Tim Allen is a protective dad when coming face-to-face with Kat Dennings‘ ex-husband on ABC’s Shifting Gears.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from the Wednesday, February 5, episode, Allen’s character Matt isn’t thrilled by an evening visitor, asking, “Who rings the doorbell after 7 at night?”
Dennings’ Riley pokes fun at her dad’s reaction. “Oh, you think it is a home invasion?” she asks, to which Matt replies, “Maybe a polite one?”
Matt is far from thrilled by the alternative when he sees Riley’s ex-husband, Jimmy (Lucas Neff), at the door.
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“Hey Matt! I am here to see Riley and the kids,” Jimmy says moments before Matt closes the door in his face. “You know … my kids?”
Matt tells Riley it was “some hipster loser” at the door “who got the wrong house.” But his daughter quickly uncovered the truth.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t Jimmy,” Matt noted. “I just said it was the wrong house.”
Wednesday’s episode is the first time viewers meet Jimmy after hearing about him on the show. Shifting Gears, which premiered in January, follows widowed father Matt and his estranged daughter, Riley, as they find themselves living together and working to repair their relationship.
After reuniting with her father, Riley has largely been focused on raising her kids while exploring a possible romance with her childhood friend, Gabriel (Sean William Scott).
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“What I think personally — because it is one of my favorite things, too — is I am on board with stretching it out,” Dennings, 38, exclusively told Us in January about the potential fictional romance. “The best onscreen relationships are when they stretch it out for many, many, many seasons because then the payoff is so satisfying. Hopefully — if we’re lucky enough to go many seasons — it’ll take that long.”
Dennings also discussed forming an onscreen bond with Allen, 71. “It clicked pretty fast. We had lunch after I accepted the role and I felt immediately like I could trust him for some reason,” she shared. “And he opened up really fast to me. So I [was] like, ‘OK, this guy is like letting me in.’”
The connection between Dennings and Allen has only gotten stronger.
“For some reason it worked pretty immediately — maybe because I’ve grown up watching him for so much of my life, but it just worked. It felt very organic,” she recalled at the time. “And as [filming has] progressed, our scenes are so funny, if I do say so myself. The arguments are my favorite scenes to play because I have no fear. There’s no fear for either of us. We just absolutely go for it and it’s so much fun.”
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Allen couldn’t agree more, telling Us in a separate interview, “We’re different in so many ways. But our attitude about comedy is very similar. She cracks me up and I’m not easy that way. Kat can [deliver these lines] with a straight face. Her anger — that she played on 2 Broke Girls — is very similar to the sharpness that Mike Baxter could get into now.”
He continued: “When we argue on screen, it’s funny that we interrupt each other and it comes quite naturally. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I adore this person already. She and her husband [Andrew W.K.] are great people. It is like I’ve known her for freaking years, same as most of this cast.”
Shifting Gears airs on ABC Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Hulu.
