After six about 20-minute episodes of the Shane Gillis-Steve Gerben-created sitcom Tires, one can begin to understand why Netflix would want to work with him. He has a certain charisma and some acting chops. In one scene during the first episode, Gillis’ character, also named Shane, tries to snow a very unhappy reporter. In the sequence, Gillis has to convey to the audience that he doesn’t mean a word he’s saying and is using the moment to humiliate his boss and cousin Will (Gerben) while playing authentic convincingly enough that one can see why the reporter might fall for it. It’s not an easy lift, but Gillis makes it work.
The story is fine enough for a hangout comedy. Will is a failure whose father owns several tire stores. Either as punishment or because it’s where he can do the least harm, Dad has exiled Will to manage one of the two lowest-performing branches of the chain. Physically slight and coded as a kind of nerd, Will doesn’t fit in with the mechanics, including their seeming ringleader, Shane. To save the shop and his job and earn his dad’s affection, he spends every episode of a “marketing” idea that derails spectacularly.
The bad news is that, despite a sound enough premise, everything the show says or tries has the shape of jokes without actually including a laugh line. It’s the essence of humor without any of the pesky chuckles.
The usual charge when it comes to a show like this is that the critic–me, in this case–is a moral prude. They’re ruining comedy with their woke-ism. When it comes to Tires, though, there is no outrage. It is neither shocking nor offensive. Sure, it makes liberal use of a particular slur for Italians. Yes, there’s plenty of slang for sex acts and parts of the body associated with said acts. However, while that language might earn a tut-tut from my Irish Catholic grandmother, God rest her soul, almost no one else will blink. The problem isn’t that I’m scandalized. The problem is Tires ultimately turns out to be a lazy copy of other sitcoms with none of the wit, surprise, or emotional investment.
One significant illustration of this issue is the show’s lead. Gerben’s Will has two prototypical boss types he can utilize. Either he should be either an everyman ala Dave in Newsradio or “a bad boss” who turns out to be a decent, caring guy like Michael Scott in The Office. However, his performance achieves neither sweet spot. What he most closely resembles, instead, is the creepy weirdo the other mechanics repeatedly portray him as. That leaves the show without a proper central figure, an absence it never finds a way to overcome.
Like In The Know earlier this year, Tires also tries to pull an emotional fast one on the audience. A key event hinges on the idea that a significant bond has developed between Will and his supervisees. Despite his incompetence and their rampant disrespect for him, they love him now. However, the show largely fails to indicate this to the audience.
In other, better shows, the tracks for this emotional catharsis would be laid over time. Viewers would see moments whose significance was perhaps unclear at the time. Then, the series would offer up those moments, plucked and strategically arranged. In turn, a person would recall those scenes and realize, “Oh, he really does look out for his co-workers” or “Wow, these people have truly grown.” There’s no such realization for the audience here. That’s because Tires only offers that occasional montage in place of true action and interaction. Instead, we get overlong scenes depicting an argument about how much sex a particular car gets the driver or a repetitive demonstration of how a Photoshop-like program can create larger or smaller breasts on drawings of women.
The pacing is a mess as a result. The show feels too long, a notable feat considering at least one episode doesn’t even reach 20 minutes. On the other hand, it also feels too short. The show never bothers sharing so much of the character development they obviously need for their story to work. Consequently, Tires is the rare show to make one comment both, “When does this episode end?” and “Wait…that’s it?”
Tires rolls onto Netflix’s showroom May 23.