#Last Man Standing: Season Nine; How Home Improvement’s Tim Taylor Returned for the FOX Sitcom

CR: Michael Becker/FOX. © 2020 FOX Media LLC.

Last Man Standing is starting its ninth and final season ox FOX on Sunday, but it is the second episode of season nine that is making buzz. The episode, titled ‘Dual Time,’ will feature a special crossover. Viewers will see Tim Allen’s Tim Taylor character from ABC’s old Home Improvement sitcom appear on the FOX series.

The crossover did take some planning. Allen had to agree to reprise the character and the FOX series had to get permission from Disney (which owns Home Improvement) as well. Per The Wrap, the studio only signed off on the appearance the day before the episode’s table read.

Last Man Standing showrunner Kevin Abbott said the following about the process behind the crossover on the FOX series:

“So the first hurdle you have to jump is to get Tim to sign off on it. I want to make sure that he wanted to play it — which he did, he fully embraced the idea, with the proviso that we would honor that character, not make fun of him or anything, which we would never do. I really liked Home Improvement and Matt Williams and David McFadzean and Carmen Finestra, who created Home Improvement, were really kind and generous in allowing us to use the character and certain iconic symbols from the show and bits. So we were going to bend over backward to not give them any reason to regret allowing us to do that.

I love working with Tim, so … We kept going at it and talking about it and talking about it until we got to a place where we thought this was funny and interesting. Tim was telling me it really kind of affected him because what that episode is about in terms of fear of moving on — and fear that you’re going to be less-than and you’re going to be losing — and when you’re in a spot where you love something, moving past it is difficult. And we’re in our final season, so a lot of this resonated with Tim. And it was really great. It was a fun episode to do.”

What has the character been doing between the end of Home Improvement and his appearance on Last Man Standing? Abbott revealed:

“I can’t remember how much stayed in after the edits, but Tim Taylor now works for Binford Tools. He’s a high muckety-muck in that company and he travels around doing quality control at the various Binford Tools. You may have noticed their stores on the corners [in Last Man Standing]. But Binford has franchised out a place now that has several locations and he was in town visiting the Denver store and checking them out. And he’d been told by a lot of people that there is a guy that does this vlog called ‘Outdoor Man’ that he looks exactly like. So he had to go see this guy, he had to go meet this guy. And boy, they do look alike.”

What do you think? Are you excited to see Tim Taylor from Home Improvement on the Last Man Standing TV Show on FOX?