Shifting Gears’ Sets a New Low for Tim Allen’s Sitcoms

As the United States steps into 2025 amidst heightened divisions, varying perspectives emerge on how mainstream entertainment should address—or sidestep—these societal rifts. Some argue that escapism is the antidote, offering audiences relief from daily discord through lighthearted fare like sitcoms. Others advocate for a more confrontational and cathartic approach, leveraging sharp comedy to engage directly with seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Shifting Gears, an all-star sitcom featuring Tim Allen and Kat Dennings that premieres on ABC on January 8, takes a third—and unfortunately, uninspired—route. It repeatedly pays shallow homage to cultural divides through formulaic rants and stale comebacks, ultimately uniting viewers in the shared monotony of soundstage banter.

Allen’s portrayal of Matt, a car mechanic, feels oddly reminiscent of Mike Baxter from Last Man Standing, the conservative patriarch in a family of women, rather than Tim Taylor from his iconic Home Improvement. While Last Man Standing was less culturally dominant than Home Improvement, its comparable episode count during its decade-long run may make it the more recognizable Allen role today. Alternatively, this casting may reflect Allen’s preference for playing the cantankerous truth-teller, fueled by either the delusion of being a modern-day Archie Bunker or the misinterpretation of Bunker as a figure to emulate.

Matt, portrayed as one of those common-sense conservatives often sanitized by TV writers to avoid addressing the harsher realities of their ideologies, spends his days ranting into a void—or at his employees—until a familiar car pulls into his life. Out steps his estranged daughter, Riley (Kat Dennings), a sharp-tongued woman who left home as a pregnant teenager, married her musician boyfriend, and had sporadic contact with her father since, including a frosty exchange at her mother’s funeral.

Now back, with her divorce looming, Riley is desperate for a place to shelter her two kids: Carter (Maxwell Simkins), an awkward teenager, and Georgia (Barrett Margolis), a sitcom-precocious tween. This setup reignites tensions with her traditionalist father, who reluctantly agrees to house them while delivering predictable gripes about Kids Today—screens, Uber accounts, pronouns, and individualized learning plans. Where do they come up with this stuff?

Shifting Gears doesn’t aim to challenge; instead, it indiscriminately mashes at hot-button issues in the hope that the resulting noise—Nancy Pelosi! Breakdown of civility! Throwing shade?—might pass for humor.

This soulless effort is especially disheartening given the pedigree of co-creator Mike Scully, who, alongside his wife Julie Thacker Scully, has a history of crafting sharp comedy. Both have written for The Simpsons, with Scully serving as showrunner during an admittedly uneven stretch, yet even his weakest episodes are masterworks compared to the two Shifting Gears episodes provided for review. The show doesn’t just fail to be funny; its punchlines, such as Matt joking that he doesn’t mind pronouns because he hates everybody equally, feel like rehashed Facebook memes—cringe-worthy at best.

Worse still, these tired jokes support stories that are neither relatable nor absurd enough to land as farce. For instance, the second episode begins with Riley overwhelmed by scheduling conflicts—an important lawyer meeting coincides with the kids’ school open house. But instead of setting up comedic hijinks, the plot fizzles: Riley cancels the lawyer meeting almost immediately and attends the open house with Matt, leading to a lackluster A-plot where Riley inexplicably drinks too much and takes offense at innocuous small talk from a friendly vice principal. Meanwhile, Matt mimes getting high off a fidget spinner in a baffling and uncomfortable gag.

The effort required to endure this parade of boomer grievances is exhausting. Though the show attempts to balance Riley’s rebuttals against Matt’s right-lite tirades, the result is a corny back-and-forth that leaves all characters flat. Dennings, whose once-tart rebel-girl charm shone in 2 Broke Girls, now seems to be phoning it in, hitting punchlines with mechanical precision but little flavor.

Despite the flimsy material, the cast features surprising talent, including Daryl Mitchell, Seann William Scott, and Jenna Elfman, the latter slated for a recurring role after the initial episodes. Scott, at least, seems content to wisecrack and relax, playing a more subdued character than his trademark manic roles of the early 2000s.

Interestingly, the show’s rare glimmers of authenticity come during non-comedic moments, when Allen and Dennings embody the grief of losing a wife and mother. These brief touches of raw emotion hint at deeper potential beneath the facile generational-clash shtick, as though everyone involved is masking genuine weariness with the endless cycle of performative both-sides bickering.

In the end, Shifting Gears feels as hollow as the partisan news commentary Matt seems to alternately love and loathe—a cynical, empty spectacle devoid of genuine insight or humor.