"Last Man Standing is recorded in front of a live studio audience." "Okay, people." "I've decided where I want to go to college." "What's your rush, huh?" "You're just a sophomore." "Unless you've decided on the Ohio State University, in which case, what took you so long?" "I'm not leaning toward the Ohio State University, mostly because its alumni insist on calling it "the" Ohio State University." "Mike:" "Well, it sounds better than the safety school of the midwest." "Well, I suppose you want her to go to your precious Michigan." "I love Eve, but I'd rather someone go there that can help them with the football team." "Michigan still has a football team?" "This is gonna be a much better year this year." "Guys!" "Guys!" "We'll go to a... as much as I would love to be part of a rivalry in an irrelevant football conference, I'm not going to either of those." "And the best part is the school won't cost you anything, dad." "Nothing?" "I'm in." " Nope." "Honey, we're gonna get a new boat!" "You know what?" "We could even call it "The Scholarship."" "[Laughs]" "Well, surprise." "What school?" "West point." "Military school?" "What parent wouldn't be happy that their kid picked West Point?" "Well, right off the top of my head, Mr. and Mrs. Gandhi." "I never got Gandhi anyway." "He wore a diaper, didn't like food." "Why would you need the diaper?" "Well, it's pretty tough to get in, so I'll have to maintain my straight a's." "Right, right, right." "Yeah, but, honey, wait." "With those grades, you could go anywhere, even the Ohio State University." "Yeah, yeah, mom." "I got it." "It's the Harvard of central Ohio." "Look..." "I want to be an army ranger, not a buckeye." "There you go." "You got to go with her on this." "Your mascot is basically an acorn wearing a cardigan." "Hey, Mr. B." "I'm almost done with the rock-climbing display, but I'm having a little trouble with the sign." "Well, work at it." "Reading can be very difficult, Kyle." "Excuse me." "Oh." "You look like you're in charge." "You see that?" "You've got the chiseled features of a leader." "Also, his face is on that poster." "Uh, I know that poster has a big smile that says "welcome,"" "but it should be saying, "this is for employees only."" "Oh, well, that... that's what we're doing here." "Jason would like to be an employee." "Shake the man's hand, Jason." "Did you wash after using the lavatory?" "I'm gonna need an answer to that, son." "The man you want to talk to is right behind you... the owner of the store, Ed Alzate." "Ed, you might want to think twice about shaking this young man's hand." "Wendi Grayson." "Hi." "And my son, Jason." "Jason Grayson." "Now, who would do that to a kid?" "[Chuckles]" "Jason, tell him why we're here." "Jason filled out an application for a job here in your store, and he hasn't heard anything back in three days." "He's very upset." "I-I-I can see that." "Are we in any danger?" "Jason's off for the summer, and he needs something to do with all of that energy." "Mm-hmm." "I do stuff." "You won't be sorry, Mr. Alzate." "He's intelligent." "He can type on that thing without even looking." "Ah." "Watch." "Jason." "See?" "Look at that." "Tell him about your positive attributes." "I'm hard-working." "I'm conscientious." "And?" "You're a self starter." "Oh." "Well, we're always looking for a kid like that." "Come back when you're him." "His father is dead." "Mrs. Grayson, this is very unusual." "I've never had someone bring his mother to a job interview before." "Well, that's my Jason." "He is one in a million." "He'll be very reliable, and he'll be on time every day because I will be driving him." "What time shall I have him here in the morning?" "You mean tomorrow morning?" "That works for us." "Say, "Thank you," Jason." "You're welcome." "What's happening?" "A little low on the left." "Uh, my left or your left?" "We're facing the same direction." "I'll turn around." "Mike, thanks for dumping that woman off on me." "Sorry about that, but I had to get out of there." "I ended up hiring her son." "Well, put him in the stockroom." "We need another doorstop." "Why did you hire that kid?" "Well, we need some extra help, and he can't be worse than the other college kids who apply." ""Can't be worse than the other kids"..." "there's a resume topper." "All right." "That's perfect, Kyle." "Now put the fake rocks back up at the top, and then we're all set." "Yes, sir." "You know, I blame the parents." "You know, they pamper their kids." "That's why they end up living at home until they're 30." "They're called millennials." "You know why?" "'Cause it takes 1,000 years to get them out of the damn house." "Eve's not taking the easy way