Apparently inspired and enheartened by the confused and dismayed reaction liberal sitcom fans have had to the news about the upcoming Roseanne revival—i.e., that Roseanne Barr’s pro-Trump political views are likely to trickle down into the heart of her beloved blue-collar matriarch, Roseanne Conner—Tim Allen has decided that it’s time to start talking about Last Man Standing again.
You remember Last Man Standing, right? It was Allen’s ABC sitcom from 2011 to 2017, in which he played a vaguely Tim Allen-type with strong conservative views, living in a fantasy world where everybody finds those attitudes inexplicably charming. ABC abruptly canceled the show last year, despite its continually high ratings, bringing a bunch of accusations of political pandering down on its head. (The network has said the real reason was the multi-cam sitcom’s surprisingly high production costs.) At the time, a petition to reverse the cancellation caught some traction in the conservative news media—garnering a not-unimpressive 418,000 signatures—before everybody involved promptly forgot about it and moved on to bigger, better, less Tim Allen-y things.
Except, of course, for Allen himself, who’s spent the last year talking about how the show was too “dangerous” for network TV. Now, he’s talking to Fox News—duh—about his continued belief that the series isn’t as dead as we’d all assumed, and that he’s apparently sitting on a groundswell of Last Man Standing Stans baying for the show to return. “I know fans would love nothing more than for us to take the cover off, fire up the engine, back this car out of the garage and get it back on the highway, full-throttle,” Allen said, stretching a metaphor to its natural breaking point, before inexplicably adding, “My sentiment sits in the front seat beside you.”
We looked around for a bit, and couldn’t find any new viral petitions demanding that the show be returned to its ABC throne. But it’s possible that we’re just not properly tuned into this rising right-wing movement, and that people are whispering words of encouragement into their front seats every single day, confident that Tim Allen’s sentiment is always there, listening to their pleas, and occasionally letting out a quiet, comforting grunt.