YMMV / Last Man Standing (2011)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Kyle really a Wide-Eyed Idealist who always looks on the bright side, or is he a Stepford Smiler who acts happy all the time as a way to cope with his traumatic childhood? Several episodes in Season 6 lend themselves to the latter.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Mike, quite understandably, is one. Supporters often find that he does genuinely have some valid points to make, especially about the harms of overprotecting children, personal responsibility, and achievement through merit. His detractors find him more of a bigoted Creator's Pet, whose rants about the supposed "attack" on masculinity and conservative values are only shown in the right because they're debated against blatant strawmen with weak opposing arguments, and who comes off as a bit of a hypocrite for complaining about the world trying to force him to be something he's not and yet making fun of those who don't conform to his worldview (especially other men who don't embody stereotypically "masculine" traits).
  • Even after her Character Development, Kristin is still one. Either she's a strong, independent woman who was able to make the best out of a hard situation and wind up with a fulfilling life or she's a brat who only gets by thanks to her parents going out of their way to help her and enables Ryan's Jerkass behavior by doing nothing to reprimand him.
  • Vanessa's become a bit of one post-Flanderization. Half the audience finds her attempts to be an open and cool mom funny and relatable while the other half finds it annoying and pathetic.
• Broken Base:
  • "Hard Ass Teacher" regarding Eve dropping a class with a hard teacher who won't give anybody a grade above a "C," and transferring to one with an easier teacher so she can get an "A" and get into West Point. Was she wrong to back away from a challenge similar to one she would find at the Academy and in the Army or was she smart for realizing the school will only care about what grade she got, not the difficulty of the teacher?
  • Alexandra Krosney vs. Amanda Fuller: who was better as Kristin. Krosney generally had better chemistry with the sisters, looking and acting related to them, and was just starting to grow into the role. Fuller had a rough start since her tenure coincided with the new emphasis on conservative vs. liberal conflict between Kristin and Mike (making her seem petty and contrarian, not helping with the change in performers), but that retool allowed more emphasis on Kristin with a feisty personality.
  • Whether the increased emphasis on conservative vs. liberal values as opposed to the gender gap between males and females was a good thing or not. Some feel it's made the show more interesting and stand out more, while others feel the show was fine the way it was.
  • The direction Eve's character takes after she gets rejected by West Point and decides to take a gap year from college while exploring her newfound talent for music. Some fans feel it's an interesting change and a great new way to explore the character (and that the writers needed to find a way to keep the character around for season six). Others feel that it's very out of character for her to just give up on a lifelong dream and the direction is more influenced by Kaitlyn Dever's interests rather than real Character Development. This was mitigated in "The Force" when Eve gets accepted into the Air Force Academy and resumes her path to becoming a military officer.
• Character Rerailment:
  • After the the poor reception to Kristin's Flanderization in season two, the writers gave her some much needed Character Development in seasons three and four, resulting in her dropping the Granola Girl and Commander Contrarian traits. By season five, her character is essentially the same as it was in season one, aside from the actress change.
  • Eve's character began going in a different direction in season five after getting rejected by West Point, namely trying to become a musician. Many people were frustrated that she seemingly just gave up on a military career until season six when she is admitted into the Air Force Academy and accepts it.
• Creator's Pet: Some viewers consider Mike to be this, especially those who believe his less than admirable traits are frequently glossed over to paint his beliefs in the right and whose supposed victimization at the hands of the liberal voices around him comes across as exaggerated.
• Critic-Proof: The show was trashed by critics but it still has a large viewership and fandom.
• Critical Dissonance: On Rotten Tomatoes, critic reviews for the second season were better than those of the first. On the other hand, most fans despised the retool and still consider season two the show's worst.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Chuck quickly became a fan favorite for his ability to trade barbs with Mike and play off the White Guilt of Vanessa, Kristin, and Ryan. Eventually, Jonathan Adams was Promoted to Opening Titles in Season Four.
  • Out of all the members of the Baxter family, Mandy and Eve are the most popular with fans (Mandy for her Fanservice and Eve for her snarker tendencies).
• Fandom Rivalry: An exceptionally vicious and aggressive one with fans of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mick, and The Last Man on Earth after Fox cancelled all three shows while this one was revived.^note LMS is not taking any of the other shows' time slots, as all three aired on Sunday and Tuesday while LMS is scheduled for Friday. Even B99 being picked for a sixth season a day later by Channel Hopping to NBC did nothing to abate the vitriol. A good part of the reason is probably that the shows are very different, with B99 boasting a serialized format and championing of progressive values, The Mick utilizing Black Comedy and Vulgar Humor, and Last Man on Earth also being serialized (even more so than B99), while LMS is more of a standard half-hour family-friendly sitcom that leans in a more conservative direction.
• Growing the Beard: The first season was all over the place tonally (a lot of management changes behind the scenes), while season two managed to latch on to a more consistent voice for the show even if the politics was polarizing. But about the time Chuck came into the show his relationship with Mike helped find a middle ground with the political conversations while still being funny.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All the jokes about Eve's friend Cammy being strange and weird became this after it was revealed in "Restaurant Opening" that she's bisexual.
  • "A House Divided" has Mike make a joke how San Diego is a great place if you're not a fan of the poor performing Chargers football team. This episode wound up airing one week after the team's owner announced he was moving them to Los Angeles.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A Running Gag in "Thanksgiving" is that Ryan bet on the Detroit Lions in their annual Thanksgiving game even though they've lost for nine years straight (and do so in the episode). After the episode aired, the Lions broke the streak in Real Life.