out." "Hmm." "Guess where she wants to go to college." "West point." "Oh, come on." "Yeah." "Now, you see that?" "You raised a good one, Mikey." "Yeah." "Yes, yes." "I guess there are a few competent young people left." "Mr. B my arm's stuck." "Here's what you do." "Use your belt as a tourniquet, bite down on it I'll be back in 127 hours." "You mind doing that somewhere else?" "You're making a racket with all that folding." "I don't know." "I guess I used too much shout and cheer." "[Chuckles]" "Why are you being such a grump?" "I'm sorry." "I got a "C" on my last geometry test." "That's not gonna get me into West Point." "Mm, West Point?" "That bar on leetsdale?" "I get in there all the time." "You just got to tell the bouncer that you left your phone in the ladies' room." "I'm talking about getting into the most prestigious military academy in the world." "Well, try the phone thing there." "It's never not worked." "Well, I would be getting an "A" in geometry if my teacher was anybody but Hardin." "Oh, I had hard-ass Hardin." "Yeah, I had Hardin, too." "God, I loved him." "[Chuckles] You also had a baby in high school, so when you say "loved"..." "He was a great teacher." "[Gasps] Of what?" "Geometry." "I can't believe Hardin's still teaching there." "Oh, he's still there, crushing the college dreams of a sweet, young girl who just wants to learn how to shoot people." "Just do what I did." "Just switch to the easier geometry teacher." "You just download the schedule-change form and you get mom or dad to sign it for you." "Dude, I switched classes, and I ended up with a gentleman's "C"..." "By copying off the gentleman next to me." "You know, Eve, uh, Hardin's actually really good at tutoring his students." "Really?" "That's your advice, Kristin?" "[Scoffs] Ask a man for help?" "Feminism called, and they were like, "Where's Kristin?"" "I was like, "Um, just in the kitchen folding her boyfriend's underwear."" "And they were like, "Ew." "Gross."" "And I was like, "Totes."" "Oh, hey." "Uh, can I get your autograph?" "Boy, there's something a geologist never hears." "What is it, honey?" "Uh, just a class schedule change form, strictly boilerplate stuff." "I'm switching geometry classes so I'll have a free period to hit the books before softball practice." "Oh, all right." "Yeah." "Sounds smart." "Yep." "These wheels are always turning." "Hold up there, proud Mary." "What class are you transferring out of?" "Geometry with Mr. Hardin." "Oh." "Isn't he the tough one the kids call "hard-ass"?" "Probably." "Kids can be really mean, you know?" "Uh, hey, will you just sign where I put the arrow sticker?" "That'd be great." "Hold on a second." "What the heck's going on with you?" "Look at her." "Sweating like a drug mule going through customs." "Okay, fine." "Hardin is killing me, okay?" "He gave me a "C" on my last test." "I don't get C's." "I can't get C's." "You really disappoint me trying to pull something over on me and, secondly, thinking that you could pull something over on me." "I'm sorry, but this teacher is like some sadistic monster who hates the young." "You know, I'll bet he orders veal even though he doesn't like veal just so they have to torture another little calf to make more veal." "Why don't we have more veal?" "[Sighs]" "You know, a lot of other parents complain about this Hardin." "He holds the kids to a ridiculously high standard." "I like this guy." "Yeah, of course you do." "Hard-ass, high standards... that's looking back at me every time I look at the mirror." "Okay, well, your hero's gonna keep me out of West Point." "If he gets tough, honey, you just get tougher." "Yeah, but it's all or nothing with this guy, dad." "You do all the right things to solve a math problem, but if you make one tiny mistake at the end, he marks the whole thing wrong." "What?" "!" "If you get a wrong answer, he marks it wrong?" "!" "Dad..." "Where's this guy from, north Korea?" "Dad, I'm still gonna be learning geometry." "I'll just be getting an "A"" "like I do in all my other honors classes." "You're running from a challenge." "That doesn't sound like someone going to West Point, unless the West Point's somewhere in France." "You know, I think Eve's being smart about this." "By going to a dumber class?" "No." "Wait, no, no, no." "Gpa is very important." "I know that." "Getting into college..." "it's insanely competitive." "I-I doubt that I would get accepted at Ohio State now." "Sure you would have." "They take anybody." "Mr. Alzate, just a heads up." "Mrs. Grayson is here to see you." "Who?" "Like, this tall, real pushy, has a long list of ways I'm not as good as her son, Jason." "Oh, God." "Tell her I'm not