Last Man Standing Is, In Fact, Still Standing

Esquire – by Tyler Coats

Last May, Tim Allen’s sitcom Last Man Standing was cancelled after a six-season run on ABC. It was a surprise to many, including Allen himself. The final season averaged 8.3 million viewers a week, which is a lot of people tuning in to watch a grumbling middle-aged man throw insults at his wife and daughters. (You see, he was the only man in his family. He was—hold onto your butts—the last man standing.)

A year later, the show is getting another shot. As rumored last week, Fox is officially picking up the show for its Fall 2018 schedule.  

As Uproxx reports:

In a FOX press release, the network announced that Allen and his TV family shall return for the 2018-2019 season. The show, which starred Allen as (yet another) version of himself, ran on ABC from 2011-2017 before getting the boot and being passed over by CMT for a near-immediate revival. The former Home Improvement “Tool Time” juggernaut then popped off a little while declaring his alter-ego to be too “dangerous” for television to handle.

Allen did, indeed, describe himself as a conservative martyr last year following ABC’s cancellation of the show, comparing his character to All in the Family‘s Archie Bunker:

Archie Bunker pushed boundaries, but Carroll O’Connor was not that guy at all. I am a version of that guy. But there is nothing more dangerous, especially in this climate, than a funny, likable conservative character. He is mitigated on the show by a family of women who had a difference of opinions, but [Mike Baxter] was a likable guy and a principled guy about work and ethics and all this stuff, I think.

While ABC has lost Last Man Standing, it still has Roseanne to fill their Red State programming bucket. Sadly, it seems like the beloved Brooklyn Nine-Nine had to be cut to provide another major platform for Allen’s beleaguered man to stand up for himself against the women in his life. Let’s hear it for gotta-hear-both-sides entertainment.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a20666395/last-man-standing-renewed-fox/