Posted on 09/29/2018 4:48:00 PM PDT by grundle
On Thursday night, the old liberal sitcom Murphy Brown was revived; on Friday, the old conservative sitcom Last Man Standing is raised from the dead. The canceled ABC show has been picked up by Fox and plopped down in its old time period. Both shows exploit the election of Donald Trump to the presidency for laughs; both are nearly unendurable in the context of the current television landscape, which is as obsessed with Trump as Trump is obsessed with TV.
You’ll recall that Tim Allen plays Mike Baxter, marketing director for a store similar to a Bass Pro Shop — lots of sporting goods, just the sort of atmosphere for a man’s man like Mike. He has a wife (played by the always good and long-suffering Nancy Travis), whose role is so thinly written I had to look up the character’s name. (It’s Vanessa.) Mike has three grown children, and, like Archie Bunker, he drives his liberal son-in-law crazy.
But Mike Baxter is no Archie Bunker (in the sense of being a vivid character), and Tim Allen is no Carroll O’Connor (in the sense of being a first-class actor), and Last Man is a pretty standard-issue family sitcom. The Friday premiere features an opening barrage of winking jokes about how quality shows get canceled and moved to other networks. This is followed by Mike doing a lot of gloating about the results of the last presidential election. (Trump is never mentioned by name, but it’s not as though Last Man takes place in an alternate universe.) The show then moves on to a banal plot about a briefly missing grandchild, a fleetingly upsetting situation engineered to bring the squabbling Baxter family together. The idea is that, whether you’re conservative or liberal, we all love our families. It’s all extremely boring.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I watched it. It was pretty good.
I’ll take Tim Allen over Carroll O’Connor any day.
Yahoo’s only saying “both are bad” because Last Man’s ratings were great and Murphy Brown’s were terrible.
If it were the reverse, the spin would be talking about that.
It was not deep and biting like VP or any of the other crap on the “premium” networks. But it’s still one of the top 3 sitcoms on TV nowadays.
This moron thinks espousing family values is “banal.” Screw him, her or it, however it chooses to be addressed.
I have to say, though: the new Mandy was cringeworthy in the season premiere.
Last Man Standing was just fine, centered around the eldest daughter and family moving to Canada. Great Canadian jokes.
I just watched it. It was good. The first five minutes were digs at their previous network. They were not kind. Heh.
I do NOT know who this author is. I don’t care who he is.
LMS and Tim Allen more closely represent the voters who put Trump into the Oval Office than any other entertainment out there on TV.
We have had over 40 years of Left Leaning shows, and Madame Secretary, West Wing, and others don’t appeal to us.
The late night ‘comics’ are NOT comical, and Johnny Carson & Jay Leno are sorely missed.
The Left has never understood the working class voters in the USA & they never will. Perhaps when the shooting stops & the landscape has been cleared of all the filth, it won’t matter.
Just saw it. Very good. Hilarious how they watched their own show on TV, theme song and everything! And commented about the network that cancelled their show. I’m noncommittal on the new Mandy, though.
“I have to say, though: the new Mandy was cringeworthy in the season premiere.”
That was my only complaint, too - however, the actress that played the original Mandy was already in her 30’s, playing a HS kid when the show originally aired. Not sure she can pull that off anymore...another decade in!
If she’s moved on to bigger things, I wish her well. She certainly is talented as far as singing and dancing and all that. She made a memorable character, that’s for sure.
Ken Tucker is certainly no regular family man. LOL The regular family man would recognize a lot of himself in LMS. Amazing, isn’t it? How Ken can be so lacking in his maleness and not even be aware of it.
We watched it and thought Tim hit a home run. Glad Fox had the good sense to air a great comedy show.
I don’t know who the stick in the mud is that wrote the yahoo critique, but he got it all wrong!
This is a great sit-com - the best one on TV. I wish it were an hour long!
The new Mandy will take some getting used to!
Glad the rest of the cast is back - new Boyd will do just fine.
As for Vanessa, she and Mike are just right for each other!
I’ll watch the new show every week, and will keep watching the old shows. By the early evening, Mrs. Taxman and I need an hour or so of great comedy! Last Man Standing is it!
It seems that she left of her own volition. I also just read that the character who plays Eve will have limited appearances this season because Eve is now at the Air Force Academy. Not sure yet about the new Boyd. He was okay in this season’s first episode, but I liked the old, younger Boyd.
Maybe I should watch it again, but the first episode seemed like it was videotaped and not filmed like the previous shows were. That just occurred to me, so I may be wrong.
Some of the best old episodes were when Vanessa was bending over backwards to pretend she doesn’t notice that their neighbors, the Larabies, are black. Very funny, laugh-out-loud stuff.
I watched and enjoyed it. Glad the show is back. This Yahoo reviewer is full of BS. LMS had record ratings on Fox with its return. Murphy Brown’s premiered to low ratings on Thursday. The article also stated that LMS was cancelled on ABC because of low ratings. Not true. LMS was second highest ratings show on ABC when they cancelled it. Yahoo is a far left news source.
I watched it and thought it was very good. I’m glad they were able to get almost the entire cast back. The new Mandy will take a while to get use to, but I’m willing to give her a chance (remember, there was a different Kristin in the first season.) I hope they also bring back Jay Leno as Joe the mechanic. I thought the interaction between Leno and Tim Allen was hilarious in the previous seasons.
Several belly laughs! Glad I tuned in. Never had watched it before; but now I’ll make a point.
“The new Mandy will take some getting used to!”
If you are old enough the series Petticoat Junction had three actresses playing Billy Jo and two playing Bobby Jo. The show lasted seven years and only canceled because of CBS’s desire to kill shows that had trees in it. LMS will do fine with the new Mandy.
It was outstanding!!!
I agree. Very good writing on a lot of the episodes.
The actress that played Eve was in, ‘Justified.’ We binge-watched that winter before last. She was awesome. Played the daughter of a pot-growing back-hills family who pretty much took over the enterprise as she got older.
Loved her performance. That ‘kid’ is going places, whether it’s to the AF Academy or to the Underground Economy, LOL!
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