here." "Mr. Alzate is not here." "Thanks for the help, Kyle." "I just came by to say thank you for giving my Jason the job." "You're welcome." "Yeah, he came home yesterday and told me all about his first day." "Apparently, it was..." "How did he put it? "Fine."" "You know, I don't get it." "I have layers and layers of employees just to keep this from happening." "Oh." "I-I don't mean to intrude." "I just..." "I came to bring Jason his lunch." "Which one of these offices is his?" "Jason doesn't have an office." "H-he's working in the stockroom." "[Chuckles] How will you recognize his potential if he's hidden away in a stockroom?" "Give him that boy's job." "Uh, Mrs. Grayson..." "Wendi." "Yes. [Chuckles]" "Y-your son is a part-time seasonal employee." "I shouldn't even know his name." "I sure as hell shouldn't know his mother's." "I'm sorry, Mr. Alzate." "I just..." "Jason is all I have in the world right now, and the house seems so empty and quiet, and when he's gone," "I-I find myself talking to the dent he left in the couch." "Mrs. Grayson, flip the cushion and move on." "This is not good for Jason or for you, either." "Just find something else to focus on." "Yeah." "Maybe you're right." "How are you feeling, Mr. Alzate?" "I have... a slight headache, but I'm pretty sure it will be gone soon." "I-I noticed a little bit of cloudiness on your tongue when you were shouting at me." "[Chuckling] I wasn't shouting." "How cloudy?" "Open." "Oh, that's bad." "You've got to sit down." "I'm gonna..." "I'm gonna have you try something." "I made it for Jason, but you need it much, much more." "I'm fine." "I'm fine." "I-I won't take "no" for an answer." "I just gave your kid a job." "You won't take "yes" for an answer." "Oh, come on, please." "This is... you know, this is very tasty." "Yeah." "I call it my niacin pasta... mmm." "Yeah." "...because instead of flour, I use niacin." "Well, this is... this is quite delicious." "Mmm." "Trust me." "You're gonna get a "thank you" note from your colon." "I doubt that." "No one writes notes anymore." "[Both laugh]" "Uh, excuse me." "Mr. Hardin?" "Come in." "Come in." "Mrs. Baxter." "Oh." "Hey." "Please tell Eve her ex-boyfriend Andrew said, "hello."" "And that he hasn't moved on." "At all." "Uh, well, I'll tell Eve that you said, "hello,"" "and for your sake, I'll leave out the last part." "Oh, my." "Is that boy wearing a dunce cap?" "[Chuckles] Oh, no." "I could never get away with being that insensitive to kids in this day and age." "It's a genius cap." "This genius forgot to do his homework." "Isn't that humiliating?" "Well, that's the kind of question I would expect from a genius." "All right, Thomas." "Your time is up." "Next time, I'll make you sit in the wobbly chair." "It doesn't sound like much, but after 20 minutes, you just want to scream." "Oh." "It's like reggae." "Uh, how can I help you, Mrs. Baxter?" "Uh, well, actually, I'm here for Eve." "Uh, she's... how can I put this?" "She's... she's not enjoying her experience in your class." "Well, fun isn't really the objective in my classroom." "That's why I removed the bouncy house." "No, w-what I mean is she's frustrated." "I mean, she's... she's even talking about a transfer." "No, no." "She can't!" "I-I mean, uh..." "I-I purposely failed the entrance exam for a.P. Calculus just so I could be in here with her." "[Laughing] Oh, Andrew." "Please go." "And you don't have to be so..." "Desperate." "Haven't you heard?" "Your kind rules the world." "You mean asthmatics?" "I'm, uh..." "I'm sorry to hear Eve's considering a transfer." "She's, uh, one of my best students." "Well, then why does she keep getting c's?" "Isn't there something that she can do to get better grades on your tests?" "Oh, absolutely." "Get more of the answers right." "I mean, what if she took a retest of... of the last test or maybe, um, earned some extra credit or..." "or something to raise her grade?" "Ah, you're one of those." "No, no, I'm not." "I-I... wait, what?" "One of what?" "One of those parents who comes in here demanding I give their kid a better grade." "Yeah, okay, all right." "Well, if I'm one of those, then I'm one of the good ones." "Mrs. Baxter, I've been teaching the same material the same way for 40 years." "Every year, the grades go down and the pressure from the parents goes up." "But the math stays the same." ""A" squared plus "B" squared equals...?" ""C" squared!" "I-I know that." "I just..." "I didn't know you were..." "wanted... never mind." "I am not going to lower my standards, and no amount of parental coercion is going to change that." "And you know why?" ""C" squared." "Because every day, I drive back and forth across the 