Love him or hate him, there’s no doubt that, in the history of convicted cocaine traffickers who made millions by pretending to be “blue collar” dads on ABC sitcoms, Tim Allen is the absolute kingpin. Allen’s rebrand from felon to family comedian back in 1991 was one of the most inexplicable and profitable pivots in the history of entertainment. Today, two smash-hit sitcoms and four Toy Story films later, the only white powder the general public associates with the man whom Michigan police caught smuggling almost a pound and a half of cocaine through Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport in 1978 is the snow speckled on his fake white beard in that Santa Clause streaming show.
Now, at 71, the Home Improvement star is ready to start a brand new project making the exact same jokes that have earned him his fortune for over three decades as ABC just gave a greenlight to his series Shifting Gears, which will feature Allen playing a cranky old classic car mechanic whose estranged daughter and grandkids move in with him unexpectedly.
It’s almost as bold a premise as the last time NBC made a sitcom about white people living in New York City.
After establishing himself as one of the biggest TV stars of the 1990s through his performance as as the handy family man and tool expert Tim Taylor on Home Improvement, Allen returned to ABC in 2011 to make Last Man Standing, a series about a sporting goods executive who struggles to maintain his manliness in a household full of women. Now, with Shifting Gears, the formula of “Tim Allen + masculine consumer goods + family = ABC sitcom” proves itself to be as timeless as it is tired.
Interestingly, Shifting Gears will move forward at ABC without its other original creators, as former Simpsons showrunner Mike Scully and his creative partner and wife Julie Thacker Scully have exited the Allen-led series for reasons that are not yet known. According to Deadline, Allen will search for a new showrunner for his newest sitcom. Presumably, any assistant in Hollywood with a working knowledge of the search-replace function and a library full of Home Improvement scripts will be at the top of the list.
