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The Season 2 premiere of “Shifting Gears” is packed with power – star power, that is.
The ABC sitcom will rev up the nostalgia on its Oct. 1 premiere (ABC, 8 ET/PT and streaming the next day on Hulu) when Tim Allen reunites with former costars from his '90s hit series “Home Improvement.”
The eight-season sitcom centered on Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor (Allen), who hosted a renovation show with flannel enthusiast Al Borland (Richard Karn) and their lovely assistant Heidi (Debbe Dunning). Tim and his better half, Jill (Patricia Richardson), raised three rambunctious sons – Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and Mark (Taran Noah Smith), who turned into '90s teen heartthrobs off the show. The Taylors’ wise neighbor Wilson (Earl Hindman) helped illuminate the error of Tim’s ways.
On “Shifting Gears” Allen portrays Matt, owner of a car restoration shop, who lost his wife to a heart attack. When he has trouble moving on, his friend Charlotte (Nancy Travis, Allen’s onscreen wife for 9 seasons on “Last Man Standing”) suggests a grief group. Enter Richardson, Karn and Dunning.
“It seemed to be a nice metaphor, and it was just ridiculously funny,” says Allen, 72. Over the years, Allen says he’s seen Karn frequently and run into Dunning at golf tournaments. Richardson, “I don't see as much,” he says. But “it was hysterically funny just getting them to be these completely different characters and you end up slipping back into your old roles you played … Mostly it was just for fun for the audience.”
Richardson and Karn appeared on Allen’s former sitcom “Last Man Standing” (2011–2021), as did Thomas. And there was an attempt to get Thomas, who left “Home Improvement” in Season 8 to focus on his education, to be on the “Shifting Gears” premiere, but Allen says, “He was going to be in this episode also. His scheduling didn't match up.”
The ‘serious amount of pain’ from a ‘Home Improvement’ stunt
Allen says he and his former castmates couldn’t help but reminisce about being on set with the young Bryan, Thomas and Smith.
“We all make jokes about the mistakes we've made, really,” Allen says. Dunning tripped “many times” down the “Tool Time” stairs.
Minor mishaps would happen “constantly,” Allen says, since the onscreen Tim was prone to accidents.
“One time they put me through Wilson’s fence,” Allen said. The crew scored the wood so that his head would have an easier time plowing through.
“I leaned in, ran, bent over with the helmet on, and hit the fence and did not go through it” and came close to knocking himself out, Allen says. The special effects team advised Allen his target was “a little to the left of that,” Allen says. He told them, “Well, you might want to mark that or something!”
In another scene, Allen fell off the roof and landed, “upside down instead of right side up on this rigging” wrapped around his groin.
“I'm hanging there in this considerable amount of discomfort,” Allen says, when the stage manager comes aver and asks him to say his line. He told her, “’I'm trapped. I can't breathe, and I'm in a serious amount of pain,’” which she relayed to the control room. “This is all going on for way too long,” Allen says, to “where I finally just said, ‘Get me the frick down!”
How Allen envisioned renovating ‘Home Improvement’ for a reboot
Allen mentioned brainstorming an idea for a “Home Improvement” revival in 2023.
“Everybody wanted us to get back to do a reboot,” Allen says. “But how would it be because all three boys would be gone? So we wanted to have them have a business in town that required the ‘Tool Man’ to help be there all the time but also come back and forth to the house.”
Like an apartment building that his kids owned that Tim helped renovate. “So it's all about the people in this apartment building, young kids and college kids,” he says. His children “come back and visit” Tim and Jill who would be “ancillary characters.” However, he says Richardson said she is not interested in doing a reboot.
When the series ended, the Taylors were headed to Indiana for Jill’s new job in a clinic. When asked what happened after the finale, Allen envisions “Tool Time” exploding in popularity. “They'd have to return to where they were in a different house,” he says. “Then different situations without the boys. That's where it kind of led into that other thing, where they had some other business in that town.”
What’s to come in 'Shifting Gears' Season 2?
Allen says in the series’ sophomore season, Matt will “investigate what it's like to find love again.” Matt and Eve (Jenna Elfman) shared a kiss in March’s finale. Matt will also be more involved with his grandchildren, Carter (Maxwell Simkins) and Georgia (Barrett Margolis) and supporting his daughter Riley (Kat Dennings), who will uncover a new talent. “She's very competent in some skill that you're going to go, ‘What?’” Allen says. “It was very clever.”
Consider our engines revved.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A Tim Allen crossover? Actor talks 'Home Improvement' costars on 'Shifting Gears' Season 2
Reporting by Erin Jensen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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