19th Street Bridge, and every day, I pray that the men and women who built that bridge learned their math from teachers who demanded the best from them." "Uh, Eve has her heart set on West Point." "She's not so interested in building bridges as she is in blowing them up." "Come on." "Isn't there something you can do to help her get an "a"?" "Yes." "I can let her take geometry from someone else." "Mr. Jory's class." "She'll like him." "He's hip..." "Plays the banjo." "Hey." "Mike Baxter here for Outdoor Man." "Hey, check it out." "Look at him, scaling that thing like a surefooted Mountain goat." "The truth is he's getting a little help." "I'm climbing!" "He's basically doing nothing." "I made it, Mr. B. I'm on top of the world!" "This is what America's come to." "Real accomplishment plays second fiddle to just feeling good about ourselves... feeling good whether we earned it or not." "U.S.A.!" "U.S.A.!" "We love to say America's number one." "But are we?" "Our students rank 30th in math, 23rd in science, and 20th in reading." "Well, what are we number one in?" "I'll tell you." "Self-esteem." "Yeah." "We're a nation of confident idiots." "It's our fault as parents." "Our little darlings scribble on a piece of paper, and we praise it." ""Oh, that's beautiful art."" "Really?" "Green dog with eight legs?" "That shouldn't bump the domino's coupon off the fridge." "We demand our eggs be grade "a"" "while we give our kids a free pass." "We expect less from our children than we do from our poultry." "Let's stop babying this generation, people, and sharpen them up!" "Oh, by the way, all hunting blades on sale this week at Outdoor Man." "Hey, come on, guys." "Coffee's on me." "Wait." "How do I get down?" "A kid from Asia would figure it out." "So, I'll bet Hardin's class was easy to find." "You just follow the sounds of screaming children." "[Chuckles]" "Yeah, you know, I saw your friend Andrew there." "He really likes you." "Yeah." "He follows me around at school." "It's sort of a "Mary's little lamb" situation." "I can see what you mean about Hardin." "Not only is he tough on kids, but he's not too crazy about parents, either." "Don't even get him started on reggae." "Hey, guys." "Hey." "Eve:" "Hi." "What's going on?" "Well, I went to see Hardin today." "You know what, honey?" "He is a lot like you." "You would've loved him." "Doesn't sound like you did. [Sighs]" "If he reminds you of me, that makes me wonder." "Maybe this whole thing's built on sand." "Hmm." "Hmm-hmm-hmm." "Well, he signed Eve's transfer, but I want to run it by you first, because you felt pretty strongly." "I do feel strongly about it." "But this is Eve's decision." "Really?" "This isn't a trick?" "Oh." "Goodbye, Hardin." "Hello, banjo boy." "[Imitates banjo playing]" "Well, look at that." "Looks like you got what you wanted." "Wait." "Hey, dad." "I'm sorry." "But all joking aside, I have tried and tried with this guy, and no matter how hard I work, he's never gonna give me an "A."" "So if I'm heading towards a minefield, isn't it better to just go around it?" "What you're doing is the smart and practical thing, but it's also the easy thing, and I don't think the easy thing is always the right thing." "Well, I know I'm disappointing you." "Believe me, it's not the easy thing." "I think you're being a little hard on Eve." "You know, I look at her as a diamond, right?" "Yeah." "You know, and a diamond is just a piece of coal that stuck it out." "If she gets in the college of her dreams, that's great, but I wish that she'd do it as the diamond that she is." "But a diamond is also produced by withstanding intense pressure." "Right." "That's what Eve just did." "Honey, she just stood up to the toughest, most important person in her life." "That's what a diamond is." "Okay." "That was a good observation." "Especially coming from somebody that went to the Ohio State University." "Hey, Mr. Alzate." "Just a heads up." "Jason Grayson's mom is here to see you." "Yeah, all the guys in the stockroom think she's, um, a [Whistles]" "Blblblblb!" "[Chuckles]" "If you've never seen a cartoon, I-I probably looked pretty foolish right there." "I get it." "They think she's crazy, huh?" "You know why Mrs. Grayson is stopping by, Kyle?" "Hmm?" "She's meeting me to go out on our date." "A date?" "Mm-hmm." "Like people do when they're a man and a woman?" "Yes, yes." "She's a lovely, caring woman, and I feel fortunate that she's agreed to go out with me." "I guess I should just, uh, exit stage right." "It's another cartoon thing." "Kyle." "Ah." "Hello, Eddie." "Well, well, well, well." "Look at you." "Shall we?" "Hmm?" "[Chuckles]" "You wearing the insoles I got for you?"