Nearly four years after Last Man Standing wrapped its nine-season run, Tim Allen is back on ABC — previously home to Last Man and Home Improvement — in the new sitcom Shifting Gears. But does the comedian’s third multi-cam offer anything audiences haven’t seen before? And if not, is that necessarily a bad thing?
In a moment, we’ll want to know what you thought of the show — TVLine’s Dave Nemetz has already given his review, which you can read here — but first, a brief recap of Episode 1:
Mike Taing/Disney
Wednesday’s series premiere introduces us to Matt Parker (played by Allen), the crotchety owner of a classic car restoration shop. He’s in the middle of one of his trademark rants, telling employees Gabriel (American Pie’s Seann William Scott) and Stitch (Galaxy Quest’s Daryl “Chill” Mitchell) how the world is going to hell in a handbasket, when suddenly a familiar-looking GTO is driven into his shop, and out comes his estranged daughter Riley (2 Broke Girls‘ Kat Dennings). She’s getting a divorce, and she and her two kids — Carter (Maxwell Simkins) and Georgia (Barrett Margolis) — need a place to stay.
The following scene lays out some much-needed backstory: It has been 15 years since an 18-and-pregnant Riley walked out of her parents’ house, bailed on college, and ran off with deadbeat musician James. Before now, she’d only ever been back for a few very awkward Christmases — and, more recently, her mother Diane’s funeral, where she barely said a word to her newly widowed father. “Mom made a relationship between you and me possible,” Riley explains. “She was our bridge.” Without Diane around, Matt and Riley struggle to live under one roof — and when Matt takes it upon himself to try and teach his grandson how to drive, resulting in a very predictable fender bender, Riley is ready to hightail it out of there.
Mike Taing/Disney
Later that night, while Matt is playing an extremely violent video game with his grandkids, Riley comes across her late mother’s flour sifter. When she brings to Dad’s attention that it’s dirty, he tells her that he hasn’t brought himself to wash it ever since the love of his life died of a sudden heart attack. Then and there, father and daughter find common ground in shared grief, which gives Riley hope: “Maybe we could build our own bridge,” she proposes. That’ll mean learning to talk like a family, and occasionally letting Matt make some of the parenting decision. And if they can make it work for the next four or five seasons, just long enough for Shifting Gears to eek its way into syndication, then everyone involved can live happily ever after.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the Shifting Gears premiere? Grade Episode 1 of the Allen-Dennings comedy below, then leave your full review in Comments.
