Sending fathers across America scrambling to their garages, so as to surreptitiously wipe away their tears of joy—and also to grab another beer, since they’re out there anyway—ABC has announced that Jay Leno will be guesting on the fifth season of Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing. In a nice nod toward self-awareness, Leno will play a salesman who refuses to stop showing up in people’s homes to talk about cars all the time, even when every logical reason for him to be there has been thoroughly exhausted. (NBC’s new automotive series, Jay Leno’s Garage, is planned to debut in October.)
This is actually the second time Leno has appeared as a character on one of his fellow car-buff’s sitcoms; he showed up as a mechanic in an episode of Home Improvement, because, in case you hadn’t heard, Jay Leno really, really likes cars. It’s nice to see Last Man Standing comment on the talk show host’s well-known loquaciousness on the subject; we can only hope the show’s writers will tap into his other notable traits as well, perhaps by having Leno’s character sabotage the vehicle in question, then take it back and drive it around for a while, before ultimately tossing the keys off to a grinning Jimmy Fallon. Last Man Standing returns on Sept. 25.
