First Impressions: Last Man Standing

As a child of the late eighties and early nineties, naturally I was a big fan of ABC’s TGIF lineups: Full House, Family Matters, Boy Meets World, I even watched Just the Ten of Us. But at the turn of the century, the family sitcom seemed to die out or just were not funny (seriously, According to Jim ran for the entire decade). Now in a new decade, the family sitcom is making a comeback and naturally on ABC, although it is not their Friday lineup, but on Wednesdays with The Middle, Suburgatory, and Modern Family dominating in the ratings.

Oddly the comedy night is anchored by Happy Endings while new family sitcom Last Man Standing airs Tuesdays, with a similar man-themes show instead of a family block (what a great lead in for Dancing with the Has-Beens). Tuesday also happened to be the same day Tim Allen’s old show; the perennial top ten rated Home Improvement aired for almost a decade.

For Last Man Standing, instead of three boys, this time around Tim has three girls: the single mom (Alexandra Kronsey, Lost’s young Eloise Hawking), the whiny one (Molly Ephraim, Paranormal Activity 2’s adopted daughter), and the tomboy (Kaitlyn Dever, Justified’s Loretta McCready, who managed to go toe to toe acting wise with Timothy Olyphant and Margo Martindale despite only being in middle school). Patricia Richardson has been traded out for Nancy Travis (The Bill Engvall Show). Instead of a television show, this time around, Tim makes rants on the internet for his sporting goods store. No Al or Wilson equivalents, but some extra Y chromosomes are provided by Hector Elizondo (Valentine's Day) who show up as Tim’s boss and Christoph Sanders (Legally Blondes) as one of his employees who Tim accidentally set up him up with the wrong daughter.

For better or worse, Last Man Standing is basically what you would expect what Home Improvement would look like if Tim had girls instead of boys, there are plenty jokes about gender roles and how man no longer acting like men. The jokes are cheap, the situations cheesy, and the characters over the top and I laughed constantly. Last Man Standing may be a show straight out of the nineties, but I have absolutely no problem with that. Hopefully Loretta can get her buddy Raylan Gibbons to make an appearance sometime.

Last Man Standing airs Tuesdays at 8:00 on ABC. You can stream the show on Hulu. You can also download Last Man Standing on iTunes.