Netflix makes no bones about being in the Shane Gillis business. His recent comedy special on the streamer was so popular that Saturday Night Live had Gillis — who was fired as a cast member shortly after being added to the cast — host an episode. And they seem so impressed with his new sitcom, that they already picked up a second season.
TIRES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Workers open the rear of a box truck that’s filled with tires.
The Gist: Will (Steve Gerben), who manages the Valley Forge Automotive Center, leaves a long message for his father, who owns the mini-chain, about his recent order of about 500 tires, which is far too many tires for any one shop. But he thinks that he’s making progress in the two months he’s been in charge, despite seeing scenes where both his employees and his customers think whatever he’s doing “fucking sucks,” as his cousin — and best mechanic — Shane (Shane Gillis) tells him.
One of Will’s ideas is a new “women’s initiative;” since women traditionally are made to feel uncomfortable by pigs like Shane at auto shops, Will feels that making them comfortable will open up a new customer base to them. So he puts up pink posters and makes sure Kilah (Kilah Fox), who sits at the front desk, is seen doing the same work as the guys. Of course, that backfires on him when one of the other mechanics, Cal (Chris O’Connor) drops a tire on Kilah’s foot.
But Will still needs Kilah out front, because he’s having a local newspaper reporter over to the shop to do a “puff piece” about the women’s initiative. Of course, things go completely wrong when the reporter comes by. Kilah tells the reporter that she’s being made to work despite her injured foot. Then, when the reporter wants to talk to a mechanic, Shane comes out and the two of them almost get into a fight.
As the reporter waits to get a free oil change on his car, he’s fixing to write up a story that’s anything but a puff piece. In the meantime, Will gets a call from another cousin, Dave (Stavros Halkias), who is in charge of the Ardmore location, claiming that Will’s dad is “pissed off” at the tire over-purchase, the women’s initiative, and pretty much everything else Will is doing. Shane offers to fix everything, but Schultz (Andrew Schulz) and Tommy (Tommy Pope), their buddies from the sales lot next door, come over and blow that out of the water with pictures of their new receptionist.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tires is a workplace comedy along the lines of The Office but it certainly carries the seemingly off-the-cuff style of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
Our Take: Gillis and Gerben, along with John McKeever, wrote Tires and McKeever directs it in a low-budget style (which makes sense, since Gillis financed the first season himself) that evokes the early seasons of Always Sunny. It’s somehow more raunchy than the venerable FX sitcom, and much of that raunch is assigned to Gillis, at least in the first episode.
The show does not acquit itself well in the first episode, mainly because the assholish side of Gillis’ character is what is emphasized more than anything else. Add that to a clumsy bit of exposition at the beginning of the episode in the form of Will’s voice mail to his father, and you’ve got a first episode that almost immediately puts the viewer off.
But even in that first episode, even during one of its raunchier moments, there are shards of character development that tell us what this show could be. As Will is getting lit up by Dave on the phone, Shane tries to distract him by pretending to perform a sexual act on him. Instead of shooing his cousin off, Will starts laughing instead. It’s a sign that, despite the fact that Shane is a constant thorn in the side of Will in his role as boss, the two of them always got along as cousins and friends.
The second episode shows more of this, when Dave tells Will that, due to lagging business, he’s going to lose Shane to another location of the chain. Shane doesn’t want to go, and Will doesn’t want him to go. But when Shane runs into an old high school football teammate who offers him a job selling windows, he also considers leaving altogether.
Yes, Gillis is still more or less a jerk in this episode, but we also see that there’s a glimmer of him wanting a little more out of his life than just skating by at the shop. The more Gillis, Gerben and McKeever can do this with all of the characters on Tires, the better the show will get.
Sex and Skin: We mention the pantomimed sex act above. Otherwise, all of it is just talk.
Parting Shot: Dave hangs up on Will as Will explains why he had to buy huge ads in the paper so the negative profile of the shop would get killed.
Sleeper Star: Hard to say here, because Gerben and Gillis dominate the first episode so much. Though we do like the subplot in episode 2 where Kilah can’t go out to smoke because the restaurant owner next door constantly comes out and complains about the kids that work for him.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Shane and Call ask Will describe what the worst day would be, Will immediately starts to go to a Holocaust reference. Shane backs him off by saying, “I was talking about Monday… Garfield.”
Our Call: SKIP IT. While we think there is room for Tires to grow into a decent and moderately funny workplace comedy, we don’t think there will be much of that growth during a six-episode first season. We may see a better show during the second season, which Netflix has already picked up.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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