Look out! This show has supplied me life-saving laughs since the early 90s. I feel so lucky to have on tape nearly every episode, from the very beginning of the series - when old Red was so clean-cut and young that you can hardly recognize him as Steve Smith.
It definitely has lost its edge in the last couple of years, but the rustic humor is still pure. They just seem to be out new ideas for the Bill segments, The Experts and the Word Game.
I can't think of any other show or movie that could match this, in its style of humor and its near-accidental staging. This kind of show only comes along once. The way it's staged, it could have been a great live hit in the earliest days of TV.
It's more than likely that I love this show because it talks about people like me, who'll use duct-tape to fix a machine I depend on my life for, because it's easier than drilling holes and setting bolts.
No show that I'm aware of has done so much to celebrate men, even though the show mostly ridicules them. I'm sorry to see how much it's degenerated, in the last season, but you can only come up with so many believably outrageous (or is it outrageously believable) stunts.
I don't know from whence the concept originated, but I'll always love Steve Smith and Pat McKenna for giving me a show about myself, and the people I know.
