Shifting Gears is officially on hiatus and will be back in January on the 2026 TV schedule, and there is already much to look forward to. Following the season premiere's Home Improvement reunion, the series is adding yet another awesome guest star for the back half of the season. However, I’m a bit suspicious about what this could mean for Matt's love life.
TVLine reports that The Office star Angela Kinsey is joining Shifting Gears as a guest star for Season 2. She is playing Lynn, a woman Tim Allen’s Matt meets on the “traditional values dating app” TradSwipe. The two “immediately hit it off and have a lot in common, but it’s clear that something is amiss,” according to the outlet.
It’s currently unknown what is “amiss” about Lynn, but it’s entirely possible that Matt is just wanting to get back out there after Eve. Shifting Gears' fall finale saw Matt professing his love to Eve, played by sitcom alum Jenna Elfman. Unfortunately, Eve revealed that she had accepted a job overseas to choreograph a K-pop group's tour. While it sounds exciting, the job will take her to South Korea and Europe for at least five months. Knowing how hard it would be to keep up a long-distance relationship for an indeterminate amount of time, Matt broke things off despite their love for each other.
This means that Matt will likely be feeling a lot of heartache when the show returns, even if he seems to be ready to move on. Or at least, to try to move on. So much so that he could be missing some pretty big signs that something is not right with his date. It’s possible Lynn could have some insane background, or her intentions for being on the dating app might be for some crazy reason that she doesn’t want to reveal right away until she’s sure that Matt is "the one." The possibilities are endless.
At the very least, whatever is amiss with Lynn, Angela Kinsey will certainly be able to do it justice. She is best known for her role as Angela Martin on NBC’s The Office for all nine seasons, and she had some pretty great moments with Rainn Wilson’s Dwight. It can be expected that she will bring all the funny and possibly all the crazy to her role as Lynn, and I cannot wait to see how it all goes down, regardless of how suspicious I am of her.
There are only five episodes left for Season 2, which comes back to ABC on Wednesday, January 7, meaning there will be a lot to cram in just a few episodes. As of now, it’s unknown when exactly fans will first meet Lynn, but there will be much to look forward to when Shifting Gears returns. For now, all episodes are streaming with a Hulu subscription.
