About seven years after their unceremonious parting, Tim Allen and ABC are officially getting back together. Shifting Gears, a pilot ordered by ABC back in March, has been picked up for series, per Variety. Allen is set to play the “stubborn” widower Matt who runs a car restoration shop; Kat Dennings is also making the leap from pilot to series, playing his adult daughter. Not everyone is coming with them, though. Mike Scully, a longtime Simpsons writer and showrunner, and Julie Thacker Scully, a fellow former Simpsons writer (and Mike’s wife), were initially set to write and executive produce the series, but will not be credited past the pilot. The hunt for a new showrunner is underway. Actor Froy Gutierrez has also bowed out; his role will be recast. Variety didn’t expand on why they weren’t sticking around, but if you want to engage in some speculation, at least one of Allen’s most recent co-stars has described his professional behavior as that of a complete asshole. Casey Wilson, who starred with Allen in last year’s The Santa Clauses for Disney+ called him “such a bitch” and “so fucking rude” and that the show was “truly the single worst experience I’ve ever had with a co-star, ever.” This, of course, is after years of complaining about political correctness and “woke” and comparing his life as a well-paid actor to living in Germany in the 1930s. But who’s to say whether that affected the people trying to do their jobs around him?Anywho, Shifting Gears doesn’t yet have a premiere date, but it does seem like the kind of thing that could take the spot of The Conners, which is set to conclude midseason.
