Pop Alert: Last Man Standing
October 20, 2011, By Craig J. Heimbuch 0 comments
I grew up on Tim Allen. When I was a kid, I had a VHS of one of his comedy specials elictely taped from HBO beneath the unaware but watchful eyes of my parents. It was one of the valuable lessons I learned early on: be the only one who knows how to set the VCR and you can get away with a lot. Then there were the movies—"The Santa Clause," "Toy Story," "Galaxy Quest"—I loved some of those. And it's impossible to bring the man up without mentioning "Home Improvement." That was the show that cemented his place in the American pop culture canon. Tim Taylor, the man, the husband, the dad, the guy's guy with a good heart and skewed world view.
Whether it was his turn as Buzz Lightyear or his work as Taylor or any number of a dozen other roles, Allen has always had a bit of the old-school man about him. Masculine, tough, though not necessarily bright, he has always been the guy apart, the man who wants to be a man but is often thwarted by the women in his life. That persona always worked because it was done cleverly and had no animace about it. Even his old stand-up, when he was decked out in suspenders and a paisley tie; when he was grunting satisfaction after having rewired the vaccuum cleaner with a car engine; when he was using a hand sander to prewash dishes; when he was underscoring the differences between the sexes, even then it was innocent. He wasn't a crotchedy old man, he was a man's man and had nothing against women. He just wanted to do manly things.
I liked him like that. I understood even if I couldn't identify. Especially now that I'm working on a book about balancing the need to feel masculine with the way the world works today—where old-school masculinity is not only sometimes frowned upon but openly shunned—I like Tim Allen. So, I wanted to like his new show, "Last Man Standing." I liked the premise. A manly man works for a hunting and fishing sporting goods company, quite literally selling the masculine ideal, but has a hard time in a private life dominated by a wife and three daughters. Could be funny, I thought, and had hoped it would be done with the same sense of innocent equilibrium that made "Home Improvement" work so well. Because Tim and Jill, at the end of the day, were a great couple that respected each other enough to listen to the cryptic neighbor, "Wilson," and implement his sage-like wisdom.
But "Last Man Standing" let me down. What could have been a clever and funny commentary on the evolution of the sexes comes off as a bitter and angry diatribe that, at turns, seems to mock modern men and fall back on boring stereotypes and cheap gags. Take this scene for example. Allen has just returned home after a catalog photo shoot in Alaska. He is overrun by the women in his life, their problems and their needs. He goes to the office the next day and, upon, entering says how glad he is to be back by proclaiming "It smells like balls in here." His boss, in the next half-minute, refers to a young employee as a "Jackwang."
I'm as up for a good scat joke as the next guy, but the problem with the show is that it is heavy handed, ham-fistedly forcing its premise down the audience's throats. Allen gripes about his 16-year-old daughter's boyfriend's inability to change a tire and prediliction for manicures. He's not exaggerating. These are built into the script. And then there's the problem of warmth. There isn't any. Allen talks to and about his daughters as if he has just met them. In the brief interactions he has with them, it's like they just met. It feels overtly contrived. And maybe that's the point. Maybe Allen is trying to poke fun at television family relationships and tell the story of masculinity by explaining the extreme ends.
