‘Shifting Gears’ Review: Tim Allen Revs Up His Angry Rich Guy Routine for a Sitcom Stuck Idling

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When Tim Allen returned to network TV the first time — for “Last Man Standing,” 12 years after “Home Improvement” ended (and one year after his feature directorial debut, “Crazy on the Outside,” bombed) — he said he’d been approached with a number of offers. “But I’m no idiot,” Allen claimed. “I said, ‘Show me what you got.'” So, per Allen, he and “Last Man Standing” creator Jack Burditt hashed things out over a few late-night writing sessions, and ta-da, a sitcom worthy of Tim Taylor was born.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and argue the series was the second coming of “Tool Time,” but I will concede it was a sitcom suited to its star. Among many conservative-courting conversation starters, “Last Man Standing” trotted out predictable jokes about PC language, high taxes, and wimpy kids, all while Allen’s Mike Baxter routinely positioned himself as the victim (despite owning a very successful company, enjoying a comfortable upper-class lifestyle, and generally doing whatever he wants). In 2018, it made perfect sense for Fox to revive the canceled show: Donald Trump was settling into his first term, broadcast TV was losing viewers, and there was a general sense in Hollywood that they could churn out a few hits by playing to the president’s fanbase. Not only was Allen a known conservative, but his series spoke to the same sense of righteous indignation felt by the MAGA clan.

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All too fittingly, now that Trump has returned, so has Allen, this time in a new broadcast sitcom, but one built from the same engine. “Shifting Gears” is another family comedy where Allen’s well-off dad struggles to understand what his kids (and grandkids) are going through. His daughter, Riley (Kat Dennings), is going through a divorce, and she needs a place to live with her two kids, Georgia (Barrett Margolis) and Carter (Maxwell Simkins). After running away from her father at age 18, she returns desperate and destitute, but still defiant, hoping her dear ol’ dad will take her in — and that he’s softened a bit in her absence.

One out of two ain’t bad for Riley, under the circumstances, but “Shifting Gears” is a far cry from good over its first two episodes. This early in the run of a multi-cam sitcom, a lack of chemistry is understandable, as are redundant exposition dumps meant to help the traditional TV audience keep up with what’s happening across 22 fleeting minutes of story. But it’s less tolerable not to finish those stories, instead tacking on a feel-good moment completely disconnected from the episode’s central issue, and these emotional gulfs are made all the more obvious when the jokes around them are this lazy and poorly delivered.

“Shifting Gears” has a very simple, very broad, very familiar premise — a grown child moves back home with her own young children — which should make it all the easier to deliver solid set-ups and punchlines. Instead, resources are devoted to Allen’s, oops, I mean Matt’s rants about whatever irritating peccadilloes he sees in today’s youth — and the rants aren’t that funny either. In the second episode, he’s upset that Carter’s school is giving him accommodations for his doctor-diagnosed anxiety. “What a surprise,” Matt says when he hears about his grand-son’s therapy. “Mo’ problems, mo’ money.” Ha… ha? In the pilot, Matt’s mad about a lot of things — bass players who call themselves musicians, people who don’t drive, mocktails — but he kicks off with a classic old man rant about how America doesn’t make things anymore.

30 p.m. EST) on ABC. (Disney/Raymond Liu)
SEANN WILLIAM SCOTT, KAT DENNINGS

“We don’t even make handbaskets in the U.S.,” Mike says. “We do make excuses, quitters, and diabetes — and celebrities that use diabetes medicine to lose weight. You want to lose weight? This hole right here [motions to his mouth], bigger than this hole right here [motions to his butt].”

Diabetes also comes up in the second episode, when Mike gets mad about a commercial where people with diabetes are dancing, but at least then he admits he’s more confused than angry. “I just don’t understand why they’re dancing if they have diabetes,” Mike says about a commercial the audience at home has not seen and has not been described to them. Perhaps this is an indicator that, in the weeks ahead, “Switching Gears” will try to balance his vitriolic screeds with warm family moments, much like “Last Man Standing” did in its later episodes. But even if it does, the new ABC series has much more to smooth out than ABC’s old series did. It needs better jokes, better timing, better arcs, better set design (the kitchen looks like a Home Depot display room), and better use of its stars. (Dennings seems to be rolling her eyes less as Riley and more as someone who hates the dialogue she’s reading.)

All that makes it hard to believe Allen examined “Switching Gears” with the same artistic rigor he gave “Last Man Standing” (let alone whatever effort he put into “Home Improvement”). He may still have plenty to say, but this isn’t the way to say it.