I’ll start out by saying that I’m anything but a fan of Tim Allen’s. I never did get his standup act and I was not a viewer of HOME IMPROVEMENT, his breakthrough sitcom that eclipsed even ROSEANNE as the number one half-hour on network television for a good part of the early ’90s. And the only reason I even watched his more recent effort, LAST MAN STANDING, is that it led into an otherwise forgettable half-hour I worked on called DR. KEN and the folks I worked with who thought it was horrid insisted I at least try and explain why its ratings were consistently superior to ours. (Hint: Try watching an episode, particularly in the second season, of DR. KEN; the answer should be obvious).
And I know folks that have met him and let’s just say the characters he portrays are extensions of his actual self. Which usually means misogynist, opinionated, and what would come off as red-pilled. Difficult is the kindest adjective I’ve seen applied to him. A few others arent fit for sharing on a platform where hate speech is still grounds for suspension.
So I had minimal expectations and even less desire to watch his latest effort, SHIFTING GEARS, and the fact that it debuted last week at a time when my local ABC station was running wall-to-wall breaking news coverage of the devastating fires made it impossible to do without pivoting to Hulu. And honestly, every time I seem to sign on to that platform I have sign-on issues (sometimes true with ESPN+ as well, AIger-heads) and unless it’s something I really want to watch, like new episodes of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING or THE BEAR, I move on.
From the reviews I read both from experts and those willing to share on my social media sites, I was hardly encouraged to even give the show a shot. Among the kinder ones I’ve seen was from THE DECIDER’s prolific Joel Keller:
(I)n a new ABC sitcom, Allen is playing someone who is even more ranty than his first two sitcom characters in a Boomers vs. Millennials battle. Will his new ranting character get schooled by his daughter, played by fellow sitcom vet Kat Dennings (Two Broke Girls)? OUR CALL: SKIP IT. Given how amped up Tim Allen’s “Angry Conservative Guy” persona is in Shifting Gears, and how poorly it plays against Dennings’ comedic style, we’re not sure the show will be able to balance the comedic with the emotional.
And the aggregate opinion of critics being culled on ROTTEN TOMATOES is far less kind. Its TOMATOMETER currently stands at 45%; 43% among “top critics”. That ain’t good.
But in the aftermath of being lulled to sleep by the surprisingly non-competitive Vikings-Rams game Monday night and awakening to a delayed broadcast of WHEEL OF FORTUNE, I noticed that KABC had shoehorned in an extra run of the pilot as filler between that and its late news. Being too exhausted and lazy to even switch channels, I allowed myself to sample it. Besides, I confess I have found the alluring Jennings a guilty pleasure since she and Beth Behrs snarked their way through hipster Brooklyn on the far more ubiquitously scheduled 2BG in what frequently came off as a lame attempt to channel LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY through the millennial sex-obsessed eyes of co-creator Whitney Cummings. I figured maybe there’d be a little cleavage to keep me awake.
Guess what? I kinda liked it. And as someone who has worked with countless shows that are not my personal cup of tea, in hindsight it’s easy to see why.
Allen’s shtick is, if nothing else, popular. ABC and Disney have made hundreds of millions off of him; his two prior series produced 397 well-sold episodes of content between them. And for as one-note and freshmanic an effort that 2BG was, that still made it through six seasons and somehow always managed to be on after whatever big sports event or TBS original I needed to monitor. And just as Allen is relying upon trademarks of his prior characters, Jennings is playing what is clearly a later-life extension of the slutty, sweet and emotionally abused Max she portrayed, and even the shockingly knowledgable Bat Mitzvah girl that one-upped Samantha Jones’ knowledge of fellatio on SEX AND THE CITY. In the pilot, her character reenters Allen’s life in dramatic and familiar style, as Keller recounts:
A beat-up old GTO rolls into the shop, which Matt recognizes as his old car. Out of it comes the person who took it 17 years prior: His daughter Riley (Kat Dennings), along with her teenage son Carter (Maxwell Simkins) and tween daughter Georgia (Barrett Margolis).
The two have been mostly estranged since Riley got pregnant at 18 and decided to get married to a musician. “He’s not a musician! He’s a bass player!” rants Matt. The last time they saw each other was at the funeral of Matt’s wife/Riley’s mom, and she only gave him a nod. Now she’s divorced and broke, and drove from Vegas to her former California home because she didn’t have anywhere else to turn.
The ensuing scenes were clearly designed from the playbook of sitcom veterans looking to sell a concept. The kids are modern day comedy stereotypes: Carter is a bit pudgy, awkward and lacks confidence; Georgia an over-the-top overachiever who has apparently watched a lot of Lisa Simpson in her time. The supporting cast is filled with familiar faces and utility roles: Seann William Scott is Allen’s overly loyal sidekick who still pines for Riley; the inspiring Daryl “Chill” Mitchell delivers one-liners from his wheelchair with his usual “don’t f–k with me” ‘tude. But one of the final scenes brought it all home for me, and as someone who’s helped producers introduce plot lines at particular times to evoke maximum audience reaction and test dial trajectory, I recognized it for the “awww” moment that it was. And apparently so did Keller:
(T)here’s a genuine moment in the first episode where Matt and Riley both mourn the fact that Riley’s mother is gone, and you can see where the show may be headed if (current showrunner Michelle) Nader can straighten things out. There was an emotional connection between the stars that the previous 15 minutes of the show would have never indicated could happen, but it worked and it made the episode more than just a collection of Allen rants and other assorted gags.
It got me enough to DVR last night’s second episode just to see how aberrative the pilot may have been. It wasn’t. We meet another apparent semi-regular in the appealing Brenda Song, who worshipped Riley in high school and has somehow now become its assistant principal, which natch is where Carter is now being enrolled. She’s yet again playing a character that reminds us how sexually repressed so many Disney sitcom characters may have been; revealing she has a mad crush on Scott’s character. But in that same scene Jennings drops her guard and confesses her current state of affairs, once again producing that “awww” moment. You can practically predict this will be a love triangle and likely a catfight at some point.
Yes, I gave it a chance, and apparently I’m not alone, as SCREEN RANT’s
Tim Allen’s new ABC sitcom, Shifting Gears, is off to a strong start and marks a major improvement for its timeslot. TVLine reports that Shifting Gears is off to a strong start in terms of viewership, debuting with 6.1 million viewers and a 0.7 in the key 18-49 demographic. It did better than The Golden Bachelorette, in addition to besting other ABC sitcoms like The Goldbergs and The Conners, which were previously in the Wednesday 8 p.m. timeslot. Allen and Dennings’ new series came close to having the biggest audience of the night, coming in slightly behind NBC’s Chicago Med, which had 6.2 million viewers.
And even the qualitative sentiment suggests upside. The POPCORNMETER side of ROTTEN TOMATOES has the populists weighing in at a current score of 69%–not in the league of more ambitious originals, but a full 53% higher than those elitist critics. It hardly seems compatible with its lead-out ABBOTT ELEMENTARY, but in a world where time-shifting is the norm, it may not need to be. And as even Keller confessed after his “skip it” review, it’s a show starring Tim Allen, so it might run well into the 2030s.
They’ve got a long way to go to meet that goal but history suggests they’ve at least got a shot. They even found a way to get me to give them one. Without any cleavage or catfight.
Until next time…