Resurfaced 'Home Improvement' Clip Shows Just How Backwards We've Slid As A Society

A clip from the long-running 90s sitcom Home Improvement has people online realizing just how far we've fallen as a culture when it comes to social issues, and it's left people feeling shocked.

The clip features the show's star Tim Allen, on whose stand-up comedy the show was based, having a heart to heart with his son about sexism that would be shocking to see on TV today.

As many pointed out, the conversation would be derided nowadays as "woke"—likely by Allen himself, who has become an outspoken conservative and Trump supporter.

The lecture Allen gives his character's oldest son Brad, played by Zachary Ty Bryan, centers on an incident in which he told his girlfriend to make him a sandwich, and to make his dad one while she's at it.

Allen's character reacts with exasperation, and later, he pulls his son aside to give him a talking-to, telling him:

"’I'm talking about you and Angela; the way you snapped your fingers, and she just jumped into action… You ever wonder why she does stuff like that?”

When Brad insists his girlfriend likes being ordered around in this manner, Allen's character replies:

"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.