Last Man Standing showrunner Kevin Abbott opened up on this most unexpected of crossovers. "We had already broken the first seven episodes when Fox, as they always do, asked, 'Hey, is there some big event, or something grabby you can have as your premiere?' And I just hate those," he recalled. "I tend to think of our show as a small show, you know? We tell small stories - so, by definition, something big and stunty really doesn't happen on our show. "It was [writer] Jon Haller who said, 'We've had a lot of the Home Improvement people on, and the only major character we haven't had is Tim ...