In September of last year, Shane Gillis took the world by storm when his comedy special, Beautiful Dogs was released on Netflix. Audience members from around the globe delighted in his laidback demeanor, and his endless supply of edgy, raunchy jokes. His popularity only climbed higher when he hosted Saturday Night Live in February, the show he was previously fired from. Last week, Gillis' new comedy show Tires was released on Netflix and has already been picked up for a second season, but is the show really all its cracked up to be? Let's take a look.
Tires is a mockumentary comedy show centering around the failing Valley Forge Automotive Center in Pennsylvania. It was created by John McKeever, Shane Gillis, and Steve Gerben, the latter two also star as the series' two main characters. The show also features comedians Kilah Fox, Chris O'Connor, and Stavros Halkias. It's full of charismatic performances, and while the comedy can be a bit much at times, there are plenty of laughs for you to enjoy on a night in with your friends. It's definitely one of those shows that you can turn your brain off to.
It is a very brief series, only having six episodes in season one, but that is far from the strangest part about Tires. The show did not debut to the rapturous applause Shane Gillis has experienced in the past. The show currently holds a score of 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, which has been slowly going down over the past week. But despite all of this, Tires has still managed to be renewed for a second season. Big deal, plenty of poorly-recieved shows have been given a second chance like that before, what's strange is that it was renewed on May 21st...and the show didn't even premiere until May 24th. In the past year, Shane Gillis has done a lot of good for Netflix, premiering his wildly successful special and performing three sold out shows for Netflix Is A Joke Fest, but it's still incredibly unorthodox for a show to get a second season before the first one even comes out. I suppose this explains a few things about season one though. Usually a show's first season is a chance for the creators to prove to their studio that they are worthy of being funded, promoted, renewed, but it appears as though the cast and crew of Tires went in with a safety net and didn't feel that same pressure to perform...and it shows.
The very first thing I noticed about Tires is the certain familiarity of it all. Within the first ten minutes I could tell exactly what this show was trying to be: The Office. When it comes to new mockumentaries, it's pretty much a given that they'll try to replicate The Office to some extent, and eventually you learn to ignore it. But Tires resemblance to The Office is staggering and at times it reads like a tride and true ripoff. A cast of unprofessional, wacky characters stuck in a dead-end job. There is some originality among certain characters, but a lot of them feel underutilized like Kilah. A definite standout of the series is episode five: "Bikini Car Wash," but that's pretty much the only episode where I can remember the entire plot after watching it. The truth is, a lot of the episodes blend together, and you're going to find yourself remembering individual jokes a lot more than you remember overall plots, something The Office rarely struggled with.
The most redeeming aspect of Tires is that it's a total passion project between a group of friends, and it's clear that the cast had a lot of fun making it. And at the end of the day, it's comforting to see that streaming giants like Netflix are still leaving room in their studio for original stories. Much like its predecessor and obvious inspiration, The Office also struggled to make an impact during its first season, so hopefully season 2 of Tires will have a lot more to show us, and I wish the crew the best of luck.