ABC is back in the comedy game this fall of the 2025 TV schedule with Shifting Gears, starring Tim Allen and Kat Dennings. While those two brought plenty of sitcom power on their own to the first season as vets of Home Improvementand 2 Broke Girls, Season 2 has already packed in some standout guest stars, and now another is on the way. A King of the Hill vet is bringing her live-action talents to Shifting Gears, but it’s the character she’s playing that has me scratching my head.
Pamela Adlon, known for projects like Better Things, Californication, and one very memorable role on Elsbeth as well as King of the Hill, has been cast to guest-star as Gabriel’s single mom, according to THR. While it’s not hard to imagine the 59-year-old Adlon fitting in with the Shifting Gears crew, it’s worth noting that Seann William Scott plays Gabriel, and the actor is 49 years old. Ten years is a very small age difference between on-screen mother and on-screen son!
I guess I’m hoping that Shifting Gears includes a mention that Adlon’s character was a teen mom, to at least make the age difference seem a little bit more acceptable. It’s not like the show introduces every character with a placard to announce their ages every time they walk into a scene, but the comedy is cutting it awfully close. Still, I’m not mad to have Pamela Adlon back on network TV, no matter what the math says about ages.
According to the outlet, she’ll appear in the new episode that airs on December 10 and streams next day with a Hulu subscription, called “Nutcracker.” The logline reveals that Adlon’s character comes into the mix when Gabe recruits Riley (Kat Dennings) to help Amelie (Carson Fagerbakke) to make an impression on his mother, with shenanigans sure to ensue.
Elsewhere in the episode, Jenna Elfman will be back as Eve while she and Mike (Tim Allen) aren’t on the best of terms, while Carter (Maxwell Simkins) needs help with a promposal. I’m curious about why Carter needs to be worried about prom in December, but hey, prom was a while ago for me. Maybe you do need several months of notice to prepare nowadays.
In all seriousness, this has been a big year for Pamela Adlon, and I certainly don’t just mean because she appeared in a few episodes of the sadly short-lived Mid-Century Modern. She reprised her fan-favorite voice role of Bobby Hill for the Hulu revival of King of the Hill, bringing the character back to the small screen for the first time in more than fifteen years.
Adlon’s episode of Shifting Gears won’t air on ABC until December 10, but you can find new episodes of the comedy in the meantime on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on the network, ahead of new episodes of Abbott Elementary Season 5. You can also revisit past episodes streaming on Hulu now.
