It welcomes Tim Allen to the world of multi-camera sitcoms for his third appearance on a strong note. “Home Improvement” ran for eight seasons on ABC and was probably the show that made him a movie star. Last Man Standing, which saw him return to television after 10 years in movies, finished airing for nine seasons (six on ABC and three on FOX) in 2021. And here he is again on ABC in “Shifting.” “Gears” opens Wednesday, but even if the past is a prelude, Allen is just 71 years old and would like you to know he’s wearing a tight T-shirt, which would put him in his 80s.
Allen plays Matt, who owns a garage that specializes in vintage and custom cars, importing cars that are of Allen’s own interest. (Here we have Daryl Mitchell as Stitch, a wisecracking wisecracker, and Seann William Scott as Gabriel, handsome and amiable but a little dim.) Back to Matt’s life, literally. When she leaves her musician boyfriend, pregnant, in the dirty Pontiac GTO she stole from him 15 years ago, his daughter Riley (Kat Dennings) arrives. The musician is getting divorced and has two children, Carter (Maxwell Simkins), a moony teenager, and Georgia, a cheerful young girl who has feelings for Lori, an inventor and “Shark Tank” panelist. I need a place with (Barrett Margolis). Greiner dreams of becoming a millionaire. (The children are excellent.)
“Well, I hope you find a man who is okay with his wife making more money than him,” says Matt, an old-school guy.
“I don’t need a man to feel complete,” Georgia replies.
“If you want to kill a spider, the guy’s gonna look pretty good.”
“I have shoes.”
Father and daughter have been more or less estranged since Riley’s mother died many years ago, and the children know about their grandfather. She was the bridge that allowed them to have a relationship. Riley, a former wild child who was voted “mean for no reason” in her high school class, tries to raise her children with a sensibility that Matt considers “that’s how it was in my day.” There is. Therefore, they must learn to get along well under the same roof. You get the picture.
Allen plays Matt, a widowed owner of a classic car restoration shop whose estranged daughter Riley (Dennings) and her children come back into his life. Mr. Dennings (left), Mr. Maxwell Simkins, Mr. Barrett Margolis, Mr. Allen, and Mr. Sean William Scott.
(Raymond Liu/Disney)
When “Last Man Standing,” in which Allen played a dissimilar character, aired in 2011, we were in the third year of the first Obama administration, and the show with a conservative protagonist was , had a slightly different role than in 2011. TV ecosystem. Now, on the verge of heaven, such a character reads as something endearing, almost suitably mean. Matt reads the Wall Street Journal and accuses TV pundits of “telling me what to think about the news, as if I’m too stupid to form my own angry opinion.” When Stitch, anticipating Matt’s rant, says, “Let me guess, we’re all going to go to hell in a handcage,” Matt replies: We make excuses, quit smoking or have diabetes, and celebrities use diabetes medications to lose weight. He described Gabriel’s dirty hat as looking like “an ordinary hat that has been left in Portland for too long.”
This kind of softball jape tenor can make “Shifting Gears” feel dated. There’s a certain subservience to the show’s sociopolitical humor, meant to give the characters something to do rather than say something substantive about “how we live now.” Exists. And no one is batting hard. After all, this is a show about loving a difficult relationship and putting aside differences. (Riley: “Why don’t we just talk to each other like rational adults? Matt: “Have you watched the news lately? That’s not relevant anymore.”) The classic one.
Allen and Dennings immediately create a satisfying combination of hostility and affection. They both know how to do sitcoms filmed in front of an audience. (Dennings spent six seasons on “2 Broke Girls.”) They’re so good at talking to each other, so good at not knowing exactly what to say. One tender moment, side by side on the sofa, he touched her leg, not knowing how to reach out. As far as the new Tim Allen here, it’s the one who almost burst into tears remembering his late wife and the flour sifter he was careful not to clean. But his arrogant character always had a soft center. (And who really needs a new Tim Allen?)
“It was really different here,” he tells Riley. “I think the reason I watch the news in the morning is because I hear a woman’s voice, even if it’s Nancy Pelosi’s voice.”
“Well, I’m annoyed by the way she’s trying to save democracy.”
The series was created by Mike Scully and Julie Tucker Scully, the writers of “The Simpsons” and co-creators with Amy Poehler of the animated series “Duncanville.” They reportedly left after the pilot (directed by John Paskin, who directed about a fifth of Home Improvement and more than a third of Last Man Standing episodes). That’s probably the reason for the second episode (I was only able to watch two episodes). — I feel like I’m having trouble concentrating.
It’s no detriment to the series that there’s nothing new here. Political differences between the close-knit sitcom family go back at least to “All in the Family,” which had been off the air for nearly a decade when Dennings was born. Adult children living with their parents, or parents living with their children (see “Lopez vs. Lopez,” currently in its third season on NBC), is an old theme on television, bringing as many generations as possible into the triplex. I like to pack it into a wall set. A formula is a formula because it’s consistent, reliable, and doesn’t give surprising results.
