Allen is one of the names on a rather short list of notable showbiz conservatives, and "Last Man Standing" - about a man named Mike Baxter (Allen), who works in the corporate offices of an outdoor-sports retail chain and lives in a home of females (his wife and daughters) - seemed to me an unimaginative and needlessly regressive exercise in the flattest form of sitcom-making. And yes, I'm the same guy who gave a good review to Thursday's return of "Murphy Brown." There no conspiracy here - "Murphy Brown" is just better written, more inventive and infused with purpose.<doc-sep>If you wanted to choose one TV show to seal up in a time capsule intended to explain the 2010s to far future robots who are curious about their human predecessors, you could do a lot worse than Last Man Standing. The Tim Allen vehicle started out as a mostly innocuous family sitcom when it launched in 2011, a somewhat dated show about an archetypal manly man leading a household full of women. But as it evolved into a series about an older white man’s continued feelings of grievance, it unexpectedly became one of the pop culture artifacts that best predicted the rise of Donald Trump. Last Man Standing was one of the few shows on television to feature a politically conservative character as its protagonist. Though the views of Mike Baxter, Allen’s character, were more centrist than those of the man who played him, its depiction of intergenerational conflict between Mike and his daughters (and sons-in-law) got at something compelling about a generational divide between (mostly white) parents and children — a divide that few other TV shows even attempted to tackle. But though the show broached political topics and let Mike wave his conservative flag, its focus was almost never on politics. It was a show about a family who, at the end of every day, still loved each other. Almost as many episodes were about mundane family arguments as they were about big political fault lines. For all that Allen and former showrunner Tim Doyle — who oversaw the series from season two to season four and shifted it into more political territory — wanted Last Man Standing to be a new All in the Family, the issues that Mike and the rest of the Baxter clan argued about rarely impacted them in any real way. They were insulated in a way that Archie Bunker and company never quite were. Did the Baxters’ isolation from true political consequences matter? Not even in the slightest. Because in 2017, ABC canceled the show after its sixth season, and it became a political football all the same, after many suspected the show had been canceled due to Allen’s support for Trump. Now, the series is back on Fox after a year off the air, and it’s almost as fascinating as it’s ever been. Last Man Standing was part of a wave of shows asking, “Yes, but what about men?” No one could have realized how prescient that would be. When Last Man Standing debuted on ABC in October 2011, the press covered the show in one of two ways. The first was both predictable and ephemeral: Last Man Standing would mark Tim Allen’s return to the network that made him famous, where he starred in Home Improvement, one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, from 1991 to 1999. Indeed, the premise of Last Man Standing almost felt like an updated Home Improvement — instead of hosting a home improvement show and having three sons, Allen’s character would work at a sporting goods store and have three daughters. Around the time of his Home Improvement tenure, Allen had also achieved great success in movies like The Santa Clause (1994) and Galaxy Quest (1999), and even though he’d had a harder time finding hits in the 2000s, after the show had ended, it was still considered a coup that he was coming back to TV at all. It was the second way that reporters covered the debut of Last Man Standing that turned out to be oddly prescient: They wrote about the show as a sitcom of the so-called “mancession,” part of a wave of comedies that debuted in the 2011–’12 TV season that were about the supposed emasculation of men, compared to the empowerment of women. Most of the mancession sitcoms are shows whose existence you’ve since forgotten, if you ever knew of them at all — shows like Man Up and How to Be a Gentleman and Work It (in which two men can’t get a job, so they begin cross-dressing as women; it was canceled after two episodes). They were purportedly spurred by an Atlantic article by Hanna Rosin called “The End of Men,” which charted how the Great Recession prompted a collapse in certain male-dominated industries, while industries that employed more women weren’t as gutted. But the “mancession” sitcoms (save for, I guess, Work It) weren’t really about a