'Last Man Standing' Will Have Tim Allen's Mike Baxter Meet Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor From 'Home Improvement'

Last Man Standing, the Tim Allen sitcom that has somehow been on for eight seasons, is about to crossover with a previous Tim Allen sitcom: Home Improvement. An upcoming episode will have Allen's Last Man Standing character Mike Baxter meet Home Improvement's Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, and I presume all sorts of shenanigans will happen. In the episode, Allen's Last Man Standing character hires a repairman, and wouldn't ya know it? The repairman just happens to be Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor. What are the odds?!

I've never seen a single episode of the Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing, and I don't plan to start anytime soon. But back in the old days, AKA the 1990s, I did indeed watch another Allen sitcom – Home Improvement. In that sitcom, Last Man Standing star Tim Allen played Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, an inept handyman with his own TV show. Tim would navigate through various problems with his family by consulting his mysterious and wise neighbor Wilson. This same exact formula played out again and again for eight seasons. It also helped turn Allen into a star.

Now, 21 years after Home Improvement ended, Allen has another show – Last Man Standing, a sitcom that originated on ABC, got canceled, and was then revived by Fox. The upcoming season of Last Man Standing – season 9 – will bring the show to a close, and they've decided to go ahead and create a crossover event in this final season just for fun. In the show, Allen plays Mike Baxter, "an executive at a sporting goods store chain headquartered in Denver, Colorado, who is a married father of three daughters and a grandfather to his eldest daughter's son." In the upcoming season 9 episode "Dual Time," "The Baxters see double when Vanessa hires a home improvement repairman (Allen) who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mike (Allen), who is struggling with an idea for his Outdoor Man 10th Anniversary vlog."

We've all been there, right? I mean, who among us hasn't struggled with ideas for an Outdoor Man 10th Anniversary vlog only to then encounter a doppelganger?

I'm not exactly sure how the show is going to explain that Tim Taylor looks exactly like Mike Baxter, but maybe they don't have to explain it. Who am I to dictate the rules of Last Man Standing? The Last Man Standing season 9 premiere is set for January 3. The big crossover episode will arrive a week later on January 7. In the meantime, you can watch a snippet of the fateful moment Tim Allen meets Tim Allen in this season 9 teaser.