#519. Home Improvement



This show was set in Detroit?

 When attempting to ascertain the ultimate Pre-Obama America television show of the past thirty years, a number of contenders leap to the front immediately.

The saccharine Full House was a show set in San Francisco that implanted a highly positive image of that Stuff White People Like (SWPL) city in the viewers mind, who would be blissfully unaware of what life was actually like on the bay.

In actuality, virtually every sitcom that has aired on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in the past 30 years could be considered blissfully unaware of the sweeping societal changes that are transpiring in the real world.

Sure some shows have an agenda, but most exist in a vacuum as if the United States had never undergone such massive demographic changes. Pressure groups have long bemoaned the lack of diversity on network television and in sitcoms, but drastic demographic changes must be pushed slowly so the populace will hardly notice (see Modern Family and Glee). With the cancellation of M.A.N.T.I.S, Black people faced a traumatic setback in the goal of landing another The Cosby Show style hit, a blow they have yet to recover from fully.

This study, Prime Time Now 2001-2002, is a diversity study that documents the gross absence of Black people in sitcoms. It's now 2011 and the latest network television shows continue to be bathed in a sea of whiteness, an occasionally life boat thrown out to Black actors to ensure such studies won't be commissioned again.

One television show in the past 30 years can be labeled as the ultimate Pre-Obama America sitcom and it was set in the outskirts of The Motor City, ostensibly in an alternate reality where Black people rarely interact with white people (of course, this is considered the real world).

That show? Home Improvement. Tim Allen's show about a bumbling tool-man, loving husband and father to three sons is set in a lily-white Detroit suburb and rarely does the harsh reality of life in that  Black-run city interfere with his families existence.

A show that also ran on ABC, The Drew Carey Show, was set in Cleveland and many people found the whitewashing of that majority Black city unsettling. Stuff Black People Don't Like can locate no articles that point out the lack of Black characters in the strange universe Home Improvement was set in, perhaps because anyone from the real Detroit greatly desired living in that fictional world.

Consider the uproar a new ABC show entitled Detroit 1-8-7 is causing, casting that crumbling city in a more realistic, gritty role it serves on a daily basis:

Growing up near Detroit in the '70s and '80s, I was jealous of other cities that had their own TV shows. New York City, L.A., Boston, Chicago — even Milwaukee had both Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. (Milwaukee!) Eventually, Detroit got a few sitcoms (Martin, Home Improvement), but no series ever really explored the dramatic possibilities of this sprawling Rust Belt city.

Cut to the first scene of Detroit 1-8-7, which makes its debut on ABC Sept. 21. A policewoman shows us the homicide-division whiteboard, too small to accommodate the growing list of murders. "We may be the last assembly line left in Detroit," she says. Later, a homicide cop is searching for a spent bullet on a roadside and finds it — after sorting through a slew of other bullets.

It's not exactly a tourism brochure. Some locals say Hollywood is giving the city a Gucci-shod kick while it's down: 24% unemployment, a hobbled auto industry and now this? ABC didn't help matters by shooting the pilot in Atlanta or by making a promo that erroneously gave Detroit the highest murder rate in the U.S. (It comes in fourth.) City councilman Kwame Kenyatta sponsored a resolution asking ABC to change the show's title, which he says equates the city with murder. (187 is police code and slang for homicide.) The resolution failed. But the question remains: Does a show set in a troubled city have a responsibility beyond the ratings?

The only 1-8-7 in Home Improvement was the running gag of Tim Taylor (played by Tim Allen) constantly hurting himself on the show he hosted within show, Tool Time. It's hard to conjure up a more family-friendly show then Home Improvement, with jokes mature enough to fool young people watching but entertain parents at the same time.

Still aired in syndication today, the show holds up remarkably well as opposed to other 1990s (and even 2000-era) comedies.

Watching the show and growing up with the Taylor family (Home Improvement was one of the few shows that maintained a high level of continuity and would constantly allude to prior episodes in other seasons) one was tragically unaware of the dire situation unfolding in the real-world of Detroit.

A brief synoposis of the show:

The series centered on the Taylor family, which consists of father Tim (Tim Allen), his spouse Jill (Patricia Richardson) and their three children: the oldest, Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), the middle child Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and youngest, Mark (Taran Noah Smith). The Taylors live in suburban Detroit, Michigan and have a neighbor named Wilson (Earl Hindman) who is often the go-to guy for solving Tim and Jill's problems.



