Home Improvements – The Complete Eighth Season: The Final Season (Disney DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Episodes: D

 

 

How tired and long in the tooth was Home Improvement when it reached its painful final season in 1997 – 1998?  Very!  The Taylors, one of the most overrated families in TV history, were wrapped up in themselves and bad jokes that never quit.  Note in our coverage of the three of the later seasons that the show was in trouble, but was making too much money and had too many habitual viewers:

 

Four

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3834/Home+Improvement

 

Five

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4655/Home+Improvement

 

Six

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5414/Home+Improvement

 

 

It is this kind of casual, shallow success that has killed network TV and the sitcom, which was only back because of overrated messes like The Cosby Show.  This is also among the last of the analog video hit sitcoms and HD cannot arrive fast enough to put this in the past.  Unless you are a huge fan, this volume is useless.

 

The 1.33 X 1 color image is still lame as it was before on all these sets, showing poor digital copies of the analog tapes were used.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is again a little better, but nothing to write home about again.  Extras this time are a reunion special and yet another blooper reel.  Allen went on to have a mixed career in movies and great personal troubles, while the rest did not do too much, though Patricia Richardson surfaced here and there.  The best is Johnathan Taylor Thomas, who avoided the first reunion, tried to be a big star on his own, then picked junk to do.

 

Nobody cared.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo