Arise, ye manly men of America! Cast aside the politically correct shackles of common decency and mutual respect, strap on your tool belts, fire up the grill (meat only, vegetables are for little girls), and crack open a lukewarm canned domestic, for the hour of your liberation is nigh! One year after ABC sent the grunting masses underground with the cancellation of Last Man Standing, Fox has taken up the mantle of Tim Allen’s right-wing multi-cam comedy and is in talks with the show’s creators for a revival of the series, Deadline reports. As for Allen himself, he’s apparently already signed a deal. A rock-hard, rigidly heterosexual deal.
As for the “why”s of all this, it doesn’t show a lot of faith in Fox’s part in its original programming slated for this fall, and also raises the question of when these talks began, exactly. Could it have been, oh, at the beginning of April, when the similarly conservative Roseanne revival was renewed by Allen’s old network, ABC, on the strength of its massive debut? If so, Fox executives may want to look at more recent ratings for the sitcom, which hit a new low this week and has lost 43 percent of its audience overall since that record-breaking premiere.
Deadline, which closely monitors such things, is cagey about the prospect, saying: “Insiders caution there are still many deals to close and the show’s return is by no means a sure thing but there are promising signs that a seventh season is possible.” Should the talks fall through, we’re sure the sitcom’s target audience will receive the news with the stoicism and complete lack of self-pitying victimization for which they are known.