decline in men’s employment. They were, instead, about a general sense that masculinity was being infringed upon, that women were ascendant and men descendant, and that society didn’t terribly care what happened to men. As if to drive the point home, the two biggest comedy hits of that fall were about women who were (at least theoretically) doing it for themselves — 2 Broke Girls and New Girl. Last Man Standing survived because it starred Tim Allen, more or less. The premise of its first season — a man feels overwhelmed by all of the women in his life and isn’t sure he has the room to be a man anymore — was thin, as these things go. The show was created by 30 Rock writer Jack Burditt, and he might have eventually made something of it. But a family tragedy led to him leaving the show, and Last Man Standing drifted aimlessly through its first season, losing half of its premiere audience. It seemed like a solid candidate for cancellation, like all of the other mancession shows. Last Man Standing had a good cast, but it never seemed to gel. Allen frequently seemed bored, and the idea that white men were being subjugated in a way they never had previously was mocked by critics and journalists. The show managed a season two renewal, but it was banished to Fridays (It had been on Allen’s old Tuesday night haunt.) Even as it was renewed, it felt unlikely that it would ever see a third season. And then it hired Tim Doyle. Starting in season two, Last Man Standing became a show about politics —but only sort of Doyle is one of those journeymen showrunners who are brought in on troubled productions in an attempt to salvage them. Usually, it doesn’t work because there’s too much water under the bridge. But in the case of Last Man Standing, Doyle and Allen were on the same page, which made things easier. And what they wanted to do was make the show more like All in the Family. Their first order of business was to import the ’70s sitcom’s most obvious source of conflict — a constant political battle of the wills with a know-it-all lefty son-in-law. The foundation was conveniently already in place, thanks to an unspoken bit of Last Man backstory: Mike’s oldest daughter, Kristin (Alexandra Krosney in season one; Amanda Fuller in all seasons thereafter), had gotten pregnant in high school, and was now raising her son as a single mother, with the backing of her parents. So season two brought Kristen’s ex-boyfriend, Ryan (Jordan Masterson), back into the fold. Thus, Mike’s grievances about Ryan letting down Kristin and their child by skipping town were papered over with fights about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and the personal subsumed into the political. It was a smart way to be like All in the Family but put a different spin on the material. But the show also began sharpening its other conflicts by transforming Mike into a somewhat reactionary old-school conservative, who loved being a guy’s guy and believed in rugged self-determination. Then it made everybody else in his circle not so sure about his positions, to varying degrees. To its credit, the show attempted to seriously explore these conflicts, as when youngest daughter Eve (Kaitlyn Dever) expressed an interest in the military, and both Mike and his wife Vanessa (Nancy Travis) worried what might happen to her, or when Ryan objected to his son taking part in a school play that featured negative stereotypes of Native Americans, only for the story to pivot to the characters wondering if his sudden return to his son’s life was sincere, or if he’d just flake out again. Still, I don’t want to oversell Last Man Standing.<doc-sep>Tim Allen and Fox are waking up to some very good news this morning. ABC not so much. Last Man Standing returned Friday night to deliver 8 million viewers and a downright shocking 1.8 rating among adults 18-49. That’s enough to easily rank as the top-rated show on Friday night — including beating rival ABC, which canceled Last Man Standing after six seasons last year despite the show’s pretty decent viewership. In fact, this was Fox’s most-watched comedy on any night in nearly seven years. Most surprisingly, Last Man Standing‘s season 7 premiere was much higher than the show’s season 6 premiere on ABC last fall (where it had 5.9 million viewers and a 1.1 rating). Remember, Last Man Standing‘s “8 million viewers” number that was bandied about so much after the show was canceled on ABC included seven days of DVR playback. This is getting 8 million right out of the gate. The comedy was not expected to grow because, frankly, older shows rarely improve year over year, changing networks usually does not boost an audience and Fox has long struggled to get viewers to their Friday night