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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Rewires America

Tim Allen

Showtime · 1991 · 30 min

The grunting, tool-obsessed stand-up set that launched a sitcom empire.

Tim Allen’s 1991 Showtime half-hour is the immediate blueprint for Home Improvement. Before the network sitcom and the film franchises, he was a Michigan comic leaning into the grunting, tool-obsessed caricature that would define his career. The stage routine is the distilled version of the character—a guy who just wants to put chrome hubcaps on a riding lawnmower.

Filmed at the Power Center for the Performing Arts in Ann Arbor, the set runs a brisk thirty minutes. It captures Allen right as he crystallized a highly marketable persona. The material stays squarely focused on domestic frustrations, from ignoring a car’s oil light to questioning how babies process raisins, all punctuated by the animalistic barks that became his calling card.

The set list

8 bits

  1. Men grunting

    Allen riffs on guttural grunts as the universal language of male communication, threading grunts throughout the performance.

  2. Souping up a lawnmower

    Explaining the masculine urge to aggressively modify power tools and lawn equipment with chrome hub caps.

  3. Rewiring his grandpa's hearing aid

    Over-powering the hearing aid to the point that it can pick up Space Shuttle communications on clear nights.

  4. Rewiring a vacuum cleaner

    Upgrading a household Eureka vacuum into a riding, rear-bagging machine fitted with a tiller.

  5. Household chores and cleaning a Dutch pot

    Joking about men's inability to properly assist with domestic cleaning and vacuuming around the house.

  6. Family venting about his 18-month-old daughter and grandmother

    Shock-value family jokes where he mockingly complains about his infant daughter and grandmother before conceding affection.

  7. Burp and blow

    Crude physical humor routine focusing on flatulence and burping.

  8. The oil light bit

    Allen's automotive routine examining how men interact with car maintenance lights.

How it plays

Tone
Stereotypically masculine, irreverent, and aggressive family-focused observational comedy.
On stage
An unabashed 'man's man' who grunts, burps, fixates on tools and engines, and celebrates modifying machines with 'more power'.
About
Men stuff, Stereotypical masculinity, Tools, engines, and cars, Household chores and domestic friction, Family relations

What the critics said

Regarded contemporaneously by fans as a defining document of his signature persona that launched 'Home Improvement', though modern retrospective critics have cited it as dated and heavily reliant on offensive or lazy gender tropes.

In the room: Thunderous applause and cheering from audiences responding to overt masculine rallying cries.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, comedydynamics.com, tvguide.com, moviemanner.com, letterboxd.com, ayearofreviewcom.wordpress.com, theratassgazette.blogspot.com, en.wikipedia.org, thetvdb.plex.tv.

Backstory

Allen's second Showtime stand-up comedy special, focusing heavily on quintessential 'man stuff' and masculine stereotypes.

Details

Released
Taped
The Power Center for the Performing Arts, Ann Arbor
Runtime
30 min
Where
Showtime
Director
Ellen Brown
Honors
1993 CableACE Award nomination for Stand-Up Comedy Special
Topics
Before
Men Are Pigs (1990)

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