Shifting Gears
Credit: ABC
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. Shows like Friends, Seinfeld and Home Improvement ruled the roost. Even before streaming took off, this started to change.
First, the nature of the sitcom began to shift. The Office brought a fresh “mockumentary” style to the genre. Expectations began to shift. Premium dramas became more en vogue following 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 TV like that anymore.
Along with the rise of premium TV, the MCU made superhero movies—and later shows—more popular than ever before. Game Of Thrones made fantasy popular. And reality TV continued to be the cheap and popular TV genre of choice for lower budget programs.
Sitcoms didn’t disappear, but their heyday was long past. Modern sitcom-adjacent shows like The Good Place ditched laugh tracks. The setting shifted also. There’s a sense in most classic sitcoms that everything is on a soundstage, whether that was Frasier’s Seattle apartment, Bundys’ suburban Chicago home from Married With Children, or the offices of Blush magazine from Just Shoot Me! In modern sitcoms like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, while a lot of 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 track.
Shifting Gears works as a title for Tim Allen’s new show on multiple levels, and I can’t help but think one of these is the shift back in time to the classic days of the sitcom, to something old and familiar and nostalgic. It’s a bit 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’m watching reruns of much older shows.
“I approached it in the same way that in the show Matt Parker modernizes classic cars,” showrunner Michelle Nader told The Wrap. “I was coming to it modernizing a classic form. I wanted it to be a sort of reinvention of the form, but not losing the parts that we love. That’s what I’m really exploring in terms of sets and the way jokes are done, the laugh track, the music.”
Shifting Gears
Credit: ABC
Allen plays Matt Parker, a curmudgeonly widower and auto-shop owner whose estranged daughter, Riley (Kat Dennings) shows up out of the blue with her two kids in tow. They haven’t really spoken in years, and they make up for lost time by arguing a lot and blaming one another for the rift—before trying to patch things up. Only one episode is out so far (first on ABC, but now streaming on Hulu) and it’s pretty hard to form a verdict on the basis of a pilot. I was amused, and I enjoy the chemistry between Allen and Dennings, but I was not immediately hooked. I was not in stitches. Some of the jokes landed but many fell flat.
Joining Allen and Dennings are 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 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 her sitcom Dharma & Greg—as well as Maxwell Simkins and Barrett Margolis as Carter and Georgia, Riley’s kids. (Allen and Mitchell also starred together 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’s still grieving the loss of his wife, though his grief mostly comes paired with wisecracks. At one point, after he and Riley have a heart-to-heart about the recent death of his wife / her mom, he tells her that this is 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’m paraphrasing, “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 lighthearted. Whatever cranky conservative quip Allen fires off is sanded down by the balance Dennings brings to the breakfast table. Matt berates his grandson’s entire generation for being lazy, for not learning how to drive because they’d rather Uber: “Jesus didn’t take an Uber,” he says before dropping the punchline: “He took the wheel.” All of this for his grandson’s Instagram feed while they sit parked in a beautiful black vintage Mustang. Later, Carter crashes the car, gently, in the parking lot.
Shifting Gears
Credit: ABC
The truth is, I don’t know what to think of Shifting Gears yet. The family sitcom elements are all here. Riley has returned with her children to beg for a place to stay while she pieces her life back together after divorcing her bass-playing, good-for-nothing husband who Matt never liked in the first place. Matt grudgingly puts a roof over her head. From here, they’ll have to learn how to get along and mend their relationship.
It’s been a hard stretch for Americans in the modern era. The rise of Trump, COVID-19 and all the new ways we can miscommunicate with one another online have conspired to make us more divided than ever. In a way, this show is trying to take that division and make it a bit nicer and gentler than it often is in real life, where plenty of families have seen rifts form over political differences.
The Republican dad and the Democratic daughter may have a fractured 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 that sunnier version of life most sitcoms represent. Divisive politics and generational divides 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.
Shifting Gears joins the new Frasier 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 sitcoms of the golden age. Time will tell if Shifting Gears can crank into high gear. Never judge a sitcom by its pilot.
And speaking of nostalgia, I’m very much enjoying 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.
