What's it about?
TV titan Tim Allen returns to ABC as Mike Baxter, world voyager and one daredevil of a marketing director who is about to face his greatest challenge yet...his family. After Mike's wife, Vanessa, receives a promotion at work, Mike must spend more time in his female-dominated household. With years of advice and guidance from their nurturing mother, Mike's three daughters are not prepared for their old-fashioned, hotheaded father to take over. Especially 20-year-old Kristin, who's trying to raise her own son, Boyd, with more of a liberal approach than Mike can stand. When he isn't reclaiming the masculinity in his home, Mike works at the sporting goods man-cave, Outdoor Man: a place where men can buy guns, jerky and a camouflage recliner in one testosterone-fueled location. Mike's boss, Ed, took Mike off of his thrilling magazine expositions and stuck him in front of the computer to supervise the company's website. With the help of his naive subordinate, Kyle, Mike runs the Outdoor Man video log, which not only explores the store's stock of man-gear, but also helps Mike express his biggest concern with the 21st century: "What happened to men?" (Pulled directly from ABC's website.)
So, how was it?
If simply reading the synopsis above did not make you gag on the horrific sexism and gender stereotyping, then stop reading this now and go watch the show because it was written for you. On the other hand if you, like me, find the very premise of this show offensive and impossible to stomach, then avoid it like the plague. Seeing it live was no better. I didn't laugh once, I cringed through the entire twenty minutes, and I probably would have turned it off after five if I wasn't reviewing it.
At least the show is equal-opportunity offensive. It portrays both women AND men in their basest, crudest, most one-dimensional forms. Nancy Travis plays Mike's wife, Vanessa, a smart working mother of three who is always understanding and supportive of her husband's masculine ways. I couldn't help but wonder why such a seemingly-intelligent women would have put up with such denigrating crap for so long. His three daughters all fall into pocket stereotypes -- there's the plucky unwed mother still living at home, the fussy teenager obsessed with the Kardashians and mani-pedis, and the stock tomboy soccer player who tries to act like a boy but is secretly only concerned with getting the cute male soccer player to like her.
And then there's Tim Allen himself. It's so depressing to see such a beloved TV actor completely destroy his charming, lovable persona from HOME IMPROVEMENT with a portrayal of the most insulting, distasteful cro-magnon man possible. Being stuck in the 1940s is not funny, it's sad and offensive. Wishing our culture was more like the times when men went hunting and the girls were subservient is not edgy, it's anti-progressive. In one particularly horrifying scene, Tim Allen kidnaps his grandson from daycare because there was a gay couple there baking muffins for the children and, as he tells his daughter, that could only result in, and I quote, "Boyd dancing on a float." This kind of blatant homophobia is not chuckle-inducing, it's abhorrent.
I thought HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN was the worst pilot so far because of how dated it was. But LAST MAN STANDING takes the cake -- it's both dated AND offensive. A truly off-putting combination. Unfortunately I know that because the show stars the well-liked Tim Allen and because the first two episodes (I couldn't even watch the second half of the two-part premiere) drew in a decidedly solid 12.9 million viewers, that this show is probably here to stay. I can only hope that a) most of those people don't tune back in or b) that those 12.9 million people are all of an older demographic who are watching because of HOME IMPROVEMENT nostalgia. Because if there are any young, impressionable people watching, I am scared of the insidious message they will be receiving under the mask of a laugh track -- the message that if you do anything other than hunt or work in a sporting goods store or complain about women, then you are somehow less than a man; that if you enjoy watching GLEE or playing soccer, then you deserve to be laughed at; that if you are a teenage girl, you deserve to be dominated by a backwards man who not only doesn't understand your feelings, but doesn't even try to.
It's sad that Tim Allen has had to stoop to such a derogatory show that panders to the lowest common denominator to get back on television. He, everyone involved, and everyone watching deserve so much better. I know some people may accuse me of taking it too seriously, that it's "just a TV show," but Tim Allen himself said in front of dozens of reporters, when asked "Why are men always portrayed as douchebags on sitcoms?", "When you don't have material, you go to the lowest common denominator." So the star himself knows and admits that this show consists of nothing but the basest jokes meant to attract the largest audience possible. And the fact that it's marketed as a family-friendly sitcom for people of all ages is genuinely frightening. Young children watching this show and thinking that these are accurate portrayals of gender-types can only result in a furthering of stereotypes and the idea that to be "different" from the "traditional" gender roles is something to be laughed at and ashamed of. In a world where children are committing suicide more and more frequently because of bullying, it's truly depressing that ABC is encouraging this kind of thinking.
Rating:
* Atrocious. I will never watch this show again. Ever.
I hate to put this on the same level as the awful-but-good-intentioned PLAYBOY CLUB and HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN, but unfortunately I don't have a zero-star rating. I didn't just passively dislike LAST MAN STANDING like those other underwhelming shows -- I felt actively repulsed by it.
What did you think, Fellow Addicts? Vote in the poll below and then hit the comments!
(For a quick glance at the other pilots coming out, check out my Fall TV Preview.)
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