Despite some initial reports claiming Tim Allen’s Shifting Gears might not get renewed for Season 2, ABC quelled all fears and officially ordered more episodes that'll debut later in the 2025 TV schedule. Fans are hoping this show matches up with his previous efforts, Last Man Standing and Home Improvement, and the stand-up comedian, who turns 72 in June 2025, reflected on achieving sitcom stardom so quickly without any experience, and topping another broadcast television icon in the process.
Anyone hooked on network sitcoms in the 1990s no doubt sat down for untold hours of multicam family fun with both Home Improvement (1991-1999) and Roseanne (1988-1997 initially) crushing the competition at the time, inspiring a host of other half-hour comedies offered to stand-up comedians. In an interview with Closer, Allen reflected on diving into making a TV show without any real experience or expectations. When asked about treasured memories, he replied with:
Oh, so many! I didn’t know anything about television. I didn’t know that you had to memorize 40 pages of dialogue. I had no idea how to do that stuff. That first week, it hit so hard that it was so new to me. I think we followed Roseanne, and pretty soon we surpassed her in ratings. We were off and running. It was a huge hit.
Before landing Home Improvement, Allen amassed more than a dozen years working stages as a stand-up comedian, making his very first on-screen movie appearance as a baggage handler in Ciro Durán’s 1988 drama Tropical Snow, co-starring David Carradine. Despite that achievement, and despite fronting two comedy specials in 1990 and 1991, Allen was completely out of his element when it came to memorizing episodic scripts and other responsibilities that became second-nature for him down the line.
One of the biggest advantages that Home Improvement had over a lot of its competition in 1991 and beyond was its key time slot, which was nestled in between Full House and Roseanne for its first season. Incredibly enough, Tim Taylor & Co. managed to tie with Cheers as the #4 show of the 1991-1992 TV season, with Roseanne Barr's long-running fave sitting comfortably at #2.
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But that Tuesday night pairing wasn't meant to last, as ABC capitalized on Home Improvement's successful first season by giving it the 9:00 p.m. anchor slot on Wednesday nights, and it rose to #3 during its second-season outing. But it was with its third year that the Detroit-set sitcom claw-hammered its way to becoming the #1 scripted show on TV, albeit still at #2 behind 60 Minutes. Meanwhile, Roseanne fell to #4 behind another stand-up star's smash hit, Seinfeld.
Though he might not have been extremely prepared during those earliest production days, Tim Allen definitely grew accustomed to being a mega-TV star across Home Improvement's eight seasons. (He boasted having the #1 TV show, #1 book, and #1 movie box office in 1994.) Though he pointed out that the machismo-driven comedy also set the stage for a pattern of audience-pleasing hits that were not so easily embraced by critics. As he put it:
The funny thing was that it was typical of my successes. Critically, people hated it. It was too pop, too stupid. [They said], 'There’s no way this guy can grunt his way through 12 episodes.' It became iconic stuff although that wasn’t the plan. The plan was just to entertain.
I would love to know the current headspace of the person who claimed that Tim Allen's signature grunts couldn't keep the show afloat. I wonder if they also thought a silly Fox animated show about a spiky-haired kid would never get off the ground.
Those salad days of the early '90s are far behind us, although ABC is currently airing the final season of the Roseanne follow-up The Conners, which kicked off the week after Shifting Gears wrapped its first season with a romantic-leaning finale. The more things change, the more they stay vaguely similiar, with different titles. Stay tuned for more details about when Allen's Matt and Kat Dennings' Riley will return.
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