Shifting Gears Review: Tim Allen And Kat Dennings Are Dueling Spark Plugs In ABC's Family-Feud Sitcom
Tim Allen knows his niche. Between Home Improvement and Last Man Standing, Allen has spent nearly two decades on network TV playing a blue-collar, no-nonsense dad who loves his kids despite all his grumbling (and grunting). Now he's back on ABC with Shifting Gears — debuting this Wednesday at 8/7c; I've seen the first two episodes — a new sitcom that's built to be right in Allen's wheelhouse. And despite some flat jokes and predictable turns, it's built surprisingly well, with a lot of the credit going to co-star Kat Dennings, who proves she can go toe-to-toe with Allen and match him jab for jab.
Allen stars as Matt, an old-fashioned man's man who restores classic cars for a living. (What could be more manly than that?) He's thrown for a loop, though, when his wild-child daughter Riley, played by Dennings, shows up on his doorstep with her two kids (Maxwell Simkins and Barrett Margolis) in tow. She's getting divorced, she announces, and she has nowhere else to go. But she and her dad have never gotten along, and they haven't spoken at all since her mom's death. "I haven't changed a lot," Riley warns Matt, and he shoots back: "Neither have I."
Shifting Gears finds a way to weave in Allen's staunchly conservative political views, with his character Matt constantly ranting about how America is going down the tubes, complaining about everything from pickleball to mocktails. (Allen is an executive producer on the series, with several Last Man Standing EPs on board as well.) Some of Matt's rants feel like leftover scraps from Allen's stand-up act, and a few of them hit a sour note: "Good luck finding a man who's OK with his wife making more money than him," Matt warns his young granddaughter when she dares to dream of a career.
To the show's credit, though, Matt isn't just heralded as a patriotic hero who's right about everything. He's challenged on his views, with Dennings making a more than capable sparring partner. The two have an entertainingly feisty dynamic right away as they bicker back and forth — they actually seem like father and daughter — and Allen even reveals a tender side in the scenes where Matt and Riley try to process the death of her mother. Dennings is a seasoned sitcom pro, too, from her years on 2 Broke Girls, and she brings plenty of sharp sass as Riley, who's just as headstrong (and just as flawed) as her dad.
The supporting cast is solid as well, including Seann William Scott and Daryl "Chill" Mitchell as a pair of wise-cracking mechanics who work at Matt's shop. (Scott's character Gabriel is obviously being set up as a love interest for Riley, but they don't know it yet.) There aren't a lot of surprises to be found in Shifting Gears' first two episodes, but we don't tune into shows like this to be surprised, anyway. We tune in to laugh, and Allen and Dennings deliver on that front as a sturdy comedy duo. No, this show doesn't try to reinvent the wheel... but it does give that wheel a pretty decent restoration job.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Tim Allen and Kat Dennings make an entertainingly feisty duo as father and daughter in ABC's new family sitcom Shifting Gears.