Tim Allen’s new sitcom ‘Shifting Gears’ has potential, but it gets off to a rough start

Tim Allen is no stranger to sitcoms, but the genre itself feels like one these days. Once upon a time, the broadcast sitcom was king of the hill. Willing to show Friends, Seinfeld and Home improvement ruled over the cane. Even before streaming took off, this began to change.

First, the nature of the sitcom began to change. The office brought a fresh “mockumentary” style to the genre. Expectations began to change. Premium dramas became more a vogue after the success of shows like The sopranos and Breaking Bad. Streaming fundamentally changed how we watch TV, with even more emphasis on drama or big-budget fantasy, not to mention Netflix’s binge-release model. The coveted weeknight time slots became irrelevant. People didn’t watch television like that anymore.

Along with the rise of premium television, the MCU made superhero movies — and later shows — more popular than ever. Game Of Thrones made fantasy popular. And reality TV continued to be the cheap and popular TV genre for lower budget shows.

Sitcoms didn’t disappear, but their heyday was long over. Modern sitcom-adjacent shows like The good place abandoned laugh track. The setting also changed. There’s a sense in most classic sitcoms that everything is on a soundstage, whether it was Frasier’s apartment in Seattle, the Bundys’ suburban Chicago home of Married with children, or the offices of Blush magazine from Just shoot me! In modern sitcoms like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, while much time is spent in the police department, much of the show takes place outside and in various locations around the city. The good place takes place in a colorful afterlife. Characters no longer make entrances perfectly timed with a joke and a laugh.

Change gears serves as a title for Tim Allen’s new show on several levels, and I can’t help but think that one of these has shifted back in time to the classic days of the sitcom, to something old and familiar and nostalgic. It’s a little jarring, to be honest, but also kind of nice. Sitcoms never went away, but I haven’t really watched any either, or at least not this kind of sitcom. I only expect laugh tracks when I watch reruns of much older shows.

“I approached it the same way that Matt Parker on the show modernizes classic cars,” showrunner Michelle Nader told The Wrap. “I got to modernize a classic shape. I wanted it to kind of reinvent the shape, but not lose the parts that we love. That’s what I’m really exploring in terms of sets and the way jokes are made , the laugh track, the music.”

Allen plays Matt Parker, a widower and auto dealership owner whose estranged daughter Riley (Kat Dennings) appears out of the blue with her two children in tow. They haven’t really spoken in years, and they make up for lost time by bickering a lot and blaming each other for the split – before trying to patch things up. With only one episode out so far (first on ABC, but now streaming on Hulu), it’s pretty hard to form a judgment based on a pilot. I was entertained, and I enjoy the chemistry between Allen and Dennings, but I wasn’t immediately hooked. I wasn’t in stitches. Some of the jokes landed, but many fell flat.

Along with Allen and Dennings is Seann William Scott (American Pie, Dude Where’s My Car) as Gabriel (how is Scott 48 years old, he doesn’t look it), Daryl Mitchell, who are fans of Fear The Walking Dead will remember as one of the truck drivers, and Jenna Elfman-also from Fear The Walking Dead, but best known for his sitcom Dharma & Greg—as well as Maxwell Simkins and Barrett Margolis as Carter and Georgia, Riley’s children. (Allen and Mitchell also co-starred in Galaxy Quest).

Matt is a grumpy old Republican who isn’t half as angry at the world as everyone seems to think he is. He is still grieving the loss of his wife, though his grief is mostly accompanied by clever tricks. At one point, after he and Riley have a heart-to-heart about his wife/her mother’s recent death, he tells her that’s why he watches the news during breakfast. He’s been all alone, and sometimes it’s nice to hear a woman’s voice “…even if it’s Nancy Pelosi.” Dennings fires back with, and I paraphrase, “Oh yeah, so terrible. She’s only trying to save democracy.”

You see, they’re from different generations and have wildly different politics, but it’s all very anodyne and light-hearted. Whatever sour conservative wit Allen fires off is ground down by the balance Dennings brings to the breakfast table. Matt mocks his grandson’s entire generation for being lazy, for not learning to drive because they’d rather Uber: “Jesus didn’t take an Uber,” he says, before dropping the punchline: “He took the wheel.” All this for his grandson’s Instagram feed while parked in a beautiful black vintage Mustang. Later, Carter gently crashes the car in the parking lot.

The truth is, I don’t know what to think Change gears yet. The family sitcom elements are all here. Riley has returned with her children to beg for a place to live while she puts her life back together after divorcing her bass-playing, good-for-nothing husband, whom Matt never liked in the first place. Matt reluctantly puts a roof over his head. From here, they will have to learn to come together and repair their relationship.

It’s been a rough stretch for Americans in the modern era. The rise of Trump, COVID-19, and all the new ways we can miscommunicate with each other online have conspired to make us more divided than ever. In a way, this show tries to take that division and make it a little nicer and gentler than it often is in real life, where many families have seen rifts form over political differences.

The Republican father and Democratic daughter may have a broken relationship, but they can heal it because family is more important than the name we check at the ballot box — or at least it should be, according to the sunnier version of life that most sitcoms represent . Divisive politics and generational gaps are just a joke or two away from a happy resolution. And maybe it’s okay to just laugh at it all, or at least listen to the laugh track, and enjoy some good old fashioned nostalgia 22 minutes at a time.

Change gears joins the new Phrases on Paramount+ in what could be seen as a bit of a sitcom renaissance, though it’s unclear if these new sitcoms will ever reach the same heights or popularity as the Golden Age sitcoms. Time will tell Change gear can screw in high gear. Never judge a sitcom by its pilot.

That said, held up against modern dramas like Shrinks or A man on the inside, the writing here feels incredibly pedestrian and bland. Maybe it’s just a rough start, or maybe the classic sitcom is better left in the past.

And speaking of nostalgia, I really enjoy the new Dexter: Original Sin show on Starz. It very much captures the feel of the original show. You can read my review right here.