Last Man Standing: 10 Odd Things About The Show That Can't Be Covered Up

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https://screenrant.com/last-man-standing-weird-moments/

10
The Kristin Switch

Kristen Baxter was played by actress Alexandra Krosney in the first season of the show, but she was traded up for Amanda Fuller from season two, onwards. The decision was made for several reasons mostly surrounding Fuller's more mature disposition and believability as a young single mother.

While it proved to be a blessing in disguise, the switch-up was jarring. It's hard to watch the first season of the show and feel like it runs congruent with the seasons that followed. Kristen's personalities are quite different depending on the actresses playing. Thankfully this happened sooner rather than down the road.

9
Where's Muffin?

The Baxters got a dog in the early seasons, but one would be hard pressed to find out where little Muffin went. The animal shows up only a sparse handful of times throughout the show before disappearing completely from it. This means little Muffin certainly won't be remembered in the annals of TV's most iconic dogs any time soon.

Unfortunately, this is a long standing tradition with Last Man Standing where characters seem to disappear without notice, never to return. Some lucky few manage to turn up for what it essentially a cameo appearance at that point.

8
Sporadic Boyd

Young Boyd started out practically as a series regular beginning with season 2, but his character started to drop off massively between seasons 4 and 6. Eventually he began to resurface before being recast by an entirely different young actor for the latter years.

This makes no sense given that Boyd was the entire reason the character of Kristin was written in the first place. The decision to swap actress Alexandra Krosney for Amanda Fuller was done because the latter presented a more motherly attitude and personality. Why then, did her son go practically AWOL?

7
Ryan's Character Change

The first season of the show mentions Ryan only in passing as a numbskull who got Kristin pregnant and then fled town to become a deadbeat dad. He finally showed up in the latter half of the season, played by none other than Disney alum Nick Jonas who played up the character's less-than-stellar intellectual quotient.

Season 2 saw Jordan Masterson take over the role, and the character was presented as more of an intellectual thinker type as opposed to a buffoon. This was a striking contrast in personalities that has never been fully rectified, making season 1 feel like a single gigantic pilot episode.

6
Joe's Infrequent Appearances

Jay Leno joined the cast of Last Man Standing halfway through the series in an attempt to play up his knowledge of cars and traditional guy stuff. It gave Tim Allen a great actor to play against, and Joe instantly became a series favorite. After all, Jay Leno was playing him.

Unfortunately, Joe suffers from the same infrequency of appearances as many second-tier cast members. He shows up for a handful of back-to-back episodes before disappearing into the ether all over again. This makes it hard for audiences to stick with the character.

5
Carol Goes AWOL

Chuck Laarbee and his wife Carol were the perfect excuse to carve in a little All In The Family-style racial tension into the show for audiences to laugh at. As a tag team, they were excellent together on screen, but Carol never lasted for the long haul. She began disappearing from the show midway through, leaving Chuck to pick up the slack.

While this did give Chuck an opportunity to become more fully integrated into Mike's "guy crew," it hurt the dynamic by robbing actress Nancy Travis of someone to play off of. Indeed, the character even makes reference to her being upset at Carol moving out of state in season 6. She later resurfaced, played by another actress.

4
Eve's Pointless Character Arc

Eve Baxter was supposed to play against the traditional female character type with her tomboy personality. She fired guns, she was pro-Conservative, and she had dreams of joining West Point. Unfortunately that dream was squashed when her application was rejected, and her character arc took a turn for the worse.

The next two seasons found Eve wading aimlessly through a musical career that was going nowhere, before she learned she'd been accepted into the Air Force academy. Between those two events, Eve just sort of wandered around a la Darlene Conner from Roseanne.

3
Vanessa's Liver

Three Men And A Baby star Nancy Travis is hilarious as Mike's good-natured, bad pun-loving wife Vanessa, and even though her character seems to go around in circles when it comes to her professional career, it's hard to imagine the show without her. One thing doesn't add up, however.

Vanessa is quite fond of wine and tends to hit the bottle at every possible opportunity. This, combined with her career woes and family stresses makes one wonder why an alcoholism episode was never fully explored. It didn't even need to be that serious; just a warning regarding the path she was going down. Seems like a missed opportunity.

2
Ed's Wife

Ed Alzate has been married more times than most people can fathom, and he frequently makes reference to this throughout the series. He eventually meets and marries another woman who already has a teenaged son, but both of them seem to disappear from the show as quickly as they are introduced.

The result is that Ed is relegated to the grumpy boss role, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for character development. Ironically, the character would end up playing off of dimwitted Kyle, and the two quickly became a comedic duo, but that's not enough to explain why Ed's wife is nowhere to be found.

1
Where Did Jim & Bud Baxter Go?

Both Mike's dad Bud and his younger brother Jim made early appearances on Last Man Standing, but those have since dried up. Jim has only made one appearance on the show so far (played by the excellent Mike Rowe), and Mike has only made reference to him a handful of times throughout the seasons.

Meanwhile, Bud started out hot as a not-too-hip dad who opens up a marijuana shop, only to disappear soon afterward. Eventually, the character would resurface in season 7 after having passed away. Tragically, actor Robert Forster would go the same way in October of 2019 after battling brain cancer.

[JO Sweet Heart]

In my opinion, if the housekeeper named Blonca had to be written out, she deserved a proper send off. To me, she was funny.

God bless you always!!!

Holly

[Lorimar Television]

I agree Blanca was a great character

[JO Sweet Heart]

^^^ My favorite line from her was when she heard Mandy say that she wanted Mike to be a minority partner in the Mandy Baxter Fashions company. Blanca was like, "That better not be coming out of my end!"

