This one sailed through the week with very little rewriting and the actors all had a terrific time that week, especially with the family dinner scene that breaks down into chaos. Matt was a fantastic showrunner, so it was important that we didn’t immediately plunge off a cliff. It was the first episode we shot after Matt Berry had left and I took over showrunning duties again. I picked this one for a very selfish reason. But this one had so much fun throughout, with twist after twist, that when it finally landed with Mike confessing that Chuck was one of his best friends, it vaulted out of the “holiday episode” pile I would normally put it in to make the final cut. Plus, I hated breaking Halloween episodes. “Bride of Pranksenstein” (Season 7, Episode 4)Īs you’ll see from my subsequent picks, I’m usually drawn to the episodes with a little more emotional heft. Kevin Abbott’s Top Five “Last Man Standing” episodes: (Of course, that’s a reference to the show’s move to Fox in 2018 after ABC canceled the show.) Allen said he enjoyed what he called the “high wire act” of “Nancy Travis playing Vanessa Baxter and Tim Allen playing Mike Baxter and you’re doing the ‘Deadpool’ thing where you’re crossing the line.”Īs “Last Man Standing” draws to a close, Variety asked Abbott and Berry to each select their definitive favorite episodes, for viewers who’d like to go back and rewatch or for newcomers looking for a primer on the sitcom. “Actually I’ve heard of that happening before.”

“Maybe there’s another network you can find it on.” Here’s that exchange, between Mike, Nancy and security expert Chuck Larabee (Jonathan Adams): Well, it’s because the truck was no longer on the network.

The finale contains plenty of winks at the camera regarding the ending of the show - including an exchange where Mike wonders why the security features on his truck didn’t alarm. They just put it in a van and carry it off wherever it goes.” “All of a sudden, you look around, Ed’s office is gone because ‘they’ve got to do it’ at 6:00 in the afternoon. She winds up having this reaction to that as Mike has peace with it, because of how much it meant to her as well.”Īllen said he found it difficult to shoot those final scenes even as other parts of the set were being torn down. And while you watch Mike thinking he’s going to fall apart once this word comes through, it’s actually kind of interesting that Vanessa does. It’s been disassembled, chop shop, it doesn’t exist and then they have to go through the process of what that means. But then the word comes through it’s gone. “At first it’s like we got to get it back. “It was perfect and there was nothing left for him to do, and then at that point somebody takes it,” Berry said. On the show, the truck is stolen right after Mike manages to get the original bill of sale, which was the last thing to make his restoration of the vehicle - which had been a presence on the show from the very beginning - complete. “I loved it, because it allowed us to tell a story that we would just tell but still leave room for the characters to be able to comment on the show closing, so that it wouldn’t be too sad,” Abbott said. But then Berry came up with the idea for the truck, and using it as a metaphor for the show. But each time they started to write those stories, it wound up feeling too sad. In figuring out how to end the series, executive producers Kevin Abbott and Matt Berry toyed with several ideas about characters leaving or saying goodbye. “I never had a bad day on the set, and it isn’t old hat… Of course, all of the actors are still alive and well and we can see each other whenever we want, but I have not fully recovered from how much I adored that world that we created.”

“I adored this show, this cast, this crew,” Allen said.

Series finale last man standing