Tim Allen is known for a lot of things, such as his impressive comedic timing, iconic roles in The Santa Clause, Toy Story, Home Improvement, and Last Man Standing. As well as his current sitcom, Shifting Gears, which is airing on the 2026 TV schedule. There is another thing that he’s known for, though, and that is his viral grunt sound from Home Improvement. And now that’s finally being explained.
Throughout all 200+ episodes of Home Improvement, Allen’s Tim Taylor grunts quite a lot for various reasons. And because of the randomness of the grunt, it’s gone viral. So much so that a TikTok user last year revealed she asked her Hinge matches to send her their best impressions of it. But why exactly did Allen do the grunt in Home Improvement? During an appearance at The Laugh Factory in Hollywood, Allen explained how he was doing a show, and some men in the crowd who were eating dinner were doing nothing but grunting. He couldn’t even get their attention, so he started doing that as well, “and a career was built.”
Considering Home Improvement is based on Allen’s own stand-up material, it’s not so surprising to hear how the grunt made the cut. A lot of stand-up comedians get their jokes through crowd work; Allen’s crowd work just so happened to go viral in the form of his TV show. It’s hard to imagine the series without Tim Taylor’s iconic tic, so the fact that he got it because of audience members savoring scotch and sirloin is really funny.
Anyone who has eaten something delicious probably has grunted one or two times, or very nearly grunted. So perhaps the next time you eat while at a comedy show, it may be best to keep any opinions, especially noisy ones, to yourself, or you may find it in one of Allen’s next projects.
Meanwhile, Allen may have not brought Tim Taylor’s grunt to Shifting Gears, but he did bring something else from Home Improvement. At the start of the second season, there was a big reunion featuring Patricia Richardson, Richard Karn, and Debbe Dunning, and they brought the laughs. Whether or not they will be returning or who else from Home Improvement is going to show up is unknown, but you never know what could happen.
For those wanting to reacquaint themselves with the infamous Tim Taylor grunt, all seasons of Home Improvement are streaming with a Hulu subscription as well as a Disney+ subscription. The viral grunt will probably never go away, so it’s only a matter of time before it finds its way back in another Allen project and is used on a pretty frequent basis. But at least there’s streaming, so it’s like it never left.
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