It’s been a little over a year since Tim Allen and Nancy Travis last graced our screens as Mike and Vanessa Baxter in the sitcom Last Man Standing, which wrapped its cancellation-split, nine-season run on Fox in May 2021. Myriad other high-profile series have been cancelled in the meantime, and 2022 as a whole is filled with shows coming to an end. But none of that necessarily makes it any more enjoyable to reflect on LMS not being around anymore, as indicated by Allen himself in one of the stand-up comedian’s more wistful social media posts of late.
Tim Allen has already been quite busy in 2022 already, with both the Santa Clause streaming series coming to Disney+ and his latest show with Home Improvement co-star Richard Karn hitting History soon. But both of those shows having wrapped filming, and given that neither one of those projects’ formats compared to how Last Man Standing episodes came together, it’s understandable that the actor would feel pangs for the show without the need to go back into Baxter mode for a new season. Here’s how he reflected on missing the show on Twitter:
Damn I miss everyone on Last Man Standing, that was a great job. pic.twitter.com/Cht8mrO0v7June 11, 2022
If you’ve ever said to yourself, “Boy, I haven’t seen a picture of TV legends Hector Elizondo and Jay Leno reading scripts at the exact same time,” then you can put that declaration to bed, because that’s a thing of the past. It’s quite the oddball behind-the-scenes picture to share as a way for Allen to show how much he missed working on Last Man Standing, given how many people would presumably choose to share a massive group shot with everyone posing and smiling. But then that’s never really been Tim Allen’s style.
In that sense, this is probably the perfect picture for him to have used, since it more properly represents what life was like on the set, where one is far more likely to see actors reading over their lines as opposed to gathering together and staring at a camera lens. Wait, that’s what filming is… You get my point, though.
A job is only as good as the co-workers one is surrounded by, and given all the talent that walked the Last Man Standing set over the years, it was a good job indeed. Am I talking largely about Paul F. Tompkins, Jere Burns, Reba McEntire, and Robert Forster? Certainly them as much as anyone.
When CinemaBlend spoke with Last Man Standing's EP and showrunner Kevin Abbott around the time of the series finale, he predicted that there would easily be room for the cast to come back together for more, though only after a few years of being away from it all. Here's how he put it at the time:
Sure. I mean, absolutely. I love the cast, I love the crew, I love everybody involved with it. I'm certain [it would be possible] with a little time off, so that I can forget all the stuff that they do that irritates me. [Laughs.] Like I said, I think their lives continue. I'd always be interested in checking in on characters that I really loved writing. I'd work with Tim again in a second. I'd work with Nancy and Hector, and all of them. I mean, you just couldn't ask for a better cast, and the writers were wonderful.
Which isn't to say that fans will definitely see Tim Allen yukking it up anew within the Outdoor Man offices, since that would obviously come down to the cast agreeing, as well as a studio to bring it to the small screen. But given Allen's ongoing popularity, it'd be silly to think it'll never happen. Once a show survives one cancellation, it can survive anything.
Tim Allen will soon be thinking a lot more about his new show with Richard Karn, More Power, which will make its chainsaw-revving debut on History on Wednesday, June 29 at 10:00 p.m. ET. Following that, Disney+ subscribers will likely see the newest chapter of the Santa Clause saga at some point closer to the Christmas season.
