Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Last Man Standing Season 9 episode "Meatless Mike." Read at your own risk!
Last Man Standing has had an unconventional run of nine seasons on television, and fans are enjoying the final season as the series works to close out its story. Well, I'm assuming they still are after the latest episode, which horrified me to no end with a very bizarre cameo by a horrifying Tim Allen puppet.
I guess technically, the puppet was Mike Baxter and was part of an episode that featured notorious ventriloquist comedian Jeff Dunham. It made sense that Last Man Standing would want to lean on the wealth of material one can pull from ventriloquism, but they went just a hair too far, in my opinion, at the episode's end. Mike's vlog sequence was done entirely by a puppet, but viewers can't possibly fathom how just bizarre and creepy this thing looks without seeing it.
To be perfectly clear, I just want to say that I think this puppet barely resembles Tim Allen or Mike Baxter. I also have to say that the puppet was not even a ventriloquist doll made up to the standard of a Jeff Dunham performance, so I think I'm more than fair here in saying it was more disturbing than enjoyable for me to watch. I suppose I could've just switched the channel as the video blog portion of Last Man Standing is of little consequence to the plot of an episode, but I just couldn't bring myself to look away.
I will give credit to the Last Man Standing team though, in finding a way to incorporate Jeff Dunham into an episode to begin with, and Jeff feuding with Ed over Twitter was an enjoyable subplot. I was truly having a good time until that nightmare of a puppet got involved, and now I'm just wondering if I'll be able to come back from it.
And if you think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, keep in mind this is not the first time Tim Allen has subjected the world to a disturbing puppet likeness of himself. Before he was giving me nightmares on Last Man Standing, Tim Taylor was trying to teach his son a lesson with a puppet way back when on Season 2 of Home Improvement!
Is Tim Allen the first actor on television to have brought in two distinctly different puppets of himself in different roles? I don't have an answer to that, and at this point, I just can't. Hopefully, the moment was enjoyed by some, and if so, I can suck it up and tune in next week despite any nightmares that come.
Last Man Standing airs on Fox Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. ET. The final season has been a fun ride the whole way, despite some weird rumors about deaths in the cast.
