There was a lot I missed on the 2025 TV schedule during the blurry days when ABC and YouTube TV were disputing. College football was the big thing, but some of my favorite ABC TV shows were preempted in this window, which is how I ended up missing a fun Toy Story nod from Tim Allen and co.
The timeline went like this. ABC dropped the Halloween episode of Shifting Gears on October 29th, but I played tennis that evening and missed the episode. The next day, the ABC and YouTube TV dispute went into effect, and I couldn’t see the episode as intended. That is until this week, when it popped back up in my library thanks to my YouTube TV subscription as the dispute ended.
During the episode, the family split up for the holidays. The kids got involved in a Dia De Los Muertos party. Riley dressed up in a Mama Bear costume that was mistaken for a Wookie while hanging out with “pal” Gabe (dressed as Han Solo) and his new love interest. Meanwhile, Matt Parker was at home and begrudgingly handing out candy with his girlfriend Eve, when a kid in a Woody costume came calling.
Matt curmudgeonly told the kid he should have dressed as a “space ranger” in an amusing Easter egg moment. Shifting Gears has often nodded at many of Tim Allen’s other projects, and even brought in the Home Improvement crew earlier this season, so the joke wasn’t wholly unexpected. However, with Toy Story 5 coming down the pipeline, the timing for the joke would have really great had I seen it on Halloween, and also it really did fit into the storyline nicely and wasn’t shoehorned in.
However, let me tell you, watching a Halloween TV episode at the end of November is all kinds of trippy, and it also meant I missed out on the show nodding back to Kat Dennings’ 2 Broke Girls work.
Disney and YouTube TV had a roughly two-week fight over how much money the latter would give the former per subscriber for ABC, ESPN and the rest of its channels. We don't know the exact final numbers, but it's rumored YouTube TV gave Disney some additional money in exchange for the ability to ingest content from ESPN's new streaming service into the YouTube TV app itself.
We do know the dispute also allegedly led to some other providers like Sling TV seeing boosts, and it led to YouTube TV subscribers earning a $20 credit for the hassle.
That may feel like a small win. In reality though, the viewers were the losers. And that’s worthy of a Tim Allen grunt.