Tim is a stereotypical American male, who loves power tools, cars and sports (especially the local Detroit teams). He is a former salesman for the fictional Binford Tool company, and is very much a cocky, accident-prone know-it-all. Witty but flippant, Tim jokes around a lot, even at inopportune times. Family life was boisterous, with the two oldest children, Brad and Randy, tormenting the much younger, Mark, while continually testing and pestering each other. This rough by-play happened especially throughout the first four seasons, and was revisited occasionally until Jonathan Taylor Thomas left at the beginning of the eighth season.


Brad, popular and athletic, was often the moving factor, who engaged before thinking, a tendency which regularly landed him in trouble. Randy, a year younger, was the comedian of the pack; known for his quick-thinking, wisecracks, and smart mouth. He had more common sense than Brad but was not immune to trouble. Mark was somewhat of a mama's boy, though later in the series (in the seventh season) he grew into a teenage outcast who dressed in black clothing (a goth). Meanwhile, Brad became interested in cars like his father and took up soccer. Randy joined the school drama club, and later the school newspaper; in the eighth season, he left for Costa Rica.

A ratings titan, Home Improvement showed us a world inhabited by the Taylor family (Tim, Jill, Brad, Randy and Mark), Tim's affable assistant on Tool Time Al Borland, the vivacious Heidi and the lovable, erudite neighbor Wilson Wilson Jr.


It was a show that was a testament to Robert Putnam's study on how diversity breeds distrust in a community, for the world of Home Improvement seemed to be a thriving, tightly nit group of white Americans that would congregate at the local hardware to swap stories of life, family, cars and the dreams, aspirations and hopes for the future.

Putnam's study shows a much different for the real United States:

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.


"The extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

Home Improvement is the ultimate sitcom that glorifies Pre-Obama America, and though it was made in the 1990s, the show reminds of all that was once good in this nation. Sadly the show completely excuses any mention of Black Detroit from polite conversation, a city that recently sent out 60,000 incorrect tax bills. Detroit, a city that may have to close half of its schools (only 50 percent graduate anyways, so some would say they are already closed) after initially closing 40 schools earlier in 2010.

The world of Home Improvement is a thriving one, a white one and a peaceful one. Detroit 1-8-7 seems light years away from the world the Taylor's inhabit, though it should be right around the corner from their fictional home in the Detroit suburbs.

We have talked about Detroit before here at SBPDL, though we have never brought up the sore subject of the happy fictional Taylor clan and Home Improvement.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Home Improvement, a sitcom that shows normal suburban life in a whitopia. Juxtaposed with the reality of Detroit, a city destroyed not by regulation, unions, socialism or natural disaster, but by white flight and a majority Black-run government, Home Improvement shows us all what Pre-Obama America was really like.

And you Thought M.A.N.T.I.S. was Bad: Undercovers Canceled Ending Show with Two Black Leads

One of the saddest days in the history of television was the melancholy date that M.A.N.T.I.S. was canceled, lasting an all to brief one season before it got the axe.

Even M.A.N.T.I.S. lasted more episodes

Wait, you don't remember M.A.N.T.I.S.? This oversight in trivial television knowledge cannot be forgiven, because this program had more potential and promise then Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development put together:

M.A.N.T.I.S. was a TV series that aired for one season on the FOX Network between August 1994 and March 1995. (Two unaired episodes were broadcast for the first time on the Sci-Fi Channel in September 1997.) The original two-hour TV pilot was produced by Sam Raimi and developed by Sam Hamm. It starred actor Carl Lumbly. The show was unique, inasmuch as it depicted an African-American superhero.

It's lamentable that most Black television shows (outside of Tyler Perry) consistently fail to find an audience and never have the opportunity to garner the high rates of return found in the lucrative market of syndication, and M.A.N.T.I.S was a show that was ever so close to breaking into the mainstream.

Television is becoming increasingly the realm for white shows, with roles for Black actresses scarce and opportunities for Black actors diminishing. Unsubstantiated claims that the despondent nosedive in ratings that M.A.N.T.I.S. drew throughout the shows only season being the primary catalyst behind the lack of Black shows have yet to be corroborated.

