movie. The family takes him up on his offer, but Tim and Jill are shocked to discover that the film is about a boy who’s been ignored by his family and decides to do away with them.

Jill’s pretty sure that Mark actually wants to harm his family, but they let him continue to produce the movie. However, when he uses a real knife in a scene where he’s going to chop off Tim’s head, she stops the production and has a real talk with him about his feelings.

In Season 8’s “Dead Weight,” Home Improvement brings home all of those jokes about Al’s mother being overweight by offing her with a heart attack. In what should be one of the best moments of Al’s life as he tells his mother that’s he’s going to propose to a woman that he loves, the scene ends with heartbreak as she keels over right on the spot.

To add insult to injury, Al’s mother’s casket is huge, and there’s a joke about how when the two of them played on the teeter totter, he was only able to go up. When no one has anything to say about Al’s mother Tim ends up giving a touching speech that inspires Al to propose to his new girlfriend at the funeral.

In “The Longest Day,” a stress test of an episode from Season 5, Randy has to deal with the possibility that he has thyroid cancer. Following a blood test, an endochornologist finds a lump on Randy’s neck that could be a malignant tumor. No one handles this well.

While Jill and Tim wait for Randy’s tests to come back they’re an absolute wreck. Jill is cooking constantly and over-mothering Randy while Tim offers to help Randy skip school. His parents can’t hold it in any longer and they have to explain that there’s a small chance that he could perish. Randy goes about his life, albeit with the thought that his days are numbered.

In the follow up episode to “Love’s Labor Lost,” Jill survives a scare on the operating table, but the pain isn’t over for the Taylor family. Initially, the doctors believed that Jill only needed to have her ovaries partially removed, but later, the doctors discover she needs a full hysterectomy.

When Jill returns from the hospital, she immediately goes after Tim for trying to help her get a thesis extension for her schoolwork. Tim attempts to understand Jill’s frustration with him, but to no avail. He precedes to blame her mood swings on menopause, which is the last thing she wants to hear.

Home Improvement was never a show about major issues. If someone had a relationship problem, it was because of a forgotten anniversary or a lost Valentine’s Day present, but in the Season 8 episode “Not-So-Great Scott,” Heidi the Tool Time Girl gets some upsetting news about her husband, Scott.

After Jill shares with Tim that one of her clients revealed that she slept with a man named Scott who resembles Heidi’s husband to a T, Tim tells Heidi about the affair. This not only breaks Jill’s patient/doctor confidentiality agreement, but it ruins Heidi’s marriage.

Things take a dark turn in Season 8’s “Love’s Labor Lost – Part 1” when Jill has to undergo an emergency hysterectomy. A doctor tells her that she could have avoided such a serious operation if she hadn’t been so busy chasing her education and kept up with her regular checkups. Tim does his best to keep a strong face before her operation, but when there’s a complication during the surgery, he nearly falls apart.

Luckily Wilson is on hand at the hospital to offer some advice on praying when all else is lost. It’s not exactly what Tim wants to hear, but he ends the episode bent in prayer as a “To be continued…” graphic fades onto screen.

When Randy volunteers at a hospice in Season 7’s “Losing My Religion,” he begins questioning the “fatal-oriented” medical establishment as well as his religion. He begins working with patients with rapidly declining health and wonders if there’s any point in going to church or believing in the afterlife.

Randy comes to the conclusion organized religion doesn’t actually help people, and that he’s not missing anything by skipping out on a Sunday service. A preacher played by Dan Akroyd helps Tim realize that even though his son isn’t attending church, he’s still doing the Lord’s work by helping people in need.

Throughout the eight-season run of Home Improvement, Wilson is Tim’s constant. He provides advice when necessary, and often helps the Tool Man cut to the heart of what’s troubling him. When Tim repays Wilson by giving him tickets to a Red Wings game in “Neighbors,” his neighbor wins $10,000 of which Tim is immediately jealous.

Things get worse when Wilson uses the money to build a massive Victorian greenhouse in his backyard that blocks Tim’s view of the area. Tim has to work through his emotion’s over Wilson’s construction, which is something that the audience hadn’t seen before.

After Tim Allen got pulled over for consuming substances and driving in real life, the episode “What A Drag” was written as a way for the cast to touch on important issues like substance abuse. In the episode, Tim falls through a gazebo and finds a small bag of pot taped under the swing. It turns out that Brad’s been using this ingenious hiding place to stash his stash.

Shocked that Brad, a star athlete, would be using drugs, Jill and Tim sit all of their kids down and tell them stories of their substance-fueled days in college. Randy and Mark don’t feel like they should be punished for their brother’s actions, but their parents give them a lecture regardless.

If there’s anything that the audience knows about Brad by Season 8 of Home Improvement it’s that he’s pretty good at soccer. By the final season of the show, Brad’s is scouted to play professionally and it looks like he’s going to have a real opportunity to get out of his small town.

When Tim brings Tool Time on location to his home in the episode “Knee Deep,” Brad trips over a piece of rolled up carpet and injures his knee, possibly ruining his chances to play soccer professionally. He blames his father for the mishap and for possibly destroying his prospects, or at least shortening his window for success.

When Tim discovers that his scheming brother Marty is homeless and living in the back of his favorite hardware store, he invites Marty and his twin six-year-old daughters to have Thanksgiving with the Taylors. Marty accepts Tim’s offer, but he doesn’t want to be criticized by his successful brother.

Things come to a head when Tim is a bit too helpful, thus making Marty feel inferior for not being able to take care of his family. He’s not just upset at Tim and Jill for parenting his children, but he’s mad at himself for not being half the dad as Tim.

With his three boys all grown up and leaving home, Tim considers having more children in the Season 7 episode “Say Goodnight, Gracie.” However, it’s not that easy as he’ll have to reverse his vasectomy if he wants to try for a new set of kids.

He babysits one of his brother’s daughters and loves it, and even has a sit down conversation with Jill about the possibiity of bringing a new life into the world. Tim decides against having more children, but his paternal instinct remains, and he hopes that Marty will continue to let him babysit.

In a Season 7 episode, Jill discovers that her mother is dating again after the passing of her father in “Bright Christmas.” Jill is angry at her mother for betraying the memory of her father, who passed only one year before.

Jill’s mother wants to integrate her new beau into the family during the Christmas holiday, but Jill isn’t over the passing of her father. When Jill explains that she’s uncomfortable with her mother dating, the two get into a fight over judging each other’s feelings on personal loss.

Things got serious on Home Improvement before Season 7, with Jill suffering a extreme guilt after a passing in her family. In the Season 6 episode “Taps,” Jill admits that she faked being sick because she didn’t want to visit her father, but didn’t realize she’s was never going to see him again. As Jill deals with her guilt and grief, Tim confronts his sons over the way they deal with grief. He’s especially upset with Randy for using dark humor to cope with his emotions.