  • Ever since the Retool, one of Kristin and Ryan's favorite types of jabs towards Mike was those involving Hillary Clinton's inevitable presidency. As of November 9, 2016, Mike got the last laugh with Donald Trump upsetting her in the 2016 election. Especially funny was the Halloween episode that aired a mere two weeks prior had Mike dress up as Trump and feature a number of jabs, including Chuck also dressing as Trump.
  • In "Hard Ass Teacher", Eve rejects the idea of attending Michigan or Ohio State and being a part of Mike and Vanessa's "rivalry in an irrelevant football conference". Two years later, Ohio State has won a National Championship, Michigan ended its slump, and the Big 10 is considered to be the best overall college football conference.
  • In one episode Mandy makes a joke about Eve being short, only for Eve to point out that she has gotten taller then her in the last year. In season seven, Mandy was recast with Molly McCook, who is significantly taller than both Molly Ephraim and Kaitlyn Dever.
  • The show was dropped by Disney-owned ABC and picked up by Fox... right before Disney bought the network's studio arm that produced it.
  • In one episode, Mike and Eve play go play golf, with Eve whining that she wants to "kill everything that ever lived" due to missing a swing and Mike telling her not to use simple strokes and not "kill" the ball. Years later, Kaitlyn Dever was casted as Abby Anderson, a character with a notorious golf swing, in The Last of Us (2023).
• Informed Wrongness: Mike gets this in season one's "Wherefore Art Thou, Mike Baxter". Outdoor Man is scheduled to take part in a competition with a rival store on a Saturday and Mike is all set to drive to the country and compete. Then Mandy announces that the lead actress in her school play got injured and she will now be taking her place; she expects Mike to attend the show that night, which is right after the competition ends. Mike tries to do the competition and make it to the show, but fails when the contest goes over schedule. Mike is made to be the bad guy for not skipping the competition and has to apologize to her. The thing is, Mandy's play takes place over two weekends with multiple performances that Mike could see, while they couldn't reschedule the skills competition. If anything, Mandy is the one being selfish by expecting Mike to show up to every single show.
• Moral Event Horizon: Many viewers feel that Ryan crossed the line when he blamed Vanessa for the sinkhole that almost got Mike and Boyd killed, then proceeded to fuel the flames in the next episode by forcing Boyd to dress as a lump of coal for Halloween while Vanessa was going through a breakdown due to work stress.
• More Popular Replacement: Jet Jurgensmeyer. Many fans consider him to be a better fit for Boyd than Flynn Morrison due to his more polished acting and chemistry with Tim Allen.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: These days, it's almost impossible for the show to be discussed without any mention of its sudden cancellation by ABC and the rumored political motivations behind the decision (whether they're true or not). A big part of it is that the controversy got an amount of press massively disproportional to the popularity of the actual show, so that it's the only thing a lot of people know about.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Amanda Fuller for the reasons described above. However, after she got involved with the efforts to get the show un-cancelled, most of the fans did a complete 180 on her.
  • Molly McCook is also considered this. Aside from the fact that Molly Ephraim was one of the most popular cast members, the general consensus is that McCook doesn't have the same comedic timing and chemistry with the other characters that made Mandy an Ensemble Dark Horse.
• Retroactive Recognition: Eve dated Scott Summers/Cyclops during seasons three and four.
• Ron the Death Eater: A few viewers like to paint Mike as a conservative bigot who embodies the worst qualities of white masculinity. However, he has been shown to be compassionate toward other people and accepting of marginalized groups such as black people (Chuck is able to joke with him about race because he knows Mike isn't actually racist), the LGBT community (he and Vanessa befriend a lesbian couple in season one), and females (even Kristin calls him a feminist in one episode).
• The Scrappy:
  • Kristin, after the actress change in season two, became a Commander Contrarian who babies her son and acts like a jerk to her parents, who helped support her after she got pregnant in high school, making her come across as a bratty ungrateful bitch to the audience. Thankfully, she underwent some Character Development and by season five she's more of a Base-Breaking Character than a universally hated character.
  • Ryan is also despised for being the embodiment of every negative stereotype about liberals. For right leaning viewers, he goes against everything they believe in; for left leaning viewers, it's a case of Stop Being Stereotypical.
• She Really Can Act: It doesn't surprise people who've seen her other work, but Kaitlyn Dever (Eve) gets a few scenes where she gets to show off her dramatic acting chops.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The show is pretty bad at this with several effects shots clearly being chroma keyed and CGI.
  • Crosses with Stylistic Suck for laughs in Mike's vlog; the effects are exaggerated, very low quality, and clearly done in-house. Sometimes the scene will keep going after the video showing immediately after he finishes shooting, complete with the occasional green screen where effects were added in.
• Spiritual Successor: Thanks to the conservative vs. liberal clash, this show is often seen as one to All in the Family. In this case, it's also a Spiritual Antithesis, as while Archie Bunker was an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, Mike Baxter is this show's viewpoint character and an Author Avatar for Allen himself.
• Strawman Has a Point: In "House of Tutor", while Mike is largely guilty of the same thing, he's right that Vanessa hiring Ryan to be a history tutor for her kids is not a good idea, since the latter has been proven to have an extremely biased view of historical events and figures that could negatively affect the students' performance on standardized exams.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans did not like the changes that took place between season one and two (recasting Kristin, making Ryan a recurring character, putting emphasis on conservative vs. liberal values, etc.)
• Win Back the Crowd: After season two's poor reception, the writers toned down the more overtly political content in seasons three and four, to positive reception from fans.

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