Patricia Richardson Recalls Challenging Tim Allen Reunion on ‘Last Man Standing’: ‘Not My Best Work’

Home Improvement fans were thrilled when Patricia Richardson reunited with Tim Allen on his 2010s sitcom Last Man Standing, but for the actress herself, one of her performances wasn’t up to her usual standard.

“Last Man Standing, this was my first appearance which was fun,” Richardson, 75, wrote via Instagram on Monday, July 6, alongside a throwback photo of her and Allen, 73, on the Last Man Standing set.

She continued, “The second [appearance] (w/Robin Roberts also guest starring). That second day of rehearsal, Friday, I got T-Boned by a 93 year old 2 months after a shoulder replacement I was still recovering from. Really painful weekend, ice and Advils were nowhere near enough, and I didn’t want go back on a heavy painkiller.”

“Had to take Friday rehearsal off, back Monday after painful weekend, didn’t know I was shooting that day. Not ready, another hard day. Shot the next day. Not my best work,” Richardson wrote of the season 5 episode, which saw her play Helen Potts. (Richardson made her first Last Man Standing guest appearance during season 4 in January 2015.)

Last Man Standing aired from 2011 to 2017 on ABC, marking Allen’s return to the network 12 years after Home Improvement ended. The show later moved to Fox for three more seasons between 2018 and 2021.

Allen, of course, played Tim “The Toolman” Taylor on Home Improvement, which aired from 1991 to 1999. Richardson costarred as Tim’s wife, Jill.

More recently, Richardson and former Home Improvement costars Richard Karn (Tim’s sidekick Al on the sitcom) and Debbe Dunning (Heidi) guest starred on an episode of Allen’s latest ABC sitcom, Shifting Gears, which aired in October 2025.

In June, Allen gave Us Weekly an exclusive update on a potential Home Improvement reboot.

“They keep talking about how it could move forward, but they get stuck [because] there are some personality problems right now with the boys,” he said of the three actors who played Tim and Jill’s sons, Zachery Ty Bryan, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Taran Noah Smith.

“They’ve got their own issues. I always thought it would be cool if it was a story about them. That’s a little challenging right now, to put it mildly,” the Toy Story actor added.

Bryan, 44, who played eldest son Brad Taylor, has had a string of legal issues over the years, most recently being sentenced to 19 months in prison in Oregon after he admitted to violating his probation. He was sentenced in March but appeared virtually because he is currently in jail in California after receiving a separate 16-month sentence for a DUI back in 2024.