lineup. But LMS has had the benefit of more press attention than usual thanks to the network shakeup, so perhaps that helped matters. So Fox won the night averaging a 1.3 in the demo with LMS, new show The Cool Kids (1.5 in the demo) and Hell’s Kitchen (0.9) vs. ABC averaging a 0.6 with Truth & Lies and 20/20. Outside of Fox, the highest rated show last night only had a 0.9, which again makes LMS’s 1.8 in the demo such a shock — LMS doesn’t exactly have a reputation for drawing younger viewers. The ratings follow up on another political skewing sitcom returning to TV — albeit after a much longer hiatus — CBS’ Murphy Brown, which disappointed Thursday night by ranking as the network’s lowest-rated comedy and falling from its lead-in with only a 1.1 rating.<doc-sep>
There was no shortage of jokes on Last Man Standing Season 7 Episode 1 proving the show is better than ever. The very first scene was a jab at ABC canceling the hit show, which is not a surprise because the joke was in all of Fox's promos for the show. It was still funny though. One thing the show did very well, although a bit cheesy, was acknowledging there is a new Mandy. Molly McCormick is tall and skinny with blonde hair, as opposed to Molly Ephraim who was shorter and skinnier with dark black hair. Kyle admitting to Mike he couldn't tell what was different about his wife was one of those true dumb Kyle moments that make fans love him. The pure excitement on his face when he screamed "you're tall and blonde" was so cute. Christoph Sanders and Molly appear to have great chemistry so far, which is a big plus for her being a believable Mandy. Kyle: I am trying to DVR my favorite TV show but it is not on. Vanessa: Oh, well maybe it got canceled. The TV business can be heartless. Kyle: It didn't get canceled. Why would they cancel a popular TV show that everybody loves? Mike: Maybe they're a bunch of idiots. Just try another channel. Vanessa: Oh Mike, they don't just take a show off of one network and put it on another. Kyle: Hey there it is! You were right Mr. B. Mike: Is it me or is it way better on this network? Permalink: Is it me or is it way better on this network? Permalink: Is it me or is it way better on this network? The episode took on a hot-button topic in today's world, politics in America. However, it was done in the most relatable way. Eve and Mandy's disagreement that turned into a no speaking war is happening in family's all over the country. In this case, though the fight was done with humor, instead of angry yelling. Related: Get HBO via Prime Video Channels for Addictive Dramas, Hilarious Comedies, and Hit Movies! When Vanessa declared politics off limits in the Baxter home, Mike had his work pals Chuck and Ed to help him hash out what was going on with his divided family. Chuck admitted he has been avoiding his own brother since the election, again very relatable to so many. What was great about the Chuck, Ed and Mike scene was they were having a serious conversation, but the one-liners were hilarious. These three men managed to joke about the Vietnam War, the MacArthur hearings and the Civil Rights movement with such dry humor and wit. It was one of the best scenes in the episode. Ryan's frustration with America was a powerful storyline as well. His desire to take action by moving back to his home country of Canada is a thought that has occurred to a lot of people since the election. Mike: How are you doing? Ryan: I am good. You actually made me realize it is time to get serious and stop being a victim and take some control over my life. Mike: See, you just needed a little push. Ryan: So I am moving the family to Canada. Vanessa: You're moving to Canada? Ryan: Look I know it is kind of sudden, so please try not to overreact. Vanessa: You're ripping my grandbaby from my arms! Permalink: You're ripping my grandbaby from my arms! Permalink: You're ripping my grandbaby from my arms! The decision for Ryan was about feeling helpless, out of control and frustrated. Even when Mike presents him with a US Citizen application and he says he has to think about it because he is unsure of the climate in America right now. Political differences are not just affecting adults either, and Last Man Standing deserves props for showing how all the fighting was affecting Boyd. He runs away because he doesn't want to move. But he also left because he feels everything is broken due to the fighting all around him, at home, at school, and on the news. It became clear in the scene with Mike and Boyd why the show chose to age the character, and it was an excellent choice. The conversation with his grandson, seeing the hurt, sadness, and desperation in Boyd prompted Mike to be the voice of reason to his family.