God bless you always!!!

Holly

[Chocolate Moose]

Agreed. Continuity here is shameful

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Chocolate Moose

Agreed. Continuity here is shameful

Last Man Standing Premiere: EP Talks Time Jump, Kristin and Ryan's MIA Daughter, Scrapped Season 8 Finale

Last Man Standing‘s final season premiere spent little time quarantined with the Baxters before it jumped ahead to a post-COVID world, where Mike and Vanessa had not one, but two new grandchildren: Mandy and Kyle’s firstborn Sarah (played by newcomer Sophia McKinlay), and Kristin and Ryan’s second child, a daughter named Evelyn.

The latter was mentioned but not seen during Sunday’s episode, which saw the long-running Tim Allen comedy jump ahead to the year 2023 to avoid stories set during the pandemic. As showrunner Kevin Abbott previously told TVLine, “People are depressed enough without having to look for us to be depressed,” hence the decision to sidestep COVID-19. “[The time jump] allowed us to tell stories from a positive point of view while addressing the impact [the pandemic has had] on our characters,” which viewers will see more of in subsequent episodes.

Below, Abbott expands on the decisions to jump forward in time and keep Kristin and Ryan’s daughter off screen, and “spoils” the episode that LMS fans won’t get the chance to see.

TVLINE | When we last spoke in April, production had been shut down one episode shy of completing Season 8. But you already had a script written, which featured the birth of Kristin and Ryan’s daughter…
My God, that’s right!

TVLINE | The premiere we saw tonight was not that episode. When did it become apparent that you had to toss the script and start from scratch?
Pretty early on. Unfortunately, things had changed too much, and it just was becoming a pain. Too much of the script would have to change anyway. And then at the end of the day, we didn’t have Kaitlyn Dever. She couldn’t make it back because of everything that was going on, so it made no sense. She was a major player in that episode.

TVLINE | How much debate was there about whether or not to incorporate the pandemic? And how much you’d focus on it before you moved forward?
The biggest question we had coming into [Season 9] was, “How do we deal with everything that’s going on?” The pandemic, the social justice movements, the economic downturn, the election… a lot of unknowns. And coming back in January, we’re looking at it going, “OK, there are already going to be other comedies on the air. By the time we get back, we’re going to be the equivalent of airline food jokes,” you know? It’s going to be really warmed over stuff. That kept me up for a couple of nights [because] it wasn’t just one event we were trying to forecast. It was many, many events that could go any direction.

TVLINE | How did you land on the decision to do a three-year time jump, to a post-COVID world?
My writers pitched [the time jump], which I just adored. I think our mission is to be positive, and to show people the humor in life’s situations. I enjoy the darker episode every now and again, but generally, we want to entertain.

TVLINE | And on a multi-camera sitcom, you’re probably thinking in terms of syndication, “Who’s going to want to relive COVID?”
Yeah. I mean, I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I’m always aware of that, that hey, a show like this is going to continue to run for a long time, and what seems interesting and current now can seem very dated and uninteresting later on. And we’re a smaller show. We tell small stories about life and family. I’m OK with telling stories about this event that changed [us] in such a way. Here’s the story we’re telling because of that. That, I think, is our mandate.

TVLINE | Was there any other reason for the time jump, beyond COVID?
Part of it, quite honestly, was [avoiding] having babies on the stage. And that, in some ways, is practical from a storytelling point of view. When you have new parents [on a sitcom], it breaks reality constantly because new parents are only with their babies — that’s it. The babies demand their attention 100 percent of the time, so it limits what the characters can do unless you want to believe that they’re horrible parents, or you make an excuse every time they enter the room, like the baby’s just down for a nap.

TVLINE | Neither Sunday’s premiere nor Episode 2 — aka the Home Improvement “crossover” (airing Thursday) — introduces Kristin and Ryan’s daughter, who would have been born at the end of Season 8. She does exist, though… right?
Well, that was the episode that’s never going to be seen. [Laughs] Her name is Evelyn.

TVLINE | She was mentioned during a conversation between Kristin and Chuck, but you never specified who Evelyn was. I thought Kris was referring to Eve.
She was named after Eve. It was a great, lovely story [that we had planned for our scrapped Season 8 finale], where Eve finds out that Kristin names her daughter after her. Like with Sarah, we’re probably not going to see a lot of Evelyn, but [these children] impact our characters and what they’re doing with their lives.

TVLINE | The future version of Mike seems a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit more reflective about what he has and what he stands to lose — especially when it comes time for Mandy and Kyle to move out again. Is that what you were going for in that final scene between father and daughter?
You nailed it, absolutely nailed it. Yes, we were. Mike has been affected by everything that’s gone on as well, and part of that is recognizing that we’re not guaranteed anything, you know? We’re not guaranteed time, we’re not guaranteed family, and Mike is starting to think in terms of his post-Outdoor Man [life], you know? He’s thinking about his family. The premiere episode is all about recognizing that that fatherly instinct never goes away. You still want to protect your kids no matter how old they are. This final season is going to be about Mike’s journey more than almost anything else — where Mike is going to end up at the end of this season, and what that means for him going forward.

What did you think of Last Man Standing‘s time-jumpy premiere? Grade it via the following poll, then drop your thoughts in a comment below.

[Lorimar Television]

The shows jumped the shark many times from recasting two of three girls, to a foreign exchange student replacing the only remaining girl. The disappearance of several supporting characters, The Wongs in s1, Blanca, etc.