Tim Allen never lost his love of stand-up; he just got sidetracked for a little while. But he’s finally back on stage and making people laugh again, and Las Vegas is a big part of that return—by the end of the year Allen will have performed five dates at The Mirage as part of its “Aces of Comedy” series.

It may have seemed he exchanged stand-up for sitcoms when Home Improvement hit the airwaves in 1991, but Allen says it wasn’t network television as much as later film work that kept him from live shows. “You know what? It was movies that took me away,” he says. “After we finished Home Improvement, I probably did 11 movies. It was very difficult to stay in practice. I got so far away it took me a good 24 months of practice in small clubs, rewriting and reworking. For my first concert I actually thought people should have their money back because I was doing 40 minutes, 45 with a little stretch.”

As Jimmy Kimmel pointed out during Allen’s April 15 appearance on Kimmel’s late-night talk show, Allen has all the money he needs and only tells jokes because he loves to—and he has no boss. It’s a freedom he first experienced March 23, 1979, after famously accepting a dare to get onstage at the Detroit Comedy Castle. He commemorated the event by carving “I Did It” on a wall tile from the club; he still possesses the tile.

The success of his ABC sitcom Last Man Standing, which wrapped its fourth season in April, came in tandem with Allen’s desire to get back in front of fans. His run as a box-office draw began in 1994 with The Santa Clause and was solidified the next year when Pixar’s Toy Story became a blockbuster. Allen returned to TV after providing the voice of Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story 3, which became the highest-grossing film of 2010 and the highest-grossing animated film in history until Frozen surpassed it. Appearing in a weekly series again had its rigors, but it also offered a stable schedule that made a return to comedy gigs possible.

Allen doesn’t just want to hear live laughter again, though. “It’s an honor to be onstage, but I want to murder them,” he says. “I want them to come out of there tired, going, ‘That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.’ That’s my goal. In Vegas, it’s not the young crowds that pay eight bucks on the Sunset Strip, and certainly not like the bigger casinos around the country like in Minnesota. It requires pinpoint accuracy. You don’t screw up. There’s a lot of respect you’ve got to earn in Las Vegas.”

Still, Allen “calms down” his set a bit in Vegas. “I’m using all of my skills to make you laugh your pants off for an hour, and it doesn’t always succeed for some people,” he says. “It’s an elegant club, it’s a great showroom and I don’t want to offend anybody. But we’re adults. I slip up sometimes. I was always a precocious kid, and I haven’t changed a bit.”

The Mirage 10 p.m. May 16, $59.99 plus tax and fee, 16+. 702.792.7777