‘Last Man Standing’: Mandy Decides to Move out After Heartwarming Mother-Daughter Moment

This week’s episode of Last Man Standing featured a major turning point in the Baxter family, after Mandy and husband Kyle finally decided to move out. Vanessa was not ready to have a completely empty nest though, and tried to derail their plans at every turn.

At the start of “Arrest Her Development,” Vanessa (Nancy Travis) told Mike (Tim Allen) the good news: Mandy (Molly McCook) and Kyle (Christoph Sanders) were going out apartment hunting.

“They say a man should never dance unless he’s being shot at, but this is a special occasion,” Mike said before throwing out his back while dancing.

Mandy and Kyle then announced they found the “perfect” place. While Mike went off to the pot shop to go over financial reports with Ryan (Jordan Masterson), Vanessa agreed to join the young couple to check out the apartment.

While Mandy and Kyle loved everything about the apartment, Vanessa tried to lower their excitement. She was making it obvious — well, at least obvious to Jen (Krista Marie Yu) — that she was not ready to see Mandy and Kyle move out. When the landlord called Vanessa, who was listed as their reference, she just listed everything wrong with the apartment.

Vanessa’s shenanigans ended up getting Mandy and Kyle rejected from every apartment they applied to. This forced them to apply for apartments in some questionable parts of town, which worried Vanessa even more.

“Some of these apartments even rent by the hour!” Vanessa pointed out.

“Mom, this is just a starter place. How long do you think we’ll actually be there?” Mandy said. “Three… four thousand hours?”

Mandy and Kyle headed off to the dump apartments, and Vanessa started making some calls as they left.

“And these are the stories my father doesn’t believe when I write home,” Jen chimed in.

Later, Mandy figured out that Vanessa was the reason why no one was accepting their applications. Vanessa admitted she just wanted to make sure she and Kyle are safe, but Mandy said that is not her job any longer.

“I’m not a little girl any more,” Mandy said. “My God, I am six-feet tall!”

“Yeah, I know and at that last place, if I hadn’t stopped you that ceiling fan would have chopped your head right off!”

Mandy accused Vanessa of thinking she and Kyle could not get along without her and Mike. She told her mother to stop treating them like children.

Mike later suggested a place to Mandy and Kyle, but the conversation was derailed when Mandy kept bringing up how protective Vanessa was being. Surprisingly, Vanessa liked the place and suggested they take it, but was clearly not happy.

Mandy left the room to talk with Vanessa, who opened up about what was wrong. Vanessa apologized for interfering in the apartment hunt, which Mandy agreed with.

Vanessa explained that it was getting difficult to picture Mandy and Kyle moving out because they had grown so close in the past year, with Kristin (Amanda Fuller) and Eve (Kaitlyn Dever) both already moved out.

“I feel like we’ve become more than mother and daughter,” Vanessa said.

“We’ve become friends,” Mandy chimed in.

“Yeah, really, really good friends. It’s just hard to watch you go,” Vanessa said through tears.

Mandy reminded Vanessa they could still hang out together, even if she no longer lives in the Baxter home, and Mandy assured Vanessa she will be welcome to help out at any time.

In the last scene of the episode, Vanessa tried to teach Mandy how to cook chicken.

“In 15 minutes, you have dinner!” Vanessa said.

“How do we know when 15 minutes is up? Do we have a timer?” Mandy asked.

“Well, in a way… Fifteen minutes is, give or take, half a glass of wine.”

New episodes of Last Man Standing air Fridays on FOX at 8 p.m. ET.

Photo credit: Michael Becker/FOX