Reviewed by Jim Malone
In a television season in dire need of fresh, new comedies, it is quite ironic that the season is being led by Tim Allen, playing a character closely resembling Tim Taylor from Home Improvement. There are enough differences to keep the audience entertained, but the similarities make the show feel strikingly familiar.
Tim Allen plays Mike Baxter, another man’s man character. Mike Baxter works for an outdoor sports catalog company and uses the same “sales pitch” platform that Tim Taylor used in Home Improvement while hosting a home improvement show. He is now providing sales pitches over the internet while playfully interacting with the subject matter and his co-workers. He matches some manly knowledge of his product with the innocent, but slanted views of life that usually leads to trouble. Even with presenting an outward appearance of experience and skill, there is usually an idiotic component that he spins in a very funny way.
Tim Allen’s character remains incredibly macho and biased to the male sex in every way. This is especially true when he interacts with the gay / flower-child operators of his grandson’s preschool, with how his eldest daughter is trying to raise his grandson out of wedlock and without a father figure in his life. Instead of the father and sons topics and situations we enjoyed in Home Improvement, now there is the father and daughter interaction with double standards and overly protective father approaches when he’s at home with his beautiful wife (Nancy Travis) and three daughters.
Tim remains very opinionated, chauvinistic, and is constantly fighting change while reminiscing how life used to be and how real men should behave like real men. However, he remains incredibly innocent with a kid-on-Christmas-morning enthusiasm within his humor. He also stays true to good-spirited, family-value type comedy that continues to be appreciated by parents, children and people of all ages. It is good to see Tim Allen back on a sitcom and it is entertaining that we get to see him do his best comedic work, again.
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Last Man Standing debuted on ABC on October 11, 2011.