Though the 2010 lineup has been anything but Black, continuing a long, steady decline in shows with Black people in starring roles:

The broadcast networks have made great strides in recent years by diversifying the faces we see on primetime TV, a momentum that carries into new and returning shows on the 2010-11 schedule. 

But it’s a scattershot success. At the moment, the number of scripted, live-action shows on broadcast television with all-black (or predominantly minority, for that matter) casts is exactly zero. 

If you take into account reality series, "you might actually be able to make the case that there are more African-Americans on broadcast TV than ever before," longtime media agency research guru Steve Sternberg told TheWrap.

Just not all on the same screen.

"Black people are starved for shows which not only feature lots of black actors but that put black culture front and center in a way they enjoy," veteran TV critic Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, told TheWrap.

Entertainment Weekly asked in 2008 "Why is TV so white?" and the answer is still eluding those who decide a show is worth producing and marketing, just as it was in the 1990s. It comes down to dollars and common sense:

 But as journalist Janine Jackson points out, the industry treats mainly white audiences and more diverse audiences differently, in terms of ratings and advertising dollars. For instance, WB’s two most successful black series—The Steve Harvey Show and The Jamie Foxx Show—draw the same number of viewers as the predominantly white-audience show Felicity, and yet a 30-second commercial on Felicity costs twice as much. And even though The Steve Harvey Show attracts 500,000 viewers more per episode than the popular white series Dawson’s Creek, a 30-second commercial on the Creek still brings in $63,000 more in advertising revenues.

What was it we said about income inequality? We'd be remiss not to point out that Black people do star in reality TV to a degree that mirrors real life.

Entertainment Weekly has a feature called the "Diversity Scorecard" and had this to say about the lily-white lineup of new shows for 2010:

Sure, we have a black president now, but do you want to see a real sign of racial progress? Watch NBC'sKodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) for no apparent reason other than their talent and attractiveness.

'Mr. & Mrs. Smith'-like spy drama 'Undercovers' this fall, a drama that has cast as its leads two black performers (Boris and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) for no apparent reason other than their talent and attractiveness.

All right, maybe having a network drama with two people of color as leads doesn't look much like progress to you, but this is network TV we're talking about, which, as a mirror of the nation, is notoriously slow to respond to social trends (like, say, the changing complexion of America). We're also talking about a TV landscape in which some of the shows with the most racially diverse casts ('Heroes,' 'Lost,' 'Law & Order') have just gone off the air.

Judging by what we know of the fall's TV fare, as announced by the networks last week, there are hardly any shows with all-white casts, but how many of them have leading roles for actors of color, and how many just have the occasional best-friend or supportive-coworker roles?

Why is it important to have diversity in starring roles? Network TV audiences are shrinking, but network TV remains the default, mainstream choice. People like to see people who look like themselves in starring roles, and that includes members of long-ignored groups who are making up an ever-increasing percentage of the mainstream viewership the networks need, more than ever, to reach.

It's noteworthy, too, that these are the shows the networks greenlit because they did so, not out of political correctness, but because they believed these were the shows that would attract the most advertising dollars. Sponsors don't want edgy, socially experimental shows; they want shows that will provide hospitable environments for their commercials and will attract desirable groups of viewers. So the vote of confidence in a show like 'Undercovers' doesn't just come from Hollywood creative types or network suits, but from corporate America. It's not about quotas or tokenism, it's about free-market capitalism in action.

Deemed one of the hot new shows of the year and lauded with high praise, Undercovers was silently being touted as the next potential M.A.N.T.I.S., elevating Black people in television to a level unseen since the glory of Dr. Huxtable, presenting ebony actors with a chance to move on up to the big time.

USA Today had this to say of the show:

The plot for Undercovers is serviceable, but hardly novel: Married former spies are drawn back into undercover work by their former agency employers. But whatever happens to the show, it has broken ground with its casting. The series is network TV's only drama built around two black leads, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe.

Josh Reims, who co-wrote the show with J.J. Abrams, says it was not written with any ethnic or racial group in mind. We did not go out of the way to hire two black actors to lead the show. But we did realize it would be great if we could do that ...We don't consider that we're revolutionizing TV, but at the same time, we do recognize that it's a big deal."

Please bring it back. Black people need this show.

MSNBC hyped the show as a watershed moment for Black actors. The high-profile show had many people wondering if this would help out other Black actors penetrate the lily-white TV landscape, before the implementation of Tim Wise's final solution.

In the end, Undercovers got the praise but the audience forgot to tune in, dispelling the notion from above that Black people are starved for shows with Black characters (perhaps Black culture was absent?):

NBC has officially pulled the plug on Undercovers, starring Boris Kodjoe and Guba Mbatha-Raw as married spies. The television drama was canceled after the show consistently produced dismal ratings. Its recent airing brought out a 1.3 rating in the 18-to-49 age demo. While the show is still filming its 12th episode, NBC will not commit to anything past its original 13-episode order.

First M.A.N.T.I.S., now Undercovers. Perhaps if Black people had tuned in the show might have stuck around a little longer.

All we can say is bring back M.A.N.T.I.S... no one is going to miss Undercovers except the people who claimed it would be the hottest show because of the two Black leads it sported. But we still miss M.A.N.T.I.S. everyday.

Black people could have watched the show, but just like the idea of buying Black, Undercovers was largely unwatched by Black people who scream with indignation upon its cancellation.

#45. Local Nightly Newscasts

Black people love television. They love television so much that 48 percent of Black children watch four hours of TV a day or more - almost double the national average.

Black people love television so much, they pioneered a station that broadcasts programs geared just for their consumption, Black Entertainment Television. However, there is one program that Black people find difficult to watch and it is on three or four channels in every city, yet germane only to that particular city: the FOX, NBC, CBS and ABC Nightly Newscasts.

Baltimore, New Orleans, Washington DC, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Knoxville, Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Dallas, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis and countless other major cities in the United States all have nightly news broadcasts that beam to the local residents the news of the day.

And those local residents of the cities listed, and those not, get a glimpse into a world that is normally blocked from their eyes: the real Black America. And for Black people, this is an untenable sin for the only image of Black people that they want non-Black people to form of them comes from ESPN, The Cosby Show and Barack Obama.

The idea that major cities, which have majority Black populations in most of them, are not beacons of tranquility and safety for all people is something Black people can't stomach:

"The annual "City Crime Rankings" report, which lists the top 10 most dangerous and the top 10 safest cities in America, makes interesting reading, according to cynics. According to the rankings, which are based on a number of factors, including crime rates aggregated out to population size, the top ten most dangerous cities all have a non-white component of between 60 and 90%. They are Camden, New Jersey, Detroit, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, Flint, Michigan, Richmond, Virginia, Baltimore, Maryland, Atlanta, Georgia, New Orleans, Louisiana, Gary, Indiana, and Birmingham, Alabama.

On the other hand, the top 10 most safest cities in America all have a white percentage of between 66 and 88%. They are Newton, Massachusetts, Clarkson, New York, Amherst, New York, Mission Viejo, California, Brick Township, New Jersey, Troy, Michigan, Thousand Oaks, California, Round Rock, Texas, Lake Forest, California, and Cary, North Carolina."

Nightly newscasts paint a horrifying picture of the chaos and disorder of life in a majority-Black city and the utter depravity and corruption that individuals living in those cities daily live through.

Black people are embarrassed by this broadcasted behavior and try and ignore it. White people watch the news and move away from it,the hope being that it won't follow. Those souls practicing gentrification in Black areas, find they they might be part of the broadcasts themselves and made an integral part of the story.

The Nightly Newscasts of every major city shatter the illusions held by well-meaning people and Black people know this and hope they will all stop broadcasting soon.

Black people are very rarely depicted as bad people in movies - only Blond men are the antagonists - and to see fiction replaced with reality daily on the Nightly Newscasts is just too much for Black people:

"In the first 24 episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent there's only one black murderer, and she is a corrupt police officer. Make of that what you will…"

Televisions shows and reruns of The Cosby Show is all Black people want white people to view on TV, so they can see the fictitious world that Hollywood has created for them. The reality of the world is just to much for Black people to bare and the Nightly Newscasts only further negative stereotypes that white people may have of them.

Black people truly wish that only white people and Black people would watch ESPN - the 24-hour all sports channel that fawns greatly on Black athletes - and turn off forever the Nightly Newscasts in their hometown - which constantly broadcasts Black failure.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the Nightly Newscasts for every major city in the United States, for Black people worry that those watching might one day decide to take the red pill, and consequently turn off ESPN forever.