“Sometimes girls do that because they’re afraid if they don’t do stuff like that, men won’t like them.”
Brad then protests that his Dad is only saying this because he married a more progressive, no-nonsense woman, played by Patricia Richardson, a sentiment that angers Allen’s character.
“I didn’t ‘end up’ with Mom, I love her. I love her because she’s a strong woman.”
Nearly 30 years may have passed, but it’s hard not to feel unsettled by how wildly progressive this now feels.
The contrast between then and now, and the Tim Allen of then and now, was definitely not lost on people on TikTok.
Indeed, you can practically hear the Fox News uproar and far-right “manosphere” podcast diatribes about how “beta” and “woke” and “anti-man” and—let’s face it—”gay” the Home Improvement scene is.
And Allen would surely be among them. He told Marc Maron in 2021 that he liked Trump in part because he makes liberals mad.
Four years later, he’s starring in the ABC sitcom Shifting Gears, in which he plays an outspoken Trump supporter in constant conflict with his daughter, played by Kat Dennings, because of the “anti-woke” rhetoric he constantly spouts.
Allen’s Home Improvement sexism monologue is exactly the kind of thing his Shifting Gears character would rail against—and lest you think the show is actually out of touch with the times, it is actually a runaway hit. Shifting gears, indeed.
