If you’ve been paying close attention to Shifting Gears, you might have noticed something going on in the background. This adjustment might have seemed subtle but is actually a deliberate and powerful choice — the set of Tim Allen’s sitcom is evolving with each episode. Matt Parker’s (Allen) house has been changing from being something kinda minimalist and bachelor to something with more stuff littered everywhere, reflecting the changes happening in the show’s central relationships. Now, thanks to production designer Stephan Olson, we finally know what the heck is going on.
During an interview with IndieWire, Olson explained that the changes to Matt’s home aren’t just a coincidence, but a deliberate stylistic choice to give us all a subconscious visual representation of the changes in his life, and the new dynamic with his daughter, Riley (Kat Dennings), and her two kids, Carter (Maxwell Simkins) and Georgia (Barrett Margolis). When the show began, Matt was a widower and an empty nester, living in a home that reflected his isolated life, controlled by his routine. But as Riley and her kids settled in, the house started to transform:
“There’s a growth curve. It’s just a huge learning process for the characters [and] what the house is like. The house changes with these new characters in it.”
Tim Allen Pushed For the Set Change in ‘Shifting Gears’
Olson noted that initially, there was hesitation from the network about making Matt’s house appear too stark, but revealed that it was actually Allen who pushed for a more natural progression:
“They had sort of a minimal lifestyle. They were empty nesters. And that was a conscious choice on everybody’s part, to not have that sitcom clutter. We had to do some convincing because I think the network sometimes would like to see it look more comfortable and more inviting, and Tim’s answer to that was, ‘The kids [characters] are gonna bring that.’”
The philosophy they were employing also extends beyond just adding more “stuff” to the set. Olson and the Shifting Gears team expanded the depth of the set so that directors could play with different camera angles and movement, and in doing so were able to enhance the sense of realism.
“Depth to sets was an early idea that I pitched, and it kind of went away for a while during the process. Then we were walking on the sets, and we’re like, ‘Boy, it would really be nice to have that.’ So we built